Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful tool even though it can be difficult for novices. However it really provides a wide range of features and tools for analytical evaluation of your website/blog. We know it all seems difficult at first, especially understanding what data is really important and how it can be used to improve your website/blog-

We provide a small guide to understanding what data you will find with Google Analytics, where to find it, and how to turn it in your favor to improve your website/blog and make it user-friendly and more likely to succeed.

Optimize content

As we have been saying since our earliest articles, content attracts visitors to your site and retains existing ones. Google Analytics helps you understand what content on your site is most popular and what is not performing at its best.

To figure out what and how many page views are for each subpage on your website/blog, click on Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. A table will appear with statistics describing visitor behavior on your website/blog.

Page views shows in the column the number of total page views in a given period. This is one of the most important parts because it indicates how popular a particular piece of content is. We recommend that you always keep popular posts in mind because they suggest how to implement the topic and give you new ideas for new topics. Write as many articles on the topics that Google Analytics gives you as most followed.

Landing pages

Now click on Content Detail > Landing Pages, you will see an overview of the pages that attract the most visitors to your website/blog. These pages are called "landing pages," "landing pages," or "landing pages."

Landing pages that turn out to attract the most visitors should be used as "gateways" to your website/blog. Generally speaking, they are somewhat your calling card and your website/blog should rely completely on them, and then space out to other topics.

Output pages

While landing pages are the most visited pages, exit pages are the least visited pages from which visitors leave your website/blog. Find the list of exit pages in Behavior > Site Content > Exit Pages.

We advise you to pay close attention to the numbers of exit page views and page views for a given subpage in relation to the others.

If the figures you get are very close in numbering, you will need to make changes, but first analyze your exit pages more closely and ask yourself why your visitors decide to leave your website/blog. If you understand where the problems (or weaknesses) of your website/blog are, you can make changes and improve them, for example you could add links to relevant or more popular content, which serve to keep visitors' attention on the page.

NB: If the exit page contains affiliate links, such as a test page, then visitor exit should not be considered negative! You want to make money from the site and visitors have to click on your partner links and exit the site to get your commission.

Analysis and improvement

Returning to better search engine rankings, Google says that visitor behavior is becoming increasingly important in achieving good website/blog rankings.

Google knows that optimizing page rankings in the search engine is really very important, but also to understand more and more how visitors behave and the quality of the user experience leaves its mark and serves as a starting and continuing point for any website/blog. Making the visitor experience of your website/blog better and better will directly improve the number of visitors to your website/blog.

Length of stay

With Google Analytics you can monitor the length of time visitors spend on individual pages and contributions. The length of stay is reported in the Average Time on Page column of Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

Good results are when visitors stay on a subpage for a long time. The content you have written is good and visitors found the information they were looking for on your website/blog.

On the other hand, if a subpage has a relatively high number of hits but a very short dwell time, this indicates that your website/blog has a problem. First check if there are obvious reasons why the visitor stays such a short dwell time.

One of the problems may be due to the presence of affiliate links, or even internal links. If the page has neither of these types of links, the message is only one: the content is not what visitors were looking for.

At this point your content is wrong and you need to rewrite it or change the topic. Check users' keyword/keyphrase searches again. What were they searching for by typing a particular keyword? Will changing or increasing the topic of your page succeed in meeting these expectations? As a model, try to use those pages that have a particularly long dwell time and write new content.

But how is the time calculated? It is the result between the time calculated based on the time when the user arrived on a subpage and when they opened another subpage. The difference between these two times is called the average time on the page. If the user bounces (i.e., visits only one subpage) the average time on the page will be zero seconds.

Bounce rate

Another option to consider is bounce rates. The bounces of individual subpages are displayed in the Behavior > Site Content > All Pages table, in the Bounce Rate column.

A percentage will appear for you showing how many visitors found your website/blog after visiting only one subpage.

If there is a subpage with a particularly high value, unfortunately it will be an indication that the topic or content covered is not suitable for your target audience.

The only positive bounce despite a high value is for single-page websites/blogs, where all the content is on one page. Since they cannot visit other pages, the user stays on the first and only page and this is counted as a bounce.

At this time you need to do a critical analysis of the content you have written and find the problems you need to solve. Check your website/blog and see if in the interesting content you have included you have not provided internal links, in which case add links and reduce bounce rates; if, on the other hand, the problem is subpages with particularly low bounce rates, that is a good sign. These are precisely the topics you need to increase, change for the better, and keep writing about. It is these articles that have successful content.

Pay special attention to bounce rates to landing pages. Remember as mentioned above that landing pages are like gateways to your website/blog, so optimize them as best you can to make sure you get new visitors to stay. Don't forget to check for affiliate links that could lead your visitors to leave quickly.

Loading times

We will never stop repeating this, but users want websites/blogs fast loading pages and subpages, as it really influences in the most important part a user's decision to stay or change websites/blogs.

In the all-too-fast time, websites/blogs with fast loading time are really beneficial for the owners and the users who visit them. This speed also implies lower bounce rates. To check the load time of your site go to Behavior > Site Speed > Overview, you will find the average load time of the entire website/blog.

In the Browser table you will find the loading times broken down by browser. Check them all and if one browser has high loading times, you should find a way to fix this. Individual page load times can be found in Behavior > Site Speed > Page Times. You can also check if there are any updates that need to be made, to speed up your website/blog.

Sometimes it is the subpages that are particularly slow. Once you figure out why, you have to optimize them. Usually for subpages the biggest problem is images. Inserting large, high-resolution images always creates speed problems. We recommend that you reduce the file size of images to greatly improve page loading times.

Analyze your target audience

It's true that your goal is to gain more and more users, but as a salesperson in a real store you also need to know how to pamper already loyal visitors. Users are not just numbers to be calculated with Google Analytics, but they are the people who make your website/blog relevant and make you money. With Google Analytics you can check the demographics of your users in Audience > Demographics.

You will find the detail of "private" information of those who visit your website/blog, such as age, gender, origin. Of course, this is not personal information, only general, but you will be able to draw valuable conclusions from it.

Age and gender

As just mentioned in the information you will find age and gender. We recommend that you compose groups by gender and age. Usually the groups are divided into young people under 40 and adults in over 40. The two groups divided into men and women could also give you a visual of who frequents your site. They obviously have different tastes and demands based on age and gender. Remember that these two factors can be very influential in content decisions.

Interests of your target group

Do you want to know what topics your website/blog visitors like? With Google Analytics you can find out, go to Audience > Interests.

Affinity categories

To plan new content or improve existing content, you need to consider Affinity Categories. In this section you will find an assessment of certain interest groups and what percentage of them are represented on your website/blog.

Technology

In the Audience > Technology > Browser and Operating System section, you will find an assessment of bounce rate, number of pages visited, and average session length for each browser.

You will need it to check if certain browsers have problems with your website/blog or if they all work flawlessly. You can thus correct the problems before you implement the damage derived from misuse of a browser.

Recognizing potential visitors

With Google Analytics you can analyze who is visiting your site, but you can also find out where potential visitors are coming from. Do an analysis at Acquisition > Channels you will find the distribution of average visitor sources.

The results come mostly from Organic Search, but under Acquisition > Source/Medium you will find more detailed information on the website of origin of the visitors. If your primary source is the social network Facebook, then it is useful to share your content on Facebook.