Google Analytics metrics is a powerful tool that helps measure and improve any website’s reach and effectiveness.
The free and user-friendly engagement-measuring program tracks how many people visit your site, where they were referred from, and many other useful statistics.
Learn how to take advantage of Google Analytics as a true Webmaster with these 7 critical Google Analytics metrics tips.
1. Get a Grasp of Your Google Analytics Metrics with Acquisition Overview
Acquisition Overview shows you a basic summary of your website’s performance as one of the broadest Google Analytics metrics. The Acquisition Overview tool gives you a holistic view of how many people visit your page and where they came from.
In addition to the broad view of your site found on the Acquisition Overview report, there are individualized reports for Referrals, Campaigns, Keywords, Search Engine Optimization, and Cost Analysis.
Take a glance at your Acquisition Overview report first before focusing on specific functions of your site you want to improve. As you start to hone specific Google Analytics metrics, you will be able to see their effects clearly on the Acquisition Overview report.
2. Track Traffic Sources
Traffic is often considered as the most vital metric for tracking website growth, development, and stagnation. Traffic is measured as the number of visitors that come to your site during a given period of time.
Traffic is counted in unique visitors, meaning users who access your site are only counted once, no matter how many times they visit your site.
Traffic Sources show you where your impressions are coming from. This tool is especially important if you are running promotions on other web platforms.
Organic Search
Organic Search traffic comes from users who find your website through a search engine inquiry. Pay close attention to this metric if you are using a search engine optimization strategy.
The Organic Search metric will let you know how effective your search engine optimization campaigns are, or if your website already ranks well in search engine results.
Direct
Direct traffic comes from typing your website’s URL into a browser.
Referral
Referral traffic comes from external websites. For example, visitors may have been directed by a guest post blog or a link mentioning your website on an online news outlet.
Social
Social traffic comes from social media mentions on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, and Pinterest.
This metric is especially helpful if your marketing efforts are primarily through social media. It can also show you opportunities in social media platforms you hadn’t considered marketing to.
3. Set and Measure Google Analytics Goals
Google Analytics’ Goals metric is an excellent way to measure how much progress your company is making towards certain objectives. The Goals feature allows you to go beyond tracking metrics, as you are tracking your website’s success in an isolated function.
Goals are broken into four categories: destination, duration, pages/screens per session, and event.
You can even add a monetary indicator to Goals with the Goal Value tool. This tool assigns a monetary value to each conversion so you can visualize the ROI of a certain online marketing tactic.
4. Sync Social Media Accounts with Social Reporting Tool
Social Reporting expands your company’s reach beyond the website itself. Social Reporting allows you to tie your website’s performance to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and other influential social media platforms.
Social Visitors Flow gives you a visual flowchart of which social media channels users are visiting your site from.
Activity Stream shows you individual post activity on blogs and comment threads. This allows you to see how much reach and engagement individual posts receive and allows you to join the conversation by responding to clients and customers’ comments immediately.
Social Value-at-a-Glance shows you exactly how much your social media efforts are making you in a monetary sense. This tool is revolutionary because social media marketing has been a somewhat mystifying field when it comes to returning investment. You can finally see where your money is being used when it comes to new media marketing through social media platforms.
5. Pay Attention to your Website’s Bounce and Exit Rates
Google Analytics metrics Bounce and Exit Rates show how long visitors stay on your site before exiting.
This tool helps troubleshoot pages where flash media may be taking too long to load, e-commerce platforms are too cumbersome for customers to use, or other issues cause site visitors to leave.
Work backward from Bounce and Exit Rates to Top Landing Pages to see what brought visitors to your site and what turned them away.
6. Take Note of Top Landing Pages
Top landing pages highlight your website’s most heavily-visited and least-visited pages.
Top Landing Pages are a great place to monetize your website’s traffic by creating a call to action for website visitors. If you find most of your site’s visitors land on a specific page from a search engine or social media referral, you can use this tool to a huge advantage.
Include a subscribe button, link to your site’s purchasing page, or move your site’s most vital information to this page. Top Landing Pages help you structure your site to the most efficient and cost-effective format.
7. Track Impressions with Location Feature
Google Analytics’ Location feature is vital to regional marketing campaigns and may lead to unexpected opportunities outside of your business’s local reach.
The Location feature shows exactly where your visitor traffic is coming from, meaning that no matter how specific your targeted regional campaign is, you can see how effective it is in the number of impressions.
Location will also open up international marketing opportunities you may not have even known your company had. The Internet allows our businesses to be more globalized than ever, so there’s no reason to limit your company to one region or country.
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