Using Google Analytics Reports To Increase Traffic

Are you using Google Analytics to boost engagement and drive traffic to your site?  Setting it up and getting a basic understanding of your website’s data is an important first step, but there is a treasure trove of reports that Google offers that can get you detailed insights on your traffic that can guide your next steps in developing relevant content for those users.

Google Analytics is a free web analytics service that provides website owners with a wealth of data about their visitors. The service includes a wide range of reports that can be used to track website traffic, assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and identify potential security vulnerabilities. One of the most useful features of Google Analytics is the ability to track the source of traffic, which can be used to identify potential security threats. By understanding where your traffic is coming from, you can take steps to protect your website from malicious activity.

Here are some ideas for using some of the advanced reports to increase traffic and engagement.

Using Google Analytics Reports To Increase Traffic

SEO Queries and Landing Page Reports

1. Connect Google Analytics with Google Webmaster Tools

2. Use the SEO report within Analytics to see keyword rankings, clicks, and impressions

3. Look for keywords with the most impressions

4. Improve the click through rate (CTR) of those keywords by improving the targeting of page titles and descriptions

You can increase your CTR by using the following techniques on your copy:

• Keep title tags around 55 characters and meta descriptions around 156 characters.  Note: if you’re using WordPress, Yoast will keep track of this for you.
• Make sure the information you provide matches the intention of the keywords you are getting the most traffic from.
• User-benefit-driven Copy – describe how the information on that page can benefit the type of user coming in through those keywords.

Keywords and CTR:

• 20% of keywords ranked in spots 1-4 have a target CTR of 20% or higher.
• 8% of keywords ranked in spots 5-6 have a target CTR of 8% or higher.
• 3% of keywords ranked in spots 7-10 have a target CTR of 3% or higher.

Traffic Sources: Queries Report

First, find the top 10 keywords currently driving traffic, then use these optimization opportunities to get more traffic:

1. Use them as alt tags for images
2. Update the image titles with those keywords as well
3. Ensure your descriptions and page titles include the same keywords to help improve rankings
4. Use them as anchor text for internal links (rotate them properly to avoid penalization)
5. Create more content based on keywords that are driving the most traffic.

Referrals Report

1. Partner with your top referrals to offer special deals.
2. Then reaffirm that deal by displaying it to those visitors upon arrival.
3. Create custom welcome messages for specific referral sources to improve conversions and engagement.

Traffic Sources Top Referrers Report

Users arrive at your website or application through a variety of sources, including search engines, social networks, and advertising campaigns. By using Google Analytics to measure these campaigns and traffic sources, you can improve your marketing efforts and user experiences.  Spend more time focused on driving additional traffic from your top sources.

For top referring community sites such as niche forums/subreddits:

• Spend more time on replying to threads.
• Spend more time looking for topics that you can contribute value to.
• Share more of your content in the community in a non-spammy, non-self-promotional way.

For top referring blogs:

• Continue growing your relationships and find more cross-promotional opportunities.
• Double down on your guest posts.  If you’re doing 1 post per month, see if you can scale it to 3-4 per month.

For top referring social sites:

• Spend more time on the social media channel that is working best and continue to engage.
• Find which exact posts/engagements are driving traffic using the platform’s analytics/Insights.  Once you figure it out, do more of it!
• Double down on growing fans and creating content for that particular channel.

For any referral source you don’t know, find out exactly what it is and why it’s driving people to your site.  Once you figure it out, build on it and see if you can grow that channel.

Site Content Report

Produce more content that resonates with your audience with the information in this report.

1. Find the top content on your site.
2. Use this to develop a content plan that caters to what your audience is interacting with.
3. Focus on creating complementary content that can increase user engagement and site time.

Visits Report

Find the optimal times to post by finding the most trafficked days to increase engagement.  Promote more on social media on the respective channels that are sending the most traffic.

Users Flow Report

The Users Flow report is a graphical representation of the paths users took through your site, from the source, through the various pages, and where along their paths they exited your site. The Users Flow report lets you compare volumes of traffic from different sources, examine traffic patterns through your site, and troubleshoot the efficacy of your site.  This report is fantastic for removing bottlenecks on your site:

1. Narrow the report by traffic source, location, device, etc.
2. Highlight traffic to a specific conversion page.
3. Analyze the average drop-off point in the funnel from landing to conversion.

Once you have this information, you can use conversion optimization methods to improve the weak link in the flow, especially by setting up A/B testing to address the dropoffs and see if you can retain users.

Mobile Report

This report is broken down by Device Category of which there are three types: desktop, mobile and tablet. It’s great to have these broken down in this way, as “tablet” data never used to have its own category.

Analyze whether your mobile visitors have a significantly higher bounce rate and how much time they’re spending on the site.  Use this data to determine if mobile usability can be improved.

• Check to see if your site is responsive and collapses without messing up the design.  It also wouldn’t hurt to run it through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
• See which devices have the highest bounce rate.
• Find out where users are dropping off int he funnel on the mobile site.  Then find out why based on A/B testing.

Audience Reports

There are twelve separate reporting sections under Audience in your website’s Google Analytics profile.  With the exception of Overview and Users Flow, each section includes an easy-to-read sessions graph and table chart showing the acquisition, behavior and conversions data for each group.

59% of shoppers say they prefer personalized e-commerce stores.  Using the audience report is a great way to personalize content:

1. Determine which audience segments prefer specific types of content and offers.
2. Show each segment a dynamic, targeted experience.

One of the most useful features of Google Analytics is the ability to see what pages are being accessed, what keywords are being used to find the site, and what browsers and operating systems are being used.

If you aren’t already using Google Analytics to see how users are engaging with your website, and even more importantly – using that information to make marketing decisions, you’re missing out on a treasure trove of valuable information.  Contact us and let’s see how we can help you get connected and turn these visitors into customers!