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A Newbie’s Essential Guide to Google Analytics

A day doesn’t go by that I don’t still feel like a newbie when it comes to Google. It’s Panda that and Penguin this if you know what I mean. Because they do this knowing your  Google Analytics guide for your business is essential. These handy tips will make learning this techie sounding mumbo-gumbo easy as pie! 

Google Analytics
It’s essential if you are new online you use Google Analytics

For a newbie, this treasure trove of information can be somewhat overwhelming. Where do you begin? What kind of data is relevant for you? What do these statistics and charts tell you ?  How can you use this information in your Google Analytics guide to increase traffic to your website, and ultimately convert your web visitors to customers?

How do you analyze Google Analytics?  Here 4 easy tips  to get started with analytics and website goal setting.

If you’re getting irrelevant traffic data such as from your own company or  your home’s IP address, your web developer if you have one, an  external consultants, and your employees – these can give you misleading traffic information.  You must and can filter them all out. 

Test And Measure

Your data should only measure traffic from genuine site visitors. These are your clients and your prospective buyers. The beauty of having your own Google Analytics guide is you can see  if you the growth of your business online. Don’t dismiss this if you’re a local business. Finding you online is the new yellow-pages so you want website traffic. 

Set-up and track your website goals. The 5 basic goals to set for your personal Google Analytics guide are: Sales, Feed Subscriptions, Call Back Requests, Lead Captures, and Blog Comments.  With these in place, you’ll get a good grip on your website’s performance  vis-à-vis your overall business goals.

To ease off some stress from monitoring data, set up custom alerts. You will receive alert messages for any significant movement in your data.  For starters, set your alerts to monitor:

Google analytics

A newbie’s guide

– significant positive and negative traffic fluctuations. This will tell you if you are getting seen by your local traffic or beyond. 

– large increases and drops in goal conversion rates. Setting up goals in Google allows you to grow your business the professional way. I like to print this chart and place it on the wall in my office. It becomes a visual goal then and is easier to achieve. If you’re super adventurous write out the goal graph and keep track as it goes up. 

– high bounce rate (refers to to how long a user views a page on your website) This is something you want to be low. The longer a visitor stays on your site the better!
– Adwords spending. Set a goal for how much you an afford and stick to it. If you are just starting out it’s best to hire someone else to do this. Adwords can be confusing and there are many courses online or a local community night class can help you master and understand this better. 

Customize your dashboards based on the data and information relevant to you this is why I call this ‘your’ Google Analytics guide.  It may be trial and error at first, but you’ll eventually get your groove in putting your dashboard together. There’s a saying that businesses who don’t track their online presence won’t be in business long. The truth is I have seen this to be true more often than I  would like. If you own a business, even if you think online marketing doesn’t apply to you – know that it does and think smart!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read source article here.