Google has become very efficient at collecting data. Whether it’s data on the keywords (a group of words used to search for information) people use to find various things online or it’s data what happens on a website… Some of that collected data, specifically the data connected to what’s happening on your organization’s website, is available is through a tool called Google Analytics. In my article last week, I dive into what Google Analytics is and the benefits of using it. In this article, let’s look at ways you can work smarter by making Google Analytics work harder.
Google Search Console
Google offers a free search console that allows for a user to troubleshoot, monitor and maintain your website presence in Google search results. What exactly does that mean for your organization? Inside the Google Search Console, the system makes sure your website can be crawled by Google, which allows for them to index the information. It also shows a detailed look at the performance of all the different keywords used to pull up your website from inside Google Search.
What does Google Search Console offer inside Google Analytics? Inside Google Analytics there is a section within Acquisition that is just for Search Console data. Within the Search Console section, you will have access to a range of information that can help you better understand what is happening on your website.
- Landing Pages: See which pages are bringing in the most people to your website. If you have goals setup (we’ll talk about that more in a little bit) then you can see how each of those pages helps reach your goals.
- Countries: Whether your organization offers services to people across the world or just in a specific country, state or city, this is one way to see just how much of your target group are coming into your website.
- Devices: Understanding whether people are using a desktop, smart phone (mobile) or tablet and how effective each one is helps to determine if your website needs some optimization done for a certain group of visitors.
- Queries: These specific searches are the ones people are making within Google Search and finding you in their results. Knowing these keywords helps better understand how optimized your website is for the terms that matter to you.
Google Tag Manager
Setting up Google Tag Manager, another free service available through Google, to process your Google Analytics data means quick and efficient analytics without requiring a developer to do a lot of coding each time there is a change. Without Google Tag Manager, most tracking of marketing tags required a developer to come in and enter code in multiple places within your website. With Google Tag Manager, most any marketing person can go into the system to add or change tags as they needed. Even with the flexibility comes a concern for the security of an organization’s website and all the data on it. This system is built to be secure, as well as help prepare you and your website for potential changes to how the Internet is used.
Goals in Google Analytics
Setting up goals for your organization provides you with a customized look at what’s going on. What exactly does that mean? Google Analytics is setup to show websites of all types (nonprofits, for-profit, and personal use) details about the people visiting their site and what they are doing. Without your help, the system does not know what data matters to you. By using goals, you are telling Google Analytics that these actions are valuable to your organization.
After you have setup your goals from the admin panel, you can find all the data being collected on the goals under the Conversions section of Google Analytics. Within the Goals section, there are six different sections you can look at. We are going to look at the two with the most value for your organization.
- Overview: It does just what the name implies. It’s a high level look at how all your goals are doing for the date range you have set. Part of that also includes knowing where (source/medium) your conversions are coming from. Knowing where conversions are coming from can help you see how effective current marketing efforts are doing and where to possibly invest in future efforts.
- Reverse Goal Path: imagine being able to see the path website visitors took to achieve a goal you have setup…only in reverse, starting with where the goal was achieved? The benefit of this is especially helpful if you want to see what content and page are encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter or getting people to donate.
Conclusion
Google Analytics alone can provide your organization with a lot of valuable information about your website and its visitors. By adding on services (like Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, and setting Goals inside Google Analytics) to the basic Analytics service, you can enhance and customize the information to best fit your organization’s needs.
