Useful SEO Insights You Can Learn from Google Analytics

Online marketing has come to represent a veritable “alphabet soup” of strange and even confusing acronyms.

CRM, B2B, SEM, and CMS are some common examples. Still, search engine optimisation (SEO) enjoys the lion’s share of popularity.

It is therefore unfortunate that getting our heads around this subject can be rather tricky without a bit of much-needed insight.

The good news is that there are plenty of tools that can provide us with a much-needed edge. One primary example involves utilising the tools associated with Google Analytics.

Let’s first take a quick look at the purpose of this system before examining the insights that it can provide.

Google Analytics at a Glance

First and foremost, Google Analytics is by far the most widely used SEO tool currently on the market. It is estimated that no less than 86.4 per cent of all online businesses employ this utility regularly.

This arises from its user-friendly nature as well as the information that it can provide. Google Analytics will supply vital data including:

• Pageviews
• Clickthrough rates
• Device type
• Visitor location
• Keyword analysis

It is also possible to customise an additional 20 parameters so that nothing is left to chance. Simply stated, Google Analytics helps to take the guesswork out of the SEO equation. What five insights can users enjoy with this tool?

1. All About Personalisation

As this article emphasises, defining your buyer persona is one of the core intentions of any well-engineered SEO strategy.

The only problem is that such a task can be tricky when performed manually. After all, you may be required to comb through mountains of data before concluding.

This is even more problematic if you happen to be catering to several niche markets. Google Analytics can help to bridge the gap between clarity and consternation.

As mentioned previously, Google Analytics offers several customisation options. You can therefore set specific parameters such as which marketing campaigns have led to the most inbound traffic, pages associated with the highest clickthrough rates and how long visitors stay on your website.

When this information is combined with customer-specific metrics such as location and previous buying habits, establishing a buyer persona becomes much simpler.

2. Appreciating the Mobile Marketplace

Did you know that a staggering 55 per cent of global online traffic was generated from mobile devices in 2020?

The chances are high that these figures will continue to increase. So, it pays to appreciate SEO trends within the mobile community.

We should also point out that Google and similar platforms are beginning to take a mobile-first approach when indexing websites. So, you will need to ensure that your pages are up to par.

If not, your rankings could begin to take a hit. You should be able to monitor inbound traffic associated with mobile devices as well as how many of these resulted in conversions.

Of course, developing a mobile-friendly presence is also crucial if you ever hope to appeal to this growing demographic. Google Analytics will help you determine if any changes need to be made. It pays to think a few steps ahead.

3. Highly Optimised Websites

How confident are you that your site is functioning at its full capacity? Have you noticed frustrating issues such as:

• Slow page load times.
• High bounce rates.
• Pages that fail to completely load (or do not load whatsoever).
• Poor keyword rankings.
• Low monthly visitors for no apparent reason.

Why not tackle these issues before they evolve into bigger (and potentially costly) problems? Once again, Google Analytics is here to help.

This tool can provide you with invaluable insight including mobile versus desktop traffic figures, the performance of pages in different languages, and load time analyses to correct any erroneous HTML coding.

If you feel that your site is experiencing any of the problems outlined above, it is crucial to utilise the tools offered by Google Analytics.

4. Reducing Your Bounce Rates

Let’s imagine for a moment that your website is experiencing a massive amount of inbound traffic. However, this is not reflected in sales and user interaction.

This is another way of describing high bounce rates. After all, your efforts will serve little purpose if individuals visit your website only to leave after a couple of seconds.

There could be many reasons for this scenario. Perhaps the quality of your product descriptions needs to be improved.

The site might not be fully optimised for mobile devices (mentioned earlier). Misleading meta descriptions, 404 errors and unclear calls-to-action (CTAs) are some other common culprits.

There are two problems associated with high bounce rates. Of course, these will inevitably impact your overall return-on-investment (ROI).

Another issue is that bounce rates will affect your search engine results page rankings. If these rankings continue to fall over time, your website will begin to fade into digital anonymity.

Google Analytics will provide you with the ability to examine various metrics to get to the root of the suspected problem in no time at all. Once an issue is isolated, it can be corrected before it causes further damage.

5. Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

The correlation between website design and inbound visitors cannot be denied. Still, we need to keep in mind that even the most well-engineered sites will naturally contain some pages which are more popular than others. This is when things can become a bit tricky.

Manually examining each page will take time and effort. Furthermore, errors may occur along the way. It is much easier to employ Google Analytics to scrutinise each page.

In fact, you will be provided with a clear overview of which pages are enjoying the most hits as well as those that tend to be underperforming.

Once these pages have been discovered, the next question involves why they are not generating the inbound hits you require.

Might their layout be to blame? What about navigational issues such as poorly placed search bars and menus? Is there a coding error that has gone unnoticed?

Does the content need to be updated or are the keywords no longer relevant for the products in question? Google Analytics will provide you with the insight required to begin answering these questions.

Google Analytics: Providing the Right Information at the Appropriate Times

While Google Analytics is indeed the most popular SEO tool on the market, we need to mention that there are plenty of alternatives. Some additional examples include:

• HubSpot
• Mixpanel
• FoxMetrics
• Woopra
• Pizik PRO Analytics Suite

Each of these is associated with its unique benefits and drawbacks, so it is wise to take a closer look at which one suits your needs.

In terms of search engine optimisation, what may have worked perfectly fine today could be outdated tomorrow.

Staying one step ahead of the game is therefore crucial if you hope to make the most out of what the online community has to offer.

Thankfully, Google Analytics can provide you with a much-needed edge when the going gets tough.