Google Analytics Fired up For Business- Module 2

The Best Website Analytics for Small to Medium Sized Businesses.

In my training intro I talked about how this how the connection was made that inspired this training manual. We are continuing our journey here into the second video. There’s some pretty cool stuff in this post that you should find insightful.

How Important Is Goal Value?

It’s kind of sad but true; most of the Google Analytics users do not truly understand using goals and assigning a goal value. What does it mean? Why is it so important? In this video you learn how deep the rabbit hole goes. Mind you, we only borrow down a few feet but you will get the idea. Assigning a goal value to your Google Analytics goals is critical if you really want to find your keyword sweet spot quickly.

What Is Index Value?

It is the average value of this page or set of pages. Index value is the e-commerce revenue plus total goal value divided by the number of page views for each page.

This area of the Google Analytics interface will not be populated with any value unless you have assigned $value for your goals.

Bounce Rate Is Not Always a Monster

Keep in mind there are blogs and web sites that you can install Google Analytics on. The difference between them is the length of content and freshness. Usually blogs have a longer page content compared to sites that have short content pages. This means that when readers visit your blog and digest your content they are likely more fatigued. Consequently the bounce rate on blog content pages is usually much higher than a web site with short content pages.

With long blog posts your navigation will disappear as the user scrolls down the content page. This also means the bounce rate will likely be higher simply because there are no objects visible to click as the reader scrolls down the page. Blog post pages typically show a longer time on site and higher bounce rate than website pages. When you analyze a website be aware of this fact and give merit to longer time on site when the bounce rate is high.

Example Shown In This Video

These are both long blog posts

Blog post on the Megalodon shark

Blog post on Bigfoot

Notice the high bounce but longer time on site (Avg time on site)

Take it a step further and drill down the content page you are on in top content reports. Find out how people are reaching this page. What keywords our most engaging to your audience? Once again, you can use the index value to help you quickly determine what pages are most interesting to people.

Not many visits but notice there is an index$ for ” megalodon model”

Ideas for Lowering Your Blog Bounce Rate

After a good chat with Mukesh and Robert an action plan was uncovered in conversation. Mukesh made a suggestion to add a scrolling navigation menu that would follow the user down as they scroll down the page. This would provide ample opportunity for a visitor to click on a navigation element. Each time 1 click is made the bounce rate is lowered. That is brilliant Mukesh!

Turning data into gold can be seen with clarity when you understand the proper metrics and dimensions to focus on. Ching, Ching happens quickly when you are giving people exactly what they want. You accomplish two goals in doing this …

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Brand Lift Tracking

For tracking brand affect on your visitors you can use the visitor’s metric. Look at time on site, depth of visit and compare timelines.

One of the newer features of Google Analytics is the new method you can configure goals in just a couple short clicks. Go to your Google Analytics interface and navigate to settings. Choose the goal option and create two brand tracking goals.

The first one is going to be time on site. Specify the amount of time you consider a good engaged visiting time.

Configure another goal for number of pages visited.

Decide how many pages you think is a good visit and enter it into your goal. In both cases do not forget to assign a dollar value to the goal.

Brand Lift Tracking Using Virtual Page Views

In top content you can also use the search feature to help you find specific pages you are looking for more quickly. For example you may want to see all your PDF files in one data table. If you have logically named your virtual page view code snippet then you can see all PDF files and compare the results. Make sure all PDF files contain your company brand. Now you are effectively gaining brand exposure that you can measure.

Let’s suppose for a moment that you have a large library of brand specific PDF files for download. Now, because you cannot place the code on PDF files you cannot track activity on a PDF file. Here you can learn and ninja tactic using virtual page views to count every time a PDF a file gets downloaded. In your top content reports your PDF downloads will appear as page views every time they are downloaded.

With a simple little modification to the link pointing to the each PDF download you are now tracking your PDF files.

Sample website shown in the training video for downloading Christmas gift tags

Manual Tagging Your Links

Use the Google Manual Tag builder free

Remembering of course; that we have not even begun to install the Google Analytics tracking code. We are still doing a pre website analysis. So let’s decide if we are going to use manual tags to track other traffic sources. For example, you may want to track Yahoo! Paid advertising, e-mail campaigns, banners, social media or any external link pointing to your website that you have control over. Tag all your profile links in social networks such as YouTube, twitter, Facebook and learn which social source is bringing new the most engaging traffic.

Hmmm it may be worth expanding your favorable network. Manual tags clearly defined the traffic source that arrives to your website in Google Analytics interface reporting. Save yourself some time & effort by installing the grease monkey plug in for Firefox. Use tinyurl.com and you will now have a method to make Google Analytics tagged urls that are shortened. This video demonstration shows exactly the way the Plugin works.

Tracking Summary

Decide on the type of web site that you have. Remember it can be more than one type of site. Example: e-commerce and lead generation together.

  • What are the goals you want to track?
  • Are you going to use manual tags for tracking specific traffic sources
  • Do you want to use virtual page views to help track items such as PDF files?

This methodology and processing of data will bring return on investment every time analysis is performed. Your ability to find gold nuggets will improve as you perform more data driven decision-making.

We must first insure our set and and configuration rocks.

To analyze and get good website advice simply find competent analysis help. If you want to find a website analyst to action data, look no further then yourself. Take this learning pad and move on to get Google Analytics Qualified. Google analytics is ideal for small  to medium sized business. Make sure every configuration you do has the mark of  Zorro. Optimization for GA is like optimizing your website, only it measures the truth of your optimization techniques. It allows you to improve your SEO process using google analytics.

Optimizing Google Analytics Cannot be Overlooked!

Google Analytics Training

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Google Analytics Training Video Series

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