7 Google Analytics Reports Every Small Business Owner Should Know

Because the reports in Google Analytics can be so confusing, I’ve created a video tutorial to  help you visualize the 7 Google Analytics reports you should understand.

If you are not into watching videos you can skip it and read the transcription of this video below the video player. Enjoy!

Hi, Bill Parlaman from RadicalMarketingSolutions.com and this is Episode 15 of The X’s and O’s of SEO.

And today, I’m going to talk about Google Analytics and the 7 most important reports every small business owners should know and use.

Google Analytics is a free web-based website tracking software program that easily allows you to track the results and effectiveness of your website marketing campaigns.

To get set up with Google Analytics is super easy.  Simply do a Google search for Google Analytics and you can set up your free account there.

So, let’s get into the reports I recommend.

Now these 7 reports are not all the reports Google has to offer. These are the ones I think you should concentrate on and get to know best.

7 Google Analytics Reports Every Small Business Owner Should Know And Use

1. Traffic Sources. The first thing that you’ll notice when you log in to Google Analytics account is your traffic sources.

Obviously, this is the amount of visits you are getting to your website on a daily basis.

• Unique Visitors. How many NEW people are visiting to your website. This is a good way of tracking how many new people are coming to your website.

• Returning Visitors. How much loyalty do you have to your website. Are people coming back time and time again?

• Referral Sites. This is an important statistics because if you are using social media, this is a great way to see how many visitors you are getting from other traffic sources like Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter and things like that. This way you can tract to see if your social media sites are working and any other traffic sources that you are using like Press Release and things like that.

• Top Keywords. Google Analytics will display your top 10 keywords bringing traffic to your website. These are the keywords people type into Google and land on your site.

2. Keyword Report. Google Analytics as a I mentioned above will show your top 10 keywords.

However, inside  your keyword report you can expand the number of keywords Google shows you to the top 500.

And this is a great report to look at because you can see what keywords are bringing you the most traffic.

I also think it’s a great opportunity to find golden nugget keywords.

• Optimize Content. If you’re looking at your Keyword Report and you see a keyword bringing you a little traffic and you’re not listed on the first page of Google for this keyword there could be an opportunity here for you.  Let’s say you’re on page 2 or 3 for this particular keyword. This means people finding your site are really digging for information on this keyword because they are finding your site on page 2 or three.

• SEO Opportunities. So, if you find an opportunity like above, this is a great opportunity for you create a page of content for this keyword or improve the content you already have on the page where your prospect is landing. The goal here is to get your webpage on the first page of Google where you’ll like get a significant bump in traffic from this keyword.

3. Bounce Rate. Another report you should be aware of is your website’s bounce rate.

Your bounce rate is the percentage of people who visit your website and leave either by hitting the back button on their web-browser or typing in another domain. In other words they fail to click a link on your site to visit another page within your site.  You want your visitors when they come to your website to land on your website and click into other pages of your site.

• No Standard Bounce Rate. Now, there is no standard bounce rate. I get this question a lot, “What is a good bounce rate?” There is really no guide to this. Obviously, I would say if you have a bounce rate of 80% or higher, you want to improve it. But what you really want to do is see that bounce rate come down each month.

• Homepage and internal pages. You can also measure your bounce rate by your homepage and your internal we- pages. So, let’s say, someone lands on a secondary page on your website and you have a high bounce rate for that page. You want to know the bounce rates of your internal pages so you can work on improving this number.

• Keywords. You want to check the bounce rate for the keywords that brought them to a particular page.  If you’re seeing a high bounce rate on a page for a particular keyword this could mean the page content is not optimized properly for that keyword.  There is a disconnect there.  So, look at which of your keywords are producing the highest bounce rates and work on improving your on-page content.

4.Time on Site. This means how long people are sticking around on your site.

• Indicates if your visitors find your site relevant and easy to use.

• Shows Google the information you’re providing on your site is relevant.

• Indicates you’re generating targeted traffic and your message to market is a match.

Now understand,  time on site does not start until your visitor clicks through to another page on your site. So, someone comes to your homepage and stays there for a while, your time on site is not going to be measured. It is not until someone clicks on another page.

Measuring your time on site and bounce rate together gives you a good indication of your websites “useablity.”

5. Exit Page Report. What this means is this is the top pages on your site where people are leaving.

You want to look at those pages to see why people are leaving through those particular pages. Is the content that you have on those pages not very good?

Look at the keywords people are typing to land on those pages. Is the content a good match for the keywords? Can you improve the content on those pages?

Is there some SEO opportunity where you can improve the content on those extra pages to get them moving to another page or maybe have a call of action on those pages where people are less likely to leave.

So, maybe take a look at your top 5 to  10 extra pages and see what you can do to improve the content on those pages to keep people there longer or clicking on to additional pages of your website.

6. Goals. The next report that you need to pay attention to and which is really important report are your goals.

Measure conversion rates. Your goals are really how you measure your conversion rates. And there are bunch of ways that you can measure conversion rates with Google Analytics.

• Lead Generation Conversion Rates. Let’s say you have an opt-in in your website, and you want to measure the conversion rate of your opt-in offer. So, it will measure how many people come to your homepage, enter their opt-in information and then redirect to your thank you page. Once they hit that thank you page, they can measure the conversion. So, you would have the Goal code from Google Analytics on your thank you page. So, let’s say you have a 100 people come to your website and 50 people hit the thank you  page after opting-in, that’s a 50% conversion rate.

• Sales Conversion Goals. You can also set goals for things like your products. So, people come to your homepage, click on your products page, go to your shopping cart and then hit your thank you page. You can measure all of this. So, let’s say if someone hits your homepage, and then goes to your products page, hits your shopping cart, but then you don’t get a lot of people hitting your thank you page, maybe there are some problems with your shopping cart page that people do not like . Maybe you need to add some additional trust items like secured credit card authorization logos and things like this. There could be some reason people don’t like your shopping cart page and they are leaving your site. This is why you need to pay attention to these metrics.

At a minimum,  I would have your Goals set up for your lead generation. This way you can measure your opt-in rate. This way you’ll know how your opt-in rate is converting.

7. Top Content. Your top content report shows you the pages your visitors visit the most.

Take a look at the keywords bringing people into these page.  Are these keywords you would expect to generate traffic and click throughs to this page?

• Place clear calls to action on these pages. Make sure that you have an excellent call to action on your top content pages because obviously, if a lot of people are hitting on that top content pages, it is an important content so make sure you have a good call to action on those pages.

• Encourage additional interaction with your site. Make additional clickable links moving your visitors through your site to the places you want them to go. ( Opt-in pages, products pages etc…)

So, these are the 7 top reports that I recommend for small business owners.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them at the bottom of this post.

And as always, if you have any additional questions  you will like me to answer in future episodes of the X’s and O’s of SEO, leave those in the comment box below as well.

This is Bill Parlaman saying, “Now go, dominate Google!”

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