Search engine optimization is a great way to make the most of your online efforts, ensuring that the content you create reaches prospective customers and results in a return on investment. However, there’s more to it than adding keywords to your content and racking up backlinks. You not only need to approach SEO with thoughtfulness and intention, but you need to track and analyze data to find out what’s working and how to improve.
This is where Google Analytics can help. The ultimate tool for websites seeking recognition and rankings for their SEO efforts, Google Analytics can deliver an absolute wealth of information that helps you to work smarter, not harder, and see increasing successes. Of course, you have to be choosy about the information you gather or you could find yourself burning the midnight oil poring over scads of data that doesn’t really help you. Here are just a few of the things every website should pay attention to on Google Analytics to gain insight into their SEO strategy moving forward.
Site Search
If you have yet to include a search bar on your website, you’re not only making life harder for visitors seeking specific items, but you’re also missing an additional chance to track and understand user behavior. Every time site visitors type in a search, you gain knowledge about what consumers are looking for on your site, as well as how many visitors are searching for the same items.
There’s more, though. You can cross-reference this data with other information, such as funnels, to get an idea of what people come to your site looking for and how hard it is for them to find it. If a lot of people are using the search bar instead of the navigation menu, you might have to consider making some changes to your site structure and navigation to make popular items easier to find, just for example.
Mobile Traffic
The number of users browsing with mobile devices like smartphones and tablets has seen consistent growth over the last several years, so much so that Google adopted a mobile-first policy that places a premium on optimization for these users. In other words, creating pages that are mobile ready could actually gain you more traction with Google in terms of ranking.
How much mobile traffic makes its way to your site? If you’re not paying attention to this crucial data, you could be missing major opportunities to maximize your SEO efforts. Google Analytics offers a few different ways to monitor your mobile traffic, including seeing which visitors are viewing your site via mobile devices, as well as tracking conversions and bounce rates so you can compare them to desktop counterparts and step up your game overall.
Bounce Rates
This is so important to track. Seeing who’s coming to your site, how they get there, and what they’re looking at is certainly important, but you also need to know why people are leaving before viewing content or making purchases. There’s no foolproof way to ascertain this information, but tracking bounce rates can give you clues and help you make changes to your site and your SEO that bring in targeted traffic and improve conversion rates.
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