You don’t just need a website. You need to know that your website is working for you!
And while you can track metrics like the number of people who fill out a contact form or buy a product directly from your site, what about the other people?
There will be visitors who come to your site for your content, to learn more about your services or products but don’t book or buy. What can you do about them?
This is where a tool like Google Analytics comes in handy because it can tell you — in very clear detail — what users are doing on your site and how you can improve their experience (and your revenue). Here, we’re going to talk about the 5 ways Google Analytics can help you grow your reach.
If you haven’t set up Google Analytics on your site yet, Google has a great tutorial to help you do that!
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1 | Understand where your visitors are coming from
Google Analytics makes it super easy to track where your visitors are coming from, so you can see exactly what marketing efforts are working. When you check your reports (on the lefthand side of your Google Analytics home screen), you’ll be able to see “Acquisition.” When you click this, you can see which channels are driving the most traffic to your website, whether it’s referrals (other people’s links), social media, search engines, etc.
Once you do that, you can then view the traffic to specific pages on your website. For example, you’ll be able to view the specific traffic sources of your site’s home page, which is very important because this is the page that visitors landed on first when visiting your site. With this data, you’ll be able to identify how people are coming to your website and where they go from there.
This lets you decide where to put more effort and where to make changes. For example, if you see that you’re getting the most traffic from email but not much from Instagram, it might be best to invest more in your email marketing than in Instagram.
2 | Identify your target audience
Your audience is everything! That’s why it’s so important to take the time to not only know them but also understand where they are coming from and how you can help them. Google Analytics has a ton of ways to get to know your site visitors better, specifically through Audience reports.
Using Audience reports, you can look at the demographics of your visitors, interests (like books, music, eco-friendly products, etc.), their location, and the devices they use to look at your site or content.
Demographics and location reports specifically are helpful in targeting your marketing, especially if you run social media ads. It also lets you know if you’re speaking to the right person in your marketing, or if you potentially need to update your content. For example, you may see that half of your audience are males from the East Coast, but you’ve been speaking to women in the Midwest. That’s useful information to have when you want to increase sales!
Related post: Make an Opt-In Your Audience Wants
3 | Strengthen your keywords
SEO (search engine optimization) is the key to getting your business seen when someone searches for it on Google. One “key” to doing this is using keywords, and Google Analytics is a great way to see if specific keywords connect people to your content.
One way to improve keywords is to sync Google Analytics with your Google Search Console. This will show you possible improvements in your keyword opportunities, and exactly what keywords people are searching for when they find your website. In order to get the best results and ranking on Google, you’ll want to analyze your keyword findings, make appropriate changes where needed, and update anything that isn’t bringing more traffic to your site.
4 | Analyze the success of your campaigns
In Google Analytics, you can set “benchmarks” and goals for things like ad campaigns, search engine results, social media traffic, email clicks, and more.
The campaign report is considered one of the most tailored reports in Google Analytics because you can create custom campaigns. In this way, every website’s report is different and able to provide unique insights into which campaigns are working and which aren’t.
Campaign information includes five different topics:
- Medium: traffic type
- Source: details about where users come from
- Campaign: the name of the chosen campaign
- Ad content: the name of the ad clicked
- Keyword: the keyword that is searched/targeted
Once you have launched your campaign, you can also use Google Analytics to analyze the results, which will prove whether or not the campaign was a success or needs to be modified.
Related post: WordPress SEO Basics to Help You Show Up More Online
5 | Monitor your site conversions
You created your website to help you sell your products or book your services, so you want to make sure it’s converting! In this sense, conversion reports run by Google Analytics are perhaps the most useful reports for your business.
When it comes to conversion reports, you’ll have to actually create goals inside Google Analytics. Once those goals are set, Google Analytics will be able to tell you if you’re on the right path or not. Goals might include the number of “Thank you for registering” pages visited (meaning someone registered for a webinar or freebie) or the number of products sold if you have an e-commerce platform.
When you run a conversion report you will see how each goal that you are tracking is performing on your website. It will track user actions, analyze conversion rates, and analyze goal funnels which will help you to understand when potential customers are giving up on completing a sale/conversion.
Final thoughts
Google Analytics is a free tool, but its value is exponential. It also comes with a learning curve, but because of its ability to improve your marketing and operations, we say it’s totally worth the time and effort to learn how to use it.
Google Analytics’ various reports help you see the different aspects of your business, and can clearly show you what’s working and what you need to improve. Tracking site visitors and their actions have never been more important than it is now and understanding your customer journey and what they’re really looking for from you will only help you grow.
For even more information on setting up your Google Analytics account and using it to the fullest, consider joining our Momentum Biz Vault and get access to this marketing guide!
This marketing guide is all about Google Analytics: How to understand your site visitors, how to get MORE people on your site, and how to use your data to turn warm audiences into paying customers!
In addition to our exclusive Google Analytics Guide, you’ll also score dozens of Canva templates. Not a member yet? Join here!