What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free tool created by Google that helps you analyze your website and track the traffic it gets. You use the information to see how users are interacting with your site and make changes to improve user experience. This is called “online marketing.”
This guide will show you how to install Google Analytics onto your site, what the basics of using it are, and how to optimize your site based on the data you get from it.
We’ll also talk about what it means when something is “optimized” for SEO, which stands for “Search Engine Optimization,” and why that’s important!
Google Analytics Seo Tools
1. Track visitor demographics and interests
It’s important to know where your site visitors are coming from. That way you can concentrate ads in certain areas, or personalize your content to suit your visitors. It’s not just location, either. Keeping an eye on age, location, gender, interests, and more, will let you build a detailed customer persona to market to.
Google Analytics allows you to generate interests and demographic reports. Just head to the account and property where you want to generate reports, click property settings, and under advertising features, set enable demographics and interests reports to on. Then save it.
2. Analyze landing page traffic
Head to the landing pages section, under behavior. Here you’ll find a list of your top-performing pages. Analyzing your best-performing pages gives you an insight into what content is popular and engaging for your audience, as well as which pieces of content could use updating.
You can sort landing page data by clicks, impressions, average position – and even all three. This is a great opportunity to discover low-hanging fruit that just needs a little attention to improve.
3. Google AMP tracking
Google AMP (accelerated mobile pages) offers a powerful browsing experience for those visiting your site on mobile. You can analyze the user interactions on your AMP pages. To do this you’ll need to add Google Analytics tracking. This can be done manually, so it’s best to let someone with coding experience take over.
Once you’ve got the code all set up, you can find the AMP data by going to behavior » site content » all pages. Then type “/amp” into the search bar above the table to generate the traffic reports for your AMP pages only.
4. Install a tracking code on your website
When you first create a Google Analytics account, it should give you a tracking code. It looks something like this:
You can then install this on every page of your website, whether it’s hosted on WordPress or custom built. The tracking code gathers information about each user every time they visit your site. This is also how Google Analytics gathers all of its data about your site, which is what you see when you open up your Google Analytics dashboard.
5. Create SEO-related goals in Google Analytics
Once you’ve added your tracking code, you can create goals in your Google Analytics account. Conversion goals allow you to set targets for the number of people visiting your site vs those that actually buy something.
You can set up conversion goals by clicking admin » goals » new goal. Conversion goals not only track when someone views the page, but when they actively engage with it – such as filling out a form or buying a product. By setting these goals, you can check how much organic traffic a page gets and how many leads came from those visitors.
6. Track visitor conversion rates
Leading on from above, Google Analytics’ goals tool isn’t the only place where you can view conversion rates. You can get an overview of conversion rates on desktop compared to mobile.
First head to audience, then click overview. From here you can look at conversions. It will also show you the average bounce rate, and how long users spend on each page depending on the device they are using.
7. Make an SEO dashboard
Did you know you can customize your data from Google Analytics on your dashboard? You can tailor it to your business, and what you first want to see as soon as you open the platform. SEO dashboards lay out the data in a simple, easy-to-view format.
Dashboards allow you to (unsurprisingly) view your Google Analytics data in a dashboard format. For those who like to digest information visually, with graphics and images, an SEO dashboard may be the best option.
8. Track visitor bounce rates
When a user clicks onto your site, if they don’t immediately find what they’re looking for or aren’t engaged with your site content, they may click off. This is known as ‘bouncing’. All websites will have some visitors that bounce, but it’s important to keep the amount that do as low as possible.
There are a number of reasons your site can experience high bounce rates, such as slow loading times, poor landing page content, or frustrating UI (user interface) and UX (user experience). You can find user bounce rates under audience » overview.
If you notice people are clicking through but quickly leaving, it might be a lack of engaging content. To create meaningful, valuable content it may be worth getting in touch with us here at Accelerate Agency. We can help with content marketing, generating SEO-focused content targeting the right audience at the right time.
9. Set up alerts for 404 pages
We’re all familiar with the “404 — Page Not Found” error. It can be inevitable on large sites, so it’s worth monitoring. You can easily do this through Google Analytics.
To start, ensure that all your 404 pages have a unified page title such as “404 — not found” or “Page not found.” Then, do not redirect them – the URL should stay the same.
Enter your page title for 404 pages, starting low and working your way up. Remember, some 404s are inevitable because of typos, so this number should be high enough to rule those out.
You now have everything you need for proper 404 alerts and monitoring. Once you’ve found the 404s you then need to work on what’s causing it. This could be a typo issue as mentioned, or an internal or external link directing to the URL.
10. Improve SEO on the highest converting pages
Google Analytics SEO tools allow you to gain a deep insight into how customers reach your pages. One way to improve SEO is to view your highest converting pages and optimize them even more. This can also mean including more keywords, and CTA (call to action) pointers to encourage them to finally make a purchase. Hiring experienced third parties like Accelerate Agency can be a great way to quickly improve a lot of your content.
You can find your highest converting pages through your SEO dashboard. From here you can analyze them and use Google’s Keyword Planner tool to look for suitable keywords that you might not have covered. By making sure you’re incorporating all the top keywords, you increase your chances of visitors finding your site when they look for them.
google analytics seo certification
Google Marketing Platform Certification
This is another large-scale course from Google experts. Just like Google Ads certification, this program contains two mandatory tests. The first certification exam reinforces your understanding of the main tasks and workflows in Google Marketing Platform products. The second exam shows the profile knowledge:
- The Search Ads 360 Certification Exam confirms your ability to configure your campaign and measure KPI in your Search Ads 360 dashboard, calculate conversions, and optimize your advertising strategy using Floodlight tags.
- The Campaign Manager Certification Exam indicates your understanding of the basics of targeting, creating, optimizing, and evaluating campaigns in Campaign Manager.
- Creative Certification demonstrates the ability to find creative solutions for ads and customize them with Display & Video 360 tools.
- The Display & Video 360 Certification Exam officially reinforces the skills of developing, implementing, and evaluating the performance of a media campaign with Display & Video 360 tools.
Educational materials are designed for the average level of knowledge. Each block takes 40 minutes to 1.5 hours but you are free to study at your own pace. Each program ends with an exam according to the standard Google assessment system: you must provide the answers in the allotted time and earn more than 80% of the points.
Google My Business Certification
Complete with its own ranking rules, Google My Business certification confirms your ability to optimize the company’s page in the catalog. This is an indispensable skill for promoting offline business. You get additional organic traffic by putting branches on the map and specifying the details of work.
Waze Certification
The Waze Ads Fundamentals course is useful for those promoting products and services for drivers. You can use navigation systems for your business purposes. Thanks to properly configured ads, your location on the map will become a destination for more clients. To get a certificate, you need to pass a short educational course and pass a 30-minute exam.
Bing Certification
The Microsoft search engine, as well as Google, is in no hurry to disclose its algorithms, so it does not run specialized SEO courses. Instead, you can take the free Bing Ads Certification.
The program is similar to Google Ads but has its own specifics. You are free to take classes in Microsoft Advertising at your own pace. At the end of the training, you will need to pass a certification exam of 100 questions by giving at least 80% of correct answers. As a result, you will receive a Certified Professional badge, a printed certificate, and a place of honor in the Microsoft Membership Directory. Certification is valid for one year; after which you will need to pass the certification again.
Conclusion
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