Do you know that you can actually train your mind to heal your body faster? At least, some researchers believe so. In fact, they have hinted that a human mind is capable of a lot of things besides decision making and analyzing the surroundings. Unfortunately, a majority of us don’t know how to do any of that. It is quite the same with Google Analytics.
If you are involved in marketing practices, you must be aware of Google Analytics. It is a tool that is used by marketers to measure their marketing efforts. However, there’s more to it. Besides helping you monitor the traffic on your website, it can also be used to boost the organic traffic on a website. And if you have been unaware of the fact, here’s your chance to educate yourself and make the most of the Google Analytics tool.
Discover in-depth details from queries report:
If you always wanted to know how your website performs in Google Search, all you need to do is set up Google Search Console account for your site. But unfortunately, the reports you’re going to find here aren’t as comprehensive as the reports you find in Google Analytics. Interestingly, you can integrate the Search Console account with Google Analytics to receive in-depth details about your search traffic, and here is how you can do it:
● Sign into your Google Analytics account, and then select the right website in the list that you want to connect with the Search Console account.
● Now, find “Admin” in the left taskbar and click on it.
● After that, you need to find the “Property Settings” in the property column and click on it.
● Now, click on “Adjust Search Console” in the Search Console column, and then click “Edit”.
● Select the search console site and click “Save.” When it’s done, click “OK.”
Now, you will be able to access the search console reports under the search console tab. Once the setup is complete, you can check what the organic visitors are looking for on your website by navigating to Acquisition > Search Console > Queries.
Get a better understanding of keyword intent:
Understanding the intention of your organic visitors is the key to search engine optimization. So, before you invest your time and effort in any SEO activity, it is better to find out whether you are delivering your organic visitors with what they want. By looking at keyword intent, you can understand if your website is driving the right traffic.
There can four different types of keyword intent:
● Informational: A user searches for the answer to a question
● Investigational: The user searches for information that may eventually lead to a transaction.
● Navigational: With this type of keyword intent, the user searches for a specific website.
● Transactional: In this case, the user is ready to make a purchase.
Interestingly, you can develop a better understanding of the keyword intent from the Queries Report under the Search Console field. With a better knowledge of the keyword intent, you can help the visitors get what they are looking for.
Use a profile filter to find out “Other” keyword data:
The Queries Report in Google Analytics can certainly be useful in identifying how the website performs for certain keywords in Google Search. However, you may also get to see a lot of queries grouped together as “Other.” Analytics identify them as queries that are made irregularly or contain sensitive information.
This “other” keyword can be anything from “APA referencing” to “string theory”. So, when we mention “Other” keyword, you need to replace it with the keyword that you found.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to understand these “other” keywords fully with Google Analytics. However, you can still have a decent idea of where the traffic is moving towards and whether you need to conduct thorough research with other techniques by using a profile filter. Interestingly, the filter can only be applied to the data gathered from new visits and not on the historical ones.
To create a filter, you need to follow these steps below:
● Find “Admin” in the left taskbar in Google Analytics.
● Under the “View” column, you will find “Filters.” Click on it.
● You’ll then get the “Add Filter” option. Click on it.
● While adding the filter to view, adhere to the following configuration:
● Put “Unlock (other)” in the field left blank for “Filter Name”
● Select the “Filter Type” to “Custom.”
● Choose “Advanced” under the “Custom” column.
● Under “Field A -> Extract A”, choose the campaign term “(other)”.
● Under “Field B -> Extract B”, choose the request URI (.*)
● Under the “Output to -> Constructor” field choose the campaign term to be “ot – $B1”
● Tick the first three checkboxes (Field A required, Field B required, and Override Output Field).
With the filter installed, Google Analytics can offer some additional benefits. However, there are a few conditions:
i) Apply this filter when the search term matches the “other” keyword
ii) Use the address of the page reached, where the “other” keyword was referring search term, within this filter.
iii) While applying the filter, replace the “other” search term with ot – followed by the landing page address.
Utilize the keyword planner to collect more ideas:
To ensure your products and services get enough exposure on Google Search, you should acknowledge almost every possible combination of keywords users choose to search for similar products and services. When you identify those keywords, you can optimize your websites for those keywords to attract more number of organic visitors.
Google Keyword Planner can help you get a great number of potential keyword ideas. It is the best keyword research tool in the market. You can simply copy your existing keywords from the Queries Report in Google Analytics, and paste it into Google Keyword Planner to find new keywords that are closely related to the existing ones.
You don’t necessarily have to add all the keywords that the keyword planner generates. If some keywords don’t meet certain search volume, it is okay to discard them and focus on the ones that matter to your business.
Track the performance of focus keywords:
If you have been using Yoast plugin for SEO, you must already know about focus keyword. As the name suggests, it’s that one keyword around which the page is built. The focus keyword lets the search engine know what the webpage is about. If you can find the right keyword for a page, you can attract the right kind of visitors who are more likely to convert into lead and customers.
If you are able to track the performance of the focus keywords, you can not only identify whether you are pulling the right traffic but also get insights into how to choose the right focus keyword for content. Interestingly, you can further curate perfect content for the chosen keyword.
If you want to track the performance of the focus keywords of your webpages, you need to enable the “Custom Dimensions” on your site. You can find the feature under the “Admin” option in the left taskbar. By enabling the custom dimensions, you can collect and analyze data that are crucial to your website.
Reduce the page loading time by monitoring the site speed report:
The loading time of a site can be a crucial factor for your online business. If you are running an academic solution providing company, and your page takes more than 20 seconds to load, the student looking for urgent homework help will leave your page and get assistance from your competitor. Moreover, he/she will contribute to your site’s bounce rate.
To get a better understanding of the importance of the loading speed of your page, here are a few facts that you must know:
● 40 per cent of the visitors leave the website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
● The conversion rate of the site reduces by 7 per cent for the delay of each second.
● 79 per cent of the online buyers never return to a website if they find the website’s performance to be poor.
To get the report on your website’s loading speed, head to Behavior > Site Speed > Overview. Go through the report to understand which page on your website is taking more to load on a browser. You can also identify the browser on which your website is performing the best.
Evaluate landing page reports to improve engagement:
It is important to analyze the organic landing pages, which are basically the first page the visitors find after getting directed by the search engines. You need to ensure that the visitors aren’t facing any problem navigating to other pages from there. To get the organic landing pages report, you can go to Acquisition > Search Console > Landing Pages.
By evaluating the organic landing pages report, you can have a better understanding of how the visitors are engaging with the site and how their experiences are with navigation. As you may realize, engagement signals are a crucial ranking factor. So, boosting the engagement metrics can help you boost the search rankings.
Monitor the referral traffic to find link opportunities:
Referral traffic can boost further link building opportunities. If you get to know that someone has linked to one of your blog posts, you can approach the content creator for backlinking opportunities, which can help in improving organic traffic.
To get the referral traffic report, you need to navigate to Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals.
Set up a custom SEO dashboard:
It is possible to set up a custom SEO dashboard that allows you to get a quick overview of SEO information. It can save you a lot of time if you usually spend a significant amount of time analyzing various SEO reports. You can use the time to improve your website’s performance with different hacks.
You have the option to create a new custom SEO dashboard or import an existing one and customize it as per your requirements. The later one is comparatively easier.
Set up a custom alert:
If you take a close look at the way Google updates its algorithms, you will notice fluctuations in the search traffic of your website more often than not. If you can get notified on the impact of the latest updates on your website traffic, you will have better chances of undoing the actions by taking several measures.
Google Analytics allows you to set up custom alerts that can help you get notified on the significant change in the reports. To set up the report, click on “Admin” on the left taskbar. Then click on the “Custom Alerts” option in the View column. After that, select the option “New Alert”. Now, configure the settings as per your requirements and then click on Save Alert.”
In conclusion
It may take us another millennia or so to figure out the full potential of our minds, but if you are willing to make the optimum use of the Google Analytics tools, you can do it right away.
Bookmark this page and use it as a guide on how to utilize Google Analytics to boost the organic traffic on your website. Here’s wishing you all the luck with your efforts.