Most of us know that Google Analytics provides a huge range of data points and metrics about who’s visiting our websites and what they’re doing during their visit. But few people know how to make the most of that information.
Here’s a little secret from agencies that provide SEO services – Google Analytics is a power tool for improving SEO. It can help you target your audience better, improve your keyword rankings, drive up sales and decrease bounce rate.
You’ve just got to know how to use all that data to your advantage. Today we bring you 5 ways you can do just that.
1. Monitor demographics and tailor your content
Do you know who’s visiting your site? When you can tailor your SEO strategy to the right audience, you’ll increase targeted traffic and have more success with conversions.
Google Analytics offers you some powerful information about your website visitors such as age, gender, interests and location.
Use this information to figure out who your highest value customers are. Then double down on targeted marketing and remarketing strategies to increase your conversion rate.
How to do it
- Open reports and select Audience > Demographics or Audience > Interests
- Look at the overviews and then take a closer look at the more specific data points
- Focus on groups that bring you the most revenue or engagement
- Consider revising your content and marketing methods to be more targeted to your high value customers
2. Optimise your site for mobile
Yep, having a mobile-friendly site is crucial. Google rewards you for it, so it should be a top priority in your SEO strategy.
How can Google Analytics help?
First up, you can check out the mobile usage stats for your website. Get a clear idea of the proportions of visitors from mobile, desktop and tablet.
If you know that a significant proportion of people are coming from mobile devices, optimise your site accordingly and focus your attention on getting more mobile conversions.
Secondly, examine the bounce rate for mobile users. If a lot of users are leaving your mobile site quickly, it’s time to make improvements.
How to do it
- Go to Audience > Mobile > Overview
- Set the date range for the last three months
- Take note of which devices are most popular for your audience
- Sort by revenue and take note of which devices bring you the most money
- Consider how you can improve your website to maximise conversions from mobile users
3. Refresh and republish content that has lost traffic
You might have published a blog post in the past that performed really well. But just because it was the top ranking post two years ago, doesn’t mean it’ll be that way today.
Instead of putting out new content continuously, you might be able to increase traffic and engagement by updating old posts and pages to rank better.
The key is to focus on the posts and pages which are most valuable. That’s the ones that have the potential to bring you more customers and more profit.
Use Google Analytics to monitor the changes in traffic and your rankings for particular money-making keywords.
You want to look at the content that’s near the top of page two of Google results. Improve these so that they rank on page 1 and you’ll boost your traffic significantly.
How to do it
- Go to the Search Results report and click the average position selector
- Filter your results for keywords ranking higher than 4 (you don’t really want to touch any blogs that are ranking in the top 3 positions because they’re already doing well)
- Check if the page isn’t ranking because of poor backlinks and fix the issue if needed.
- Choose content to refresh and make sure your post aligns with searcher intent and SEO best practices
4. Target keywords that people are putting into your search bar
If you have an internal search engine on your website, you can track what people are searching for with Google Analytics.
This offers a great opportunity to find new keywords that you haven’t got a good landing page for. It’ll also help point out if you’re ranking for keywords that don’t align with what people are actually searching for.
If users are searching for certain keywords in your website, there could be lots of people searching for them on Google too.
Use Google Analytics to come up with new topics to rank for and to align your content better with searcher intent.
How to do it
- Set up internal search tracking and collect data for at least 2 months
- Look at the Search Terms report (find it in Behaviour > Site Search)
- Filter out typos and inappropriate long-tail keywords
- Sort by percentage of search exits (this will show you search terms that didn’t yield a satisfactory result. I.e. searchers who left after typing in their search)
- Conduct keyword research for each of the terms to check their search volume
- Consider creating new content for each keyword and other related topics
5. Reduce bounce rate and lost traffic
There are countless reasons why someone might leave your website without converting or taking any action.
It’s impossible to figure out all the why’s. But looking closely at the data can help you find and fix problem pages that might be driving people away or not providing what they’re looking for.
Google Analytics tells you two important metrics about people leaving your website. These are:
- Bounce rate – the percentage of people who left your website without visiting another page.
- Exit page – the last page a person visited before they left your site.
You can look at these metrics for your whole site or individual pages. Keep your eye out for pages that have both a high bounce rate and high exit page numbers.
Consider if these pages match user intent and how you can improve them. Especially focus on improving your ‘big money’ pages that are important for conversions.
How to do it
- Go to Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages
- Click the advanced option and choose to view organic sources (this will filter out traffic from paid ad campaigns)
- Sort by highest traffic (you’ll want to work on your most important pages first)
- For any pages that have a high bounce rate and exit page number, check for issues like outdated content, messy design, loadspeed and relevance.
- Consider using A/B testing to narrow down the cause of high bounce rate
That’s all for now
Whether you handle your SEO yourself or invest in professional SEO services, Google Analytics should be one of your most well-used tools. Don’t forget to take time to examine the data closely. It’s the best way to streamline your SEO strategy and get better results. Results you can be proud of.