Using Google Analytics to Improve SEO

Google Analytics SEOGone are the days when small firms would advertise their services on the yellow pages, or in local newspapers. These days, advertising for small and medium enterprises happens on the Internet. Ranking high on Google’s search engine results is a priority of web-savvy businessmen who don’t have enough advertising budget and perhaps knowledgeable enough to understand that they don’t need to advertise on tri-media to reach out to their consumers or clients.

It is of vital importance for small firms to have their websites land on the first page of a Google search engine result. As more and more people search for goods and services online, a small firm in Orlando, FL that sells figurines needs to be on the first page for a Google search on the words “figurines Orlando”, for example.

This is the reason why small business owners are learning the intricacies of search engine optimization or SEO. By making their websites more SEO-friendly, online merchants can increase the chances that their websites rank high on Google search results.

What is Google Analytics?

One of the ways to improve SEO is through Google Analytics, a free web analytics service providing statistics and analytical tools for SEO and marketing. With it, almost anyone who manages a website can track and analyze data that can help him or her understand further how to improve the website’s Google ranking. It provides information like keywords that visitors are using to search on Google. Or design elements that are not exactly a hit among online visitors.

Curiously, a good percentage of web masters and website owners aren’t tapping Google for their web marketing campaigns. Some studies have indicated that nearly 80 percent of e-commerce retailers are using the service incorrectly.

However, most webmasters don’t use Google Analytics to its full potential. Studies indicate that almost 80% of ecommerce retailers use Google Analytics incorrectly. Viewing daily traffic stats, page views and traffic sources is a very basic way of using Google Analytics. This article seeks to show how to use Google Analytics for SEO.

How SEO Affects Website Traffic

There are numerous ways how search engine optimization affects website traffic. If you own a website, you should be familiar with Google Analytics and how it can hike organic traffic to any website with search queries and landing page reports. In GA, web masters can determine the loopholes in their websites and more importantly, identify ways to generate more traffic.

The first step to improving organic traffic using Google Analytics is to integrate the Google Analytics account with the Google Webmaster Tools account. Once these tools have been integrated, you can view the top performing search queries for the website you are managing. You can also sort the keywords by ranking them according to number of impressions. Pick the keywords with the highest impressions, as these will be the keywords that you need to work on your website to increase organic traffic.

These top keywords should improve their click through rate or CTR so that traffic to your website also increases. How do you do that? One is to keep the page and post titles to around 55 characters. Meta descriptions, on the other hand, should be around 150 to 156 characters.

You can also create content around these high impression keywords, like articles that are sprinkled with the keywords and related terms that your visitors are looking for on your website.

Generating Keyword Reports

Google Analytics SEO report includes a report on the top 10 keywords that bring in the highest traffic to your website. Then you can use these 10 keywords to generate more traffic by using them as alt tags in the images you used on your website. Alternatively, you can use these keywords in the titles of images. These keywords can also be used in the page title, description, or part of anchor text in the internal website links.

One of the Google Analytics custom reports that you can also make good use of is the Traffic Source Referral report. This one would tell you which websites are sending traffic to your website. The report sorts out the referrers into various categories like communities or niche forums, blogs, and social media.

So what do you do with the info from the traffic source referral report? You can perhaps create a specific landing page for visitors coming from referrers, or customized messages for various referral sources.

Improve Mobile User Experience

To say that more and more people are browsing the internet using mobile devices like smartphones and tablets would be an understatement. According to the Pew Research Center, almost two out of three American adults own a smartphone, with ownership high among the millennials and those with high income. Most of them, too, access the Internet through their mobile devices.

Google Analytics also provides a report on the mobile experience of the website through a mobile report. This report would tell you if your website has a design that is responsive or appropriate for mobile device browsing. You can look at the bounce rate, as a high bounce rate can indicate that the design of your website is not configured for mobile visitors.

Personalizing Messages

Google Analytics also generate audience reports, which can identify content preferences of the various audience segments on your website. Creating a personalized message for various audiences can increase the likelihood that your visitors would buy products on your website. According to studies, 6 out of 10 online shoppers purchase from customized stores. Now it is up to you how you can create messages that would appeal to a specific audience segment.

Indeed, Google Analytics is one web analytics tool that you should harness to get a lot of insights regarding your website’s traffic. By understanding the various reports and statistics it generates, you can identify the things that need to be done in terms of the design and content of your website. Thus you can make the right adjustments as well. Eventually, you will see your website getting an increase in traffic, which should translate to more profits on your part.