The Role Of Google Analytics In SEO

How can you expect to know whether or not something works if you’re not able to measure the “before” and “after”? SEO campaigns are no different. Every insight and edge you can glean is critical to executing a successful SEO strategy, and using Google Analytics for those insights has become an industry standard among individuals and agencies offering everything from content marketing to local SEO services and the like.

But Google Analytics can be intimidating and confusing for first-time users, and with nearly infinite data points and segmentation options, it can be hard to discern exactly which data is useful and which data is just noise.

Here at Direct SEO, we find the keys to SEO in Google Analytics insights every day to help our clients grow, so we’ve broken down exactly what data you can pull from Google Analytics to jumpstart your SEO campaigns.

The Benefits Of Using Google Analytics For SEO

1. It’s Completely Free
   Of all the analytics programs available, Google Analytics is easily the most comprehensive free solution on the market. SEO and Google Analytics go hand-in-hand, as a free analytics program (the paid version kicks in when you have 10 million+ monthly visitors) helps you derive substantial data insights without the associated costs.
2. Determine If Your SEO Campaign Is Working
   Like we mentioned above; how can you expect to execute a strategy if you can’t measure the strategy’s success? SEO analytics and reporting is crucial to determine if your SEO efforts are leading to more engaged, relevant users.
3. Learn More About Your Target Audience
   Every business has to define their target market, but that’s easier said than done. Google Analytics is important because it allows you to segment your online audience in order to understand their interests, demographics, location and more, so you have a better idea of just who is interested in your product/service.

What Does Direct SEO Track In Google Analytics?

• Page Views - A page view is logged when someone views a page on your site.
• Unique Users - This counts the number of users who visit your site. This may be different from “sessions”, because unique users may initiate multiple “sessions” in a day.
• Referral Traffic - A referral happens when users are brought to your site from a third-party. The referral report will show you just where these users are coming from and how those users perform on your site.
• Bounce Rate - Bounce rate looks at the frequency that users visit a single page on your site, don’t perform any meaningful actions and then leave. By not interacting with your site, they’re effectively “bouncing”. 
• Behavior Flow - This is a visual flow chart that shows you what pages users are visiting most, on which pages users click through to other pages and which pages lose the most visitors. So for instance to track store visits from organic users in Analytics and see how those individuals perform on the rest of the site, the Behavior Flow report would be one of several effective solutions.
• Goal Tracking and Completion Rate - “Goals” are various goals you set in Google Analytics; it can be something as simple as an email list signup or as big as a purchase. Goal tracking and completion rate details with what frequency users complete those goals.
• Organic Keywords - Google Analytics offers some insight into which organic keywords drive traffic to your website. But if you’re wondering how to track keywords in Google Analytics accurately, you’ll need to purchase the paid version or integrate 3rd party software to do that.
• Social Network Referrals - This shows you how many users came to your site from social networks and how they perform.
• Average Time On Page - Average time on page details how much time users spend on each individual page (hint: more time is usually better).

How We Leverage Google Analytics For SEO Insights

Here at Direct SEO, we leverage SEO analytics and reporting to determine many things, including:

1. Popular Pages
   We’ll find which pages are already performing well and what users like about those pages so we can replicate that page success.
2. Keywords 
   We use advanced third-party reporting software integrated with Google Analytics to track which keywords are performing well and capitalize.
3. Testing Metadata
   By leveraging analytics, we’re able to test out new page meta data like title and header tags to determine what your audience best responds to.
4. Increase User Engagement
   We use analytics to determine what changes improve your user engagement rate and continually iterate on those changes.
5. Increase Goal Conversion Rate
   We help businesses turn more website users into loyal customers through analyzing behavior flow and more.

Direct SEO: Your SEO And Google Analytics Experts

Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful tool. If used correctly, it can dramatically improve a company’s online performance and ROI.

Direct SEO has years of collective experience analyzing, interpreting, and leveraging Google Analytics insights to bolster company SEO efforts. We’re ready to help businesses everywhere turn their website data into company success.

Fill out the form below for a free consultation and get started today!