With GA, I have found a resource that allows me to become more intelligent in developing content and driving traffic to this blog. I have begun to familiarize myself with key data points presented through GA and just beginning to discover “just how deep the rabbit hole goes.” (This is my one reference to “The Matrix” for the day.)
New vs. Returning Visitors: This data stream helps you determine whether the content on the blog is building loyal followers who are coming back to the site for more of your wisdom. If after a few blog posts you begin to notice a very high percentage of new visitors, but a very low percentage of returning visitors, this means that the content you are presenting is likely not piquing the interest of your visitors. Change is in order with your content and marketing strategy. A blogger, Mitz, offers up 9 Ways to Build Traffic to Your New Blog. Rule number 1 is to make sure that you are publishing quality material.
Visitor Flow with Map Overlay: Once the blog develops a large number of followers, by using ‘geotargeting’ capabilities this report could be very beneficial if you wanted to solicit potential advertisers. For instance, the Map Overlay will tell you where your visitors are when they view your site. The data can be broken down into country specific views, showing the various regions, cities and metro areas that your visitors reside in. When entertaining regional advertisers who sell goods or services in specific areas, you can use the Map Overlay feature to determine if your web traffic matches the sales footprint of a potential advertiser. Below is a sample Map Overlay.
Language: When blogging, it is important to be aware of what language your viewers prefer to be communicated with. As part of the Visitor Report, Google Analytics presents the preferred language by visitors to your site. If your blog has a regional following, for instance among Texas or California residents, then a large percentage of visitors may actually prefer to view your content in Spanish. According to the U.S. Census, there are four states where at least one-in-five residents spoke Spanish at home in 2007 – Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. Also in 2010, there were 37 million Hispanic Americans who spoke (or read) Spanish in the home. If it turns out that a large percentage of your blog’s audience prefers Spanish, you may want to consider having a Spanish-focused version of the site with content catered to that community. It will be ideal to determine whether you will need to simply translate the content or bring on experienced writers who can create culture-based content.
Referring Sites: I have always believed that regardless of the content presented on a website, referral traffic should be evaluated regularly. Having insight into this can help you when you are determining the level of content on your blog and the way that you drive viewers to it. There are many questions that this data can help shine light on, including:
Referring Sites: I have always believed that regardless of the content presented on a website, referral traffic should be evaluated regularly. Having insight into this can help you when you are determining the level of content on your blog and the way that you drive viewers to it. There are many questions that this data can help shine light on, including:
· Is there a common category of websites sending traffic to my blog? Looking at the sites that a majority of your viewers are coming from allows you to use specific affinities and interests to help you in the content development for your blog.
· If there is an e-commerce function to your website or blog, are there sites that make sense to engage in a marketing partnership? Referring sites data can identify the websites that are sending heavy traffic to you that should be considered for marketing investments. A free link on a page might drive a decent amount of traffic, but an advertising banner or page sponsorship has the potential of driving a much higher stream of customers to the website. Also from a blogger’s perspective a partnership could easily consist of agreeing to be a guest blogger on another person’s blog in order to appeal to the other person’s followers and build credibility for your blog.
· Is there a link to my blog on a website that I am unaware of and is it driving good traffic? In some cases, there are links to your blog on webpages that you didn’t initiate the partnership. It is good to review these sites and the navigation trends on your site to determine if the viewers are sticking to the content presented on your site. For instance, there may be a link to your page on a ‘dog grooming’ fan page, but when you review the referring traffic to your ‘web analytics’ themed blog you find that the bounce rate of this traffic is very high. In this case, your link is on a site that is not relevant to content on your blog or website. Your options are to either request that the link be removed or add a bit of relevance to your site on the topic. Depending on the topic, it may not make sense to adapt to a theme like ‘dog grooming.’ Of course there is another option. You can do nothing as long as you are not paying for the traffic coming to your blog site.
Keywords: Reviewing the keywords that are bringing organic traffic to your blog can be very helpful when developing content for the blog. With Google Analytics you are able to drill down and watch the overall activity based on the search engine keywords that were used to find your website. You can use this information to tweak content so your blog ranks in higher positions at the search engines. But blogger Bill Bolmeier also reminds us that keywords are an attribute of your content and “if you over do it, the search engines will whack you by ranking you lower if you try and trick out your site with tons of keywords, which is known as keyword stuffing.”
In-Page Analytics: One of the features that I really appreciate about Google Analytics is the ability to review a visual assessment of how users interact with your blog pages. Through this tool, you can determine if your blog has a user-friendly design that allows your readers to easily find the content they are looking for within your website. The tool also helps determine whether your readers are being motivated to achieve certain actions like commenting on a blog post, ‘liking’ a specific post, clicking on an image or video within a page, or sharing the content through a social media channel icon on your page. Another useful aspect of In-page Analytics is the “Avg. Time on Page” stat that will demonstrate how engaging the content on a particular page is to the viewers.
Final thoughts... “How could Google Analytics metrics have helped ?”
Usually, I end every blog post with a section on how the topic of the day could have helped me in the past. But in this case, the content speaks for itself by describing how to use stats presented in Google Analytics like “New vs. Returning Visitors”, “Language”, “Referring Sites”, “Keywords” and “In-Page Analytics” to make this blog more successful. To quote you data hounds out there, the answers are all in the data. It is up to us to use it wisely.
Give me your feedback and let me know, "how using Google Analytics metrics may have helped" you in the past.
Through Google Analytics (GA), I will be using the data collected on-page analytics to make this a better blogging experience for me and the readers of this blog.
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