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Overhaul Your SEO Strategy With Google Analytics
Web analytics tools aren't just the preserve of big business. Even the smallest entrepreneurial enterprise can benefit from analytics technology. Google Analytics is one of the most used tools on the web, offering a full suite of features that can be readily adapted to bolster your SEO strategy.
Google Analytics can be used to refine existing pages to lower bounce rates and increase conversions. In extreme cases, it can substantially increase traffic to your website. Need some more guidance on how analytics tools can help you? Read on for five of the most useful SEO insights Google Analytics can offer you.
1. Mobile Traffic Insights
It's estimated that around two-thirds of all Google searches are done on a mobile device. It's no surprise that search engines are focusing more on mobile devices as far as indexing is concerned. When it comes to optimizing your site, you need to be keeping a close eye on mobile traffic.
However, you need to be doing far more than simply monitoring the number of uses accessing your site via a smartphone. More crucial is to determine mobile conversions on each page of your website. By doing this, you can determine the success of each page and flag ones where there is room for improvement. With this information at your disposal, you can start focusing on optimizing your online platforms for mobile users.
It's also essential that you take the time to compare your desktop and mobile sites for general traffic, as well as bounce rate insights. This will give you a clear indication of which one is performing better and which one you need to focus on improving. If you're running multilingual websites, you'll need to delve into mobile traffic stats for every language.
2. The Importance of Bounce Rate
Monitoring bounce rate is something every business owner should be doing. The general rule here is to ensure it remains as low as possible, usually under 40%. Bounce rate essentially refers to how long a user spends on a website before "bouncing" away. Single-page visits aren't a good sign for businesses and a particularly high bounce rate suggests your website needs some serious work.
Google Analytics makes it easy to determine which pages are suffering from higher bounce rates. Once you've narrowed things down, you can start assessing problem pages and addressing factors that might be holding them back. This can include how responsive a page is for mobile device users and page loading times. In many cases, the page content quality may be causing users to leave your website after a single-page visit.
3. Access Deeper Traffic Insights with Custom Segments
If your SEO strategy needs some serious work, custom segments are one of the most useful features you can turn to. Segments allow you to easily isolate specific subsets of data, grouping site visitors that share certain characteristics.
Google Analytics collects an expansive set of data, granting invaluable insights into visitor demographics. You can use segments to determine where your visitors are based, how they arrived at your site, and what action was taken after arriving there.
If you're selling goods or services on your website, you can use these insights to determine what part of the world is producing the highest level of sales. Used effectively, this data can also be used to build a buyer persona template, allowing you to tailor your SEO strategies and online content toward your audience. You can also use these findings to identify untapped corners of the market, allowing you to create new content to attract new visitors to your site.
4. Improved Site Navigation
Site navigation is incredibly important. Poor accessibility is one of the biggest causes of high bounce rates, with visitors unlikely to stick around if they don't have the tools to find what they're looking for. The aim here is to improve user experience, allowing visitors to find what they're looking for as quickly as possible.
Google Analytics comes in handy when determining the effectiveness of your website navigation. You can check to see what percentage of visitors are using the search bar to navigate your site. If this number is high, focus on optimizing the effectiveness of your search bar to refine the user experience. You're not only looking to maintain the interest of a visitor but shorten the amount of time it takes for them to land on your site and complete an action.
You can also gain useful SEO insights from the search terms visitors are typing into the search bar of your website. You may find that the most popular searches are well-matched with existing pages. However, if there's nothing currently correlating, think about publishing fresh content in the form of a blog post to drive organic traffic to your website.
5. Look for Landing Pages That Aren't Performing
If your website is on the large side, there's a high chance that several pages are underperforming. Use Google Analytics to quickly identify these underperforming pages so you can apply some quick fixes.
There could be many individual factors impacting the performance of a webpage. If a particular page is experiencing very low levels of traffic, ask yourself whether you still need it. If the answer is no, consider removing it entirely. Not only will this free up your attention for focusing elsewhere, but it may also improve the overall structure of your website.
Strengthen Your SEO Strategy Today
These are just a handful of the best SEO insights that Google Analytics provides. If you're one of the few businesses yet to wake up to the advent of mobile-first browsing, mobile traffic insights are something you should be exploring.
Businesses of any size should also be focusing on lowering bounce rates and increasing conversions. With Google Analytics tools, you'll have no trouble identifying the key factors behind high bounce rate levels. You can also leverage these tools to help you improve site navigation, enhance user experience, and formulate new ideas for content creation to drive organic traffic to your website.
Meet The Author:
Ian Carroll is the director of Digital Funnel, a digital marketing and SEO agency. They specialize in helping small and medium size businesses with lead generation and driving sales.
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