Today in episode 31, we’ll continue our conversation about Google Analytics. We’ll discuss how to use your Analytics results to optimize your site!
If you missed last week’s episode, Part 1 of Google Analytics, make sure to hop out of this one and catch up on that one first. We’ll be continuing right where we left off. I’d like you to bring your Google Analytics and follow along with me. We left off on the left-hand side under “interest.” This tells us who our people are, what they like to do, and how we can use this information to write content that they’ll really like.
Table of Contents
How To Read Google Analytics Part 2
Interest/Audience
Under interest, we talked about overview. I do full stats once a month on all our blogs so I know where we’re standing at all times. If you aren’t the type of person that likes to do this, that’s fine! Look over the overview once in awhile, and make sure you’re writing about what your readers like! It’s all about the readers. Without them, none of this would be possible.
Our readers are “cooking people” and aspiring chefs. It is over 22,000 people a month with that interest. That’s about 50% of our content would appeal to these people if we were a food blog. We’re a parenting interest blog, so we want to look at the percentage. Since 50% of the people we serve have this interest, that’s about how much of that content we post. We’ve amped it up a bit because of the people that have this interest. It makes sense since we all want to eat good food. If you look through, foodies was number 19. The people coming to our site aren’t looking for how to make the “best of the best.” They’re looking for practical meals for their families.
As you go through these numbers, look at what people like that you aren’t having that many people come to you for. We have few sports/gamers. We don’t have many people coming to us for that and we don’t offer it. It makes sense. If you notice that not many of your readers are coming to you for the content that you DO offer most… you need to do one of two things: stop writing about what you love (which I don’t recommend) OR narrow your niche and your focus more and start writing more of what you love and begin advertising to people in those crowds. You want to make sure you’re serving your audience. That doesn’t mean they dictate your content. We’ve already discussed niche, and now you need to make sure that you’re attracting that audience, and serving the content they like to read.
Geo
Here we look at language and location. We spoke about this pretty well in last week’s episode. You want to make sure you gear your content to your audience. If you’re English speaking, and your readers are primarily English speaking, you want to tailor your content to fit this. Same with location. This day and age, your readers can be from anywhere in the world. That’s the beauty of it. We need to make sure we’re working the best way we can for advertisers and for our readers. We spoke last week about how you don’t want to promote a product that you don’t have the audience for. It’s unethical.
Behavior
New visitor vs. returning visitor. Want to know what a great percentage of new vs. returning visitors is? Answer is… I have no idea! If you have 100 people (for the sake of easy math) coming to your site every month for the last year and 75% are returning and 25% are new. The people coming love your stuff and keep coming back. That’s great. That also means, however, that you aren’t attracting new viewers. Why? This means the people that are coming back aren’t telling your friends. If you write about something that may be embarrassing or personal, that makes sense. You may just want to market in different ways. On our site, TOTS Family site, we write about a wide range of topics in the parenting advice category and want to attract new readers often. Because we are a parenting advice site, we also know that people come to us and then leave. If you’re looking for advice on Hand, Foot, Mouth, for example, you are going to find what you’re looking for and leave. You might not be interested in recipes and the different things we have to offer. If your blog is more niched that ours, you’ll want to see a little more of a balance.
For example, our new visitors are at 90%. Returning visitors are at 10%. We are growing, and that correlates with our monthly traffic. Our traffic is growing each month and we are getting more and more readers. 10% may seem like a small number, but it’s actually roughly about 5,000 people that come back to our site each month. That’s the basics of behaviour.
Technology
This speaks to the reader’s browser and operating system. We spoke in depth about this last week. You want to make sure you’re catering to your mobile readers and/or however readers are accessing your site.
Acquisition
Now, this is where the money is. It tells you where your readers are coming from. So, if you’re spending 10 hours a week on Facebook and you want to know your ROI (Return On Investment), this is where you’ll find it. To figure that out, you’ll go to acquisition, then overview. You’ll see if they came from social media, direct (they typed in your site to the search bar), etc. for us, it’s 60% social, 27% direct, referrals is about 10%, orangic serac, etc.
Social has always been our highest. If you click on that, it’ll break it down to which social media site they came from. 90% of these people come from Pinterest. Then 7% from Stumble Upon and 3% from Twitter. When you see the date at the top right-hand side of the screen, you can change your date range. Don’t spend too much time looking at what one day (unless you have an abnormal crazy high day). A broad 30-day scope of things will show you trends. If you notice traffic coming form somewhere specifically you may want to focus more time and attention there.
Last big tip, since we’re running out of time (there’s so much to talk about with Google Analytics).
Landing Pages
Go to Google Analytics on the left side, behaviour and overview. These are your landing pages. Where are people landing when they come to your site. Look at the top 10 pages that they land on. Find out what they’re going to and what they like about that post. I have 3 baby posts, a couple of teens, a cleaning post and a recipe post. You’ll want to make sure you know what interest people, that you’re creating more content that they love and make sure you’re optimized to make revenue off your most popular post. Link towards other posts so that people find more about what they’re looking for.
Site Speed/Behavior Flow.
You can even see site speed. Maybe on days that your site was slow, your traffic was really slow. You can see behaviour flow. Maybe they came to our site and landed on our post about how to prevent SIDS, but after that they left. If they didn’t leave, where did they go. They went to the site about what a baby needs or doesn’t need. Maybe they clicked on an ad and left our site that way.
That’s it about Google Analytics. Again, thanks to SubmitOwl.com for sponsoring this weeks episode. Make sure that you’re seen all the places you want to be seen in search engines, etc. If you don’t know how to get your site on them, or don’t have the time, go to Submitowl.com. $24.95 and they’ll submit all the places for you. That’s it guys! Have a great Happy New Year, and I’ll talk to you next week.
Until next time, thanks for listening to the Sandbox to Success podcast, with your host: Katrina M. Thom. If you like what you just heard, leave us a message at iTunes or Stitcher. We would also love to hear what you have to say. Use the hashtag #totspodcast to connect with us on Twitter. Don’t forget to check out the show notes, which can be found at www.totsbusiness.com. Join us next time for another edition of the Sandbox to Success podcast. Have an AWESOME day!
