The Importance of Competitor Analysis for Effective SEO
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May 28, 2021So, you have activated Google Analytics and you’re ready to start analysing all that data. The number of reports you can generate can be overwhelming. You’re thinking, “Where should I start? What are the most important reports I should be using?” Knowing which reports to create and monitor is key in optimizing your SEO.
There are 3 useful Google Analytic reports that you should always be keeping your eye on. While you can create reports on just about every imaginable combination of criteria, the following 5 will give you a solid foundation for building your SEO and optimizing your site.
Audience Report
The Google Analytics Audience report showing New versus Return Visitors is a great start. An increase in the number of new visitors to your site shows that you are generating business and expanding your reach. The SEO you have in place is beginning to work. Your Google ranking in searches may be increasing or people are engaging with your ads. You’re off to a great start!
If you are having a hard time getting new visitors, you may need to focus on some basic SEO for small businesses to drive people to your site. There are some simple ways to begin to work on optimizing and increasing your site’s SEO.
Returning visitors can be an even better indicator of strong SEO because it means that they are interested in your content whether it be simply informational, a product you are selling, or a service you are providing. Returning visitors are more likely to engage with your site such as filling out a contact form or buying whatever it is you are selling than a first time visitor. Congratulations on having great content!
However, if people are not returning, try working on your content. Content is king for optimizing your SEO and ranking on Google. There are some great content tools out there to help with this.
The New vs. Returning Visitors is a great Audience report to begin with in Google Analytics. It will help you understand who is visiting your site so that you can focus your SEO optimization on the area that needs work; either attracting new visitors, or trying to retain them once you have them so that you can convert them to customers.
Acquisitions Report
The Google Analytics Acquisitions report showing your Source and Medium is a great tool for helping you determine how traffic is arriving on your site. With this report, we can figure out the most important traffic sources driving people to us.
In the Source/Medium report, you will find two main categories. The source, which is the origin of your traffic such as search engines or domains, and the Medium such as from an organic search, cost-per-click paid search, or referral.
In the Google Analytics report below, we can see the organic source results of searches, which engines are being used such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Duck Duck Go, referrals from other sites and links, social media, and how well paid advertising is doing.
This report is a favorite because it helps you understand how traffic is actually arriving on your site. https://measureschool.com/google-analytics-report/
Behavior Report
Finally, we come to the Google Analytics Landing Pages report under Behavior. The Landing Page Report is important because you can see which of your site’s pages are earning the most traffic. The top landing pages in Google Analytics act as the introduction for people to your website. You want these pages to catch their attention and keep them on your site, hopefully creating conversions such as filling out contact forms or making a sale.
When viewing this report, you can see not only what your top visited pages are, but see how long people are staying on these pages. Once you got people to your site, did they stay? Did they click to another page within your site? Or did they leave immediately?
The Landing Pages report can answer all of these questions for you and more. You can find some great in depth information on how tracking your landing pages can help you and your SEO.
Google Analytics reports such as New vs. Return Visitors, Source/Medium, and Landing Pages are necessary tools to help you optimize the SEO on your page and drive more traffic to you. There are hundreds of reports you can create within Google Analytics and it can be pretty overwhelming. These three reports are easy to understand, easy to set up, and will give you a good overview to begin using analytics reports.