Using Google Analytics to Boost Traffic

Google Analytics is a great free statistics tool that provides comprehensive statistics on your site, and those statistics can be used to help you boost your traffic. It is pretty simple to install by simply inserting a snippet of code on your site. Try to use something like a header or some piece of code that is on every page, or in Blogger simply insert it into the html.

Considering how expensive some stat programs are, or the fact that some of the free ones require an icon or image linking back to their site, this is extremely valuable. In particular, this is great for bloggers who might lack money to spend hundreds on a decent stats package.

Once it’s loaded, you can simply visit the Google Analytics page for detailed statistics. While the usefulness of this information might not be obvious, there are many ways you can mine this information to help you drive more traffic and better optimize your site for search engines.

Google Analytics Dashboard

This is the main page of the Google Analytics site. Even right here, you can gather some useful information. You can see the number of visits, percentage of new visitors, and average time on site over an extended period. A key statistic here is the bounce rate option in the top right pulldown menu. Look for trends here, and also find out if you have a lot of visitors who hit your site and immediately bounce out.

Then you can play with your site to see if you can improve those numbers. Add more internal links, for instance, in blog posts to encourage internal clicking. Change your color scheme or tinker with your design, and wait to watch your bounce rate to see if it’s impacted.

Google Referral Tracking

One of the best tools of the Google Analytics is the ability to analyze your Google (and other search engine) traffic. You can look at trends to see how many referrals you are getting from various search engines, pay-per-click ads or external links. From the dashboard, just click on “traffic sources.”

This is a gold mine of information. If you click on a particular source, like Google, you can see a graphic of referrals over a period of time. This will tell you, for instance, if Google referrals have dropped off, which should be a concern. It’s also nice when you get a bunch of traffic from a social bookmarking site. That will show a whole bunch of page-views, but can mask a drop-off in search engine referrals.

Better yet, examine the keywords. You can use this information to expand on phrases where you are ranking well, or to revise pages that currently drive traffic for totally irrelevant to your site. You can also click on keywords, and then click “bounce rate” at the top right. That will show you which keywords bring bad traffic that doesn’t stay on site.

Google Analytics Map

Another great feature is the Google Analytics map. If you’re running a general interest site, it could be easy to overlook this cool feature. But you can even use it just to see, for example, that you get a decent amount of traffic from a specific country. That can help you cater your content to that audience.

You can even narrow your statistics down to the city and state level, which could be useful if you find you have a large audience in a particular city.

Content Statistics

Use the content statistics to determine which pages are the most popular, or which have high bounce rates and might need to be improved. You can view your top content by title or by URL. You can also see which content is keeping people on the page for the longest time, or serve often as exit pages.

Google Analytics Downsides

Anything free can’t be perfect, right? There are a few downsides to using it. For one thing, you are giving Google access to detailed statistics on your site. There is also a lag in reporting, so the statistics are not real-time. In the post, Three Reasons Google Analytics Fails for Seo, Eric Lander writes:

If you are serious about search engine optimization, Google Analytics is NOT for you. I know it’s tough to look past the (non-existent) price tag, ease of use and conversion tools — but trust me when I say that Google Analytics is a flawed program for your needs.

So it’s important to know there are downsides. For many sites and blogs, these aren’t crucial and probably aren’t reason enough to avoid using this great free program. It also shouldn’t be your only source of statistics, and you can use resources like Google Webmaster tools and your hosting provider’s log tracking.

In the end, though, it is a great tool (certainly for the money) and is especially important if you are not currently using detailed statistics. This post just covers some of the basics, but there are many uses for these statistics. If you currently use Google Analytics, what’s your favorite use?