SEO: Understanding Using Google Analytics by Guest Blogger Shannon Steffens

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logoshannon09sm2 SEO: Understanding Using Google Analytics by Guest Blogger Shannon Steffens Business Tips Guest Bloggers


This is part 2 of Shannon Steffen’s series on SEO.  Part 1 is here.

I am excited to be back on Jodi’s blog this week. We are again tackling the nebulous topic of SEO and what we can do to improve our website rankings. Today I am going to talk about Google Analytics. This is a free tool that will give you more information then you ever thought about your web site visitors. You can learn what browser they use, what type of connection they use and how they found your web site (web search, direct url or referral from another site). All this information can be used to determine what key words to use on your metadata, what marketing ideas are working or didn’t work, and finally how many visitors you have to your web site.

Today I am going to cover what information you can get from setting up Google Analytics – next week I will show you how to use sitemaps to increase the information you can get from Google Analytics.

This is the basic screen – it shows you all the url’s that you have set up with Google Analytics. I have both my blog and my website set up, so I can track visits to both places.

ga1-900x562 SEO: Understanding Using Google Analytics by Guest Blogger Shannon Steffens Business Tips Guest Bloggers

Today’s topic started out to be a quick and easy discussion about Google Anaylitcs, but I quickly realized that there is so much more to Analytics and how we can make the most of this FANTASTIC tool. I learned so much about my visitors, I can now tell you what browser they use, if they came to the site via a Google search or a direct link, the type of monitor they have, well the list goes on an on. I will use information going forward to improve my web rankings along with designing my site. To be honest I found myself getting lost in all the information I have available to me.

ga2-900x562 SEO: Understanding Using Google Analytics by Guest Blogger Shannon Steffens Business Tips Guest Bloggers

Today I am just going to keep the discussion to the basics, explaining a few of the terms that are listed along with showing you some of the information you can get from Google Analytics.

Visitors/Visits: It is good to watch this number, but you will get more detail on the visitor tab. It is the data located there that really gives you a better idea of how your site is doing. It will even tell you what search terms are used for clients coming to your site via web searches, which in turn can help you determine what key words to use for your metadata.

See the images below for some of the information found under the Vistors tab. We are going to be using this again in the coming weeks.

ga3-900x562 SEO: Understanding Using Google Analytics by Guest Blogger Shannon Steffens Business Tips Guest Bloggers

ga4-900x562 SEO: Understanding Using Google Analytics by Guest Blogger Shannon Steffens Business Tips Guest Bloggers


Bounce Rate: This is a big thing, in short this is the number of people who come to your website and leave right away. This number is hard to get under 25% and a great bounce rate is considered anything under 50%. If the bounce rate is high you need to look at your home page and make sure that your both your site and landing page get the point across to your clients. As you can clearly see I need to work on this issue. Monday did not have a sitemap listed with Google. I have an all flash site with only two pages that I can index with Google Anaylitcs. Using a sitemap (more on this next time) I am hoping to improve this number.

Pages/Visit: This number is another way you can tell if your site is pulling in potential clients. This number will be only “1” if you have an all flash website. If you have a Flash site with a landing page, like a splash page this will be “2”.


Avg. Time on Site: This tells you, like the bounce rate if people are spending time on your website. This number is rather low, but I am not sure if it is because I did not have my entire site mapped. I am hoping to see different numbers when I get my blog stats going.


% New Visits: This is the number of people visiting your website that have not been there before.


Now that I have told you why you what Google Analytics can do for you the next step is for you to add it to your web site.
Start here and follow their directions:
Google has great directions and wonderful help tools, but if you get stuck just post here and I will respond.

To add it to your blog use the following application. It was very easy to install and use:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analyticator/

MCPActions

No Comments

  1. Jonni on February 27, 2009 at 5:27 pm

    Hey Jodi,Great information! Thank you so much.When I received your email about the color workshop it also mentioned that Jasmine Star was going to be on your blog. Is that right? That’s so cool, I just blogged about how much I LOVE her blog a few nights ago. I can’t wait…Hugs,Jonni

  2. Christine on February 28, 2009 at 12:54 am

    Shannon, Thanks so much for all of the great information! I have a question for you…I went to google analytics and began to follow their directions, however, when I got to the point of needing to embed the “tracking text” into my website in the “body” I got lost. My website is hosted and was designed by photobiz so I have no idea where to embed that text. Any ideas or should I contact photobiz and have them walk me through where I can track? Thanks!!! Christine

  3. Shannon on February 28, 2009 at 10:55 am

    Christine,I am not familiar with Photobiz’s sites. You want to put the code in your splash page if possible, as that is the first page they come to on your site. Typically that would be your index.html page. If you have access to the actual site files find your index.html page and open it by right clicking on notepad. Then you can add the code just before the tag. Photobiz should be able to tell you how to do this with their site.

  4. John on June 2, 2009 at 11:58 am

    Google Analytics is a great tool to really understand how your website is doing and in what ways it can be improved upon. It takes a while to get the hang of, but is very useful for any online business.

  5. Victor on June 5, 2009 at 10:41 am

    I also had a problem implementing the code on my site. But once I’ve properly placed the code within the body, I was able to track the traffic to my site, it is quite amusing at first. I also use alexa’s traffic report, but it seems a little different with Google analytics.

  6. utah orthodontist on June 11, 2009 at 11:42 pm

    This is some great info, thanks for taking the time to share!

  7. Michael Fiechtner on July 1, 2009 at 7:27 pm

    Great program! I just added Google Analytics to my blog. One suggestion I do have is also to use FeedBurner which is free through Google too. I may say this wrong but I believe FeedBurner helps to track those “subcribers” and people who are reading your blog through a reader such as Google Reader. I believe that Google Analytics doesn’t pick up a “visit” if the person is just reading your blog posts through a reader. I think I’m saying this right. It’s a cool program too! Thanks for all of your insight into Photoshop and now analytics!

  8. Timo on July 2, 2009 at 11:03 am

    Good information – keep up the good work! Looking to write my first robot soon.

  9. SEO Malta on July 17, 2009 at 10:49 am

    Google Analytics is a cool free tool which can definitely help in analyzing traffic, understand the potential and weaknesses of a website which will be essential for search engine optimization too. Having said that, it has some flaws too including the fact the data is not real time for example.

  10. Jeremy on August 14, 2009 at 12:17 am

    Google Analytic is a great free tool to add to your site. Thanks for the great info I’ll be adding it to my sites.

  11. Eljon on August 16, 2009 at 2:21 am

    Hello. Thank you very much for the very useful information. I also use Google Analytics for my blog and it is really helpful on tracking my blog’s stats.

  12. Payday advance on August 21, 2009 at 10:17 pm

    Wow, great information thanks for sharing it!

  13. Diana on August 22, 2009 at 11:05 pm

    I use photobiz its brilliant. You just go into settings and you will see “visit counter”. You pop the code in there and update. Voila! Good luck.

  14. Property Blog on August 26, 2009 at 11:52 am

    Google analytics is just brilliant, the best tool available currently on the web.

  15. Mich on September 3, 2009 at 4:16 pm

    I love the idea of Google analytic. Very detailed and one of the best tools there is. I am grateful that I read this because I needed more info on it.

  16. Video Game Blog on September 4, 2009 at 10:56 am

    thanks shannon. nice tips.. just made the google analytics acc.. hope everything will work fine

  17. Ethan on September 4, 2009 at 4:24 pm

    Thanks for this awesome blog.

  18. Kerry on September 5, 2009 at 10:39 pm

    These are very helpful tips on google analytics.

  19. Amanda on September 6, 2009 at 7:24 pm

    This is awesome. Thanks.

  20. Brian Kopp on September 8, 2009 at 11:45 am

    Thank you so much for this helpful blog. Glad I stopped by.

  21. Anchor zotrim review on September 9, 2009 at 12:18 pm

    Thanks for these great tips. Much appreciated.

  22. Will on September 9, 2009 at 4:56 pm

    I really enjoyed reading this blog and found it very detailed and what I was looking for.

  23. Steph on September 10, 2009 at 5:56 pm

    Thank you. Google Analytics is a reat tool for staying on top of things. Wonderful Info!

  24. Paul on September 11, 2009 at 7:58 am

    I bookmarked this blog. Thanks for sharing it.

  25. jane on September 13, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    Cool software tips, looking for input on designing a new free SEO software suite.

  26. accents on September 23, 2009 at 12:53 am

    Nice information i got from your blog,i have added on my bookmark list….Thanks again for sharing it

  27. oes tsetnoc on September 28, 2009 at 11:27 pm

    wow amazing tips.. Before i though google analytics is not important but now i found that it is very important to a website or a blogs.

  28. Canada Immigration Guide 2010 on October 8, 2009 at 7:36 am

    google analytics tool is best one for analysing our websites,nice post thanks for it

  29. social networks on October 9, 2009 at 3:08 am

    Thanks for the amazing tips.. I bookmarked it 😀

  30. The Best Forex on October 27, 2009 at 7:13 am

    i am using google analytics for my website its really nice tool

  31. sports equipment on December 18, 2009 at 5:27 am

    Recently i have changed for google analytics previously i preferred web stats but its doesn’t worked much

  32. Johnson Fluet on March 8, 2012 at 12:46 am

    Thank You Guys, your publish assisted me to get some excellent stuff which is truly brilliant.

  33. teresa on September 19, 2012 at 3:26 am

    Thankfulness to my father who stated to me concerning this webpage, this blog is truly amazing.

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