To test the value of your search engine optimization (SEO), you must hire a full-time digital marketer, digital analyst, or SEO consultant. Another option is doing SEO yourself by using several SEO tools out there on the web.
Online marketers want to examine if SEO will really give them profits for their investment of time and money. But they usually must pay a big amount of bucks for a digital marketer or consultant to investigate whether SEO is the right marketing approach for them in the first place.
This is where we welcome you to the world of Google Analytics.
What is Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free Web analytics service that gives statistics and essential analytical tools for SEO and marketing objectives. Anyone with a Google account can access this service. Google Analytics is a perfect fit toward small and medium-sized retail websites.
The service has limits that make it less adapted to more complex websites and bigger businesses. Also, Google uses sampling in its reports instead of analyzing all accessible data.
This tool is very crucial because it enables you to measure the outcomes of singular campaigns in real-time, match the data to previous periods, and so much more.
The question is: how do you use Google Analytics?
Google Analytics Guidelines
Distinguishing Slow Loading Page Times
Optimizing the page load times is something that most SEO operators prioritize. If your page loads more than 5 seconds, say goodbye to most of your visitors.
The pages’ load speed is a major factor here. That is why it always suggested that if a brand is investing time and money in SEO and keyword rankings, it should be overlooking a website that loads slowly.
Here, we are going to talk about identifying slow loading pages and scale their impact to your site.
To do this, go to Behavior > Site Speed > Page Timings. You can set the middle column to ‘Avg. Page Load Time’ and the right column to ‘% Exit’.You can also add a ‘Secondary Dimension’ of Medium and penetrate down to display only organic traffic.
How to View Only Organic Search Traffic
This one may already be clear. It’s always surprising how many businesses see a decline in overall website traffic and directly jump to the conclusion that the traffic loss is because of a decline in organic search traffic.
In many occasions, digging a little deeper can actually expose that organic traffic is up while other traffic causes are down, which results in the overall traffic decline of a website.
To look at Organic Search traffic over time, the first step is to open your Channel Grouping report, which can be located by selecting Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. In there, you will view traffic sources segmented by channel. To see a more comprehensive report which involves only organic search traffic metrics, you must click on the Organic Search.
How to Measure The Quality of SEO Traffic
Even if many say that quality is subjective and can’t be measured, we believe that it can be calculated. In fact, there are a bunch of ways to measure the quality of any kind of traffic source, not just search traffic.
The most common report practiced to measure development or decline in the quality of search traffic is the Assisted Conversions report (Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions). With this report active, you can begin by setting the date range to ‘Last month’ and contrasting it to ‘Previous period’.
What is left to you is a month-to-month comparison of conversions straight from search, or in the time when there were many visits to the site, conversions where the search had a role but is not directly associated with the conversion.
Attributing Dollar Values to Organic Traffic
Reminders: To make this tactic work, you are required to access a Google AdWords account, and your Analytics should be synced with your Search Console account.
This is an approach that is widely used for companies who are looking for a more convenient way to learn the value SEO is causing to their business beyond developments in traffic, visibility, and conversions by attaching a dollar value to their organic traffic results. To assign a total dollar value to a site’s organic traffic, you should analyze how much the keywords would take if bought in a Google AdWords campaign.
To obtain a site’s keyword search phrases and queries, go to Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization > Queries. With this report pulled up, open your AdWords account in a new tab and click Tools > Keyword Planner. Click “Get search volume data and trends” and enter the best keywords from your Google Analytics Queries report. Then, click “Get search volume.” On the next screen select “Keyword Ideas.”
Every keyword you’ve typed will have a Suggested Bid amount which is an evaluation of what advertisers are currently paying per click for each keyword indexed.
Conclusion
The information above is just a few of the opportunities you can hit into Google Analytics. Knowing the full potential of this tool and using it will help you devise SEO approaches that can be very successful.
