Google Analytics is such an amazing analytic tool to make you understand your potential customers as well as turn any strategy into actions. But before making a proper marketing decision, you should understand the sense of those numbers as well as know how to align with your brand strategy. Here’s a PART 1 breakdown of some crucial metrics how to report SEO on Google Analytics.
Table of Contents
Question 1: How many people visited your website?
Our No.1 tip is that you are able to report the number of visitors to your website. Hence, this report will answer two questions:
Question 1a: How popular is your website?
To notice the popularity of your website, you should understand correctly the definition of an user, a session and pageviews as well as unique pageview.
Click Audience section, then Overview, you will definitely see what you are gonna report on your website’s popularity.
- An user: An user is a visitor who has started a session on your website during any given period of time. For instance, a visitor who visits HappyPoints.io on Google Chrome, is counted as an user. But if the same visitor open 2 browsers Chrome and Safari at the same time and visiting the same website, we count it 2 users: one in Safari and one in Chrome. Also, if you browse a website with an incognito tab, we count it as 2 users.
- A session: Google Analytics defines a session as a group of user interactions with your website that take place within a given time frame. A given time frame is usually 30 minutes. If Linda arrives and returns within that 30 min, we count it as a session. Also, if she arrives on HappyPoints.io, leaves after 30 min to a lunch break and comes back after 15 min, a new session begins.
- Pageview: A page view is a view of a page tracked by Google Analytics code. If an user reload a page multiple times within a time frame of 30 minutes, we count them as multiple pageviews. If an user navigates to a different page and then return to the previous, this counts as another pageview.
- A unique pageview, as seen in the Content Overview report, aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session.
This Audience overview briefly answer the question of your website’s popularity. Above image shows us a recorded Audience statistics over the period of Mar 13th to Mar 19th. Based on this report, nearly 99% of users are reported new. There were 135,678 sessions that are made within 30 minutes with 184 pageviews at those sessions. By reporting these statistics, you can also compare with your competitors over the same period.
Question 1b: Growth trend
By analyzing the popularity of your website over a period of time, you can also answer the question of your website’ growth trend. Has your website had an increase or decrease of traffics or pageviews by time? Or by seasonal changes? By yearly changes? Or basically by your previous campaigns? What you should do to improve it overtime?
By adjusting a new time period in the Audience overview section, you can compare your website performance over given time.
Besides answering your campaign peak period, you can either choose to compare your website over seasonal period (for example from March to May 2020 to March to May 2021), or over previous same period (for example from March to May 2020 to June to August 2020). If your business is not doing well over these periods, a strategy to enhance your website content, your ads performance or add a new feature on your website, etc,…
A very helpful tip to increase your performance is to use Similarweb.com. Comparing your competitors’ performance versus yours can actually help you you to figure out what sort of features to enhance.
Question 2: Who are your visitors?
After acknowledging of your website’s popularity and growth trend, you should be able to define an overview of their personas. To answer this question, you should rely on multiple sub- Audience sections such as Demographics, Interests, Geo and Behavior.
Question 2.1: Age and Genders
Getting to know your potential customers is crucial. Like knowing their age and gender. The ages reported on Google Analytics are divided into 6 sub-groups: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64 & 65+. For some reasons, under 18 group is not counted in this report. Both genders are reported properly in this report.
The ability to report on your visitors’ age and gender can help you revise your website’s performance. Like whether it attracts the right sort of visitors. For example, if you sell mum and children clothing, there are no way that your website should attract a huge number of male visitors. From there, you can implement any activities to improve your website performance.
Question 2.2: Interests
The Interests section reports on 2 most important categories: Affinity Category and In-market segment category.
Affinity categories basically are people that are engaged in higher funnel activities (Top of Funnel, or TOFU), or to translate into other words – less like Purchase Behavior. In-market segments are near the bottom of the funnel. People at this funnel are more likely to convert into potential customers. Based on this section, you can definitely look for digital strategies to target either your TOFU (to raise brand awareness) or BOFU (to convert into customers).
Final Thoughts
These are just a first few metrics to help you to report SEO on Google Analytics. Hopefully, it assist you to turn your statistics into real and high-converting strategy. Let’s move on to Part 2 of this Google Analytics section!
