Since starting our SEO Tips series in January, we have made lots of suggestions in how you can take practical steps to improve your rankings in search engine results, but how do you know if these efforts are paying off?
Unlike traditional marketing techniques where it can be difficult to accurately measure your efforts, you can use the really powerful reporting platform, Google Analytics to see if all your hard work has meant an increase in traffic, more time spent on your website, and more pages viewed and much more!
Google Analytics is completely free to access but does require a tracking code to be added to the backend code of your website that will then start tracking visits to your website that you can then analyse on the platform.
If you are completely new to Google Analytics some of the key metrics we think are helpful to analysing your website performance are:
Sessions
This is the number of times your website has been visited in a given time frame. In Google Analytics you can change the date range that data displays for, so if you have been working hard on tweaking your content or maybe one of our other tips, you can see if this has meant more visits to your site.
New and Returning Users
Keeping an eye on how many users to your site that have visited before or have just found you can be a great insight into your audience. Whilst it is exciting to have new users discover your business, it can be equally validating to know that people who have visited your website before found something of value that has made them visit again.
Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate is the number of people who land on your website, view one page and then leave. We looked at Rank Brain earlier in this series and how a high bounce rate can indicate to Google that the content or user experience on a website is not what its searchers are looking for, so this is something to keep an eye on.
A high bounce rate can be the result of lots of different reasons, not all of which are negative. Sometimes users will visit your website to get your contact information, find this and leave your website to then get in touch through email or a call, which is not a negative interaction for your business.
Traffic Source
Traffic Source shows how people found your website, whether it was through your Social Media, a referral link from another website (backlinks) or Organic results in a search engine. This is good to know if you want to see what the most useful source is at directing people to your website. Ideally, you would like to see high numbers in the Organic Search Result traffic if you have been working hard to improve your position in organic searches.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of information available through Google Analytics and if you would like to learn more there is lots of helpful resources out there like the Analytics Academy or Google’s Digital Garage.
For some of our clients who really value this information, but don’t have time to analyse the data themselves we create monthly Analytics Reports where we present the information in an easy to read format as well as providing comparison information, so they can track their performance from month to month.
If you would like an Analytics Report for the traffic to your website, please contact us, we are offering these reports at a discounted rate of £30 + vat all through November as part of just one of our ‘Purple Friday’ promotions (keep an eye on our social media for more great promos).