So you’ve been told to use Google Analytics but you’re feeling completely overwhelmed with the set up and all the data? Well you’ve come to the right place because I’m going to talk you through the different stats you can pull from Google Analytics, and also why this stat may be important to you and how you’re running your blog.
How to set up?
You can use your usual gmail account to set up a free Google Analytics account. If you don’t already then you can create a new Google account alongside Analytics. Make sure you’re using your own account and not your web designers or another editor in case they stop working with you and you lose your data. To create an account your need to set up your website. Ensure your URL is correct and you select the right one between http and https for your site.
Next you’ll need to install your tracking code. Go to the Tracking Info section under Admin and you can find your tracking code. This needs to be on every single page on your website so you can use plugins to make this easier. I personally use Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights. Once you’ve copied this code into the right plug in then you’re done! Give it a test back over at Google Analytics and then wait to see your stats come in.
With GDPR compliance you’ll need to ensure you’re stating that you use Google Analytics and why you’re using the data on your privacy policy. You’ll also need to state if you’re sharing this information with third parties or not.
Audience
Overview
Users are how many individual people who have been on your blog in the time period you’ve specified. Often brands will ask for this number for your stats as UUPM (unique users per month) or MUU (monthly unique users) and this is a great stat to see how many people you’re content reaches.
New Users are similar to users except this is a user who’s new to your site. If you’re currently trying to gain growth and an increased following and you see this getting higher than that’s great.
Sessions are a single visit to your site which consists of one or more pageviews along with other interactions. After 30 minutes of inactivity a new session will be reported if the reader performs an interaction such as view a new page. This is important if you’re trying to increase time people are on your blog.
A Pageview is reported when a page has been viewed by a user on your website. Often people confuse pageviews with users, but users can have multiple page views across multiple sessions.
Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions with a single pageview. Depending on your content a high bounce rate can be good or bad. If you’re content is quick content that the reader can read and then leave, then a high bounce rate isn’t so bad. If you’re trying to sell a product, then a high bounce rate can show you’re low on conversions.
Demographics
When you started Branding your blog you probably picked a target audience. The easiest way to create a target audience is gender and age range, which you can cross check with who’s actually visiting your site on analytics.
For example, my main readers are female and aged 25-34 with my second age range 18-24. This is completely understandable as I talk about beauty and mostly YA books. But, if I wanted to reach out more to the younger audience I could cater to them more by changing up my content to skew younger.
Interests
Interests are another great way to understand who’s already reading your content. Of course I get a lot of people who are interested in books and literature on my site. But, I also get a lot who are interested in cooking & recipes so if I wanted to start expanding I could create content around that.
Geo
If you’re writing in English, there’s an extremely strong chance that your language will be mostly English. But it’s really great to understand where your audience lives. I may be from the UK but it’s great to know I have a lot of USA readers, who I can cater to in some of my content.
Behaviour
Understanding how many of your readers are returning visitors, how often people have multiple sessions and how long they’re staying for each sessions are really important. As your content grows you would hope to see your returning users grow, and your sessions increasing in quantity and length.
Obviously this data can be taken with a pinch of salt as it doesn’t come with plain context telling you X amount of people had 10 second sessions because Y wasn’t good. But you can use this data to try and work on aspects on your site which will increase your stats.
Technology and Mobile
Not really as important as many other factors that analytics tells you, but it is good to know how many people are reading your blog on mobile devices. This is because you may need to get AMP to have a faster running page for mobile which will help your SEO efforts.
Acquisition
Knowing where your traffic is coming from is great, especially if you’re trying to promote your blog. If you’re using social a lot, and you don’t seem to be getting any traffic from it then you know you’re doing something wrong and aren’t getting the clicks.
Direct links are any links where Google does not have information as to where the link is from. For example, if I type in the URL in my browser it counts as a direct link. Or if I text my friend a URL and they click, google can’t register that as a source.
Referral links are when your site’s link is on a website that is not classed as social or search engine.
Social is obviously when it’s from social media. There’s also a second social tab which shows you a more detailed look as to which social networks are driving traffic.
Organic search is search results driven and is a wonderful indicator as to how your SEO efforts are going. If these aren’t increasing as you’re working on improving SEO, then you know you either need to wait more, or work on it.
If you’re using PPC to pay for search results then you can also use the AdWords tab in Acquisition. This will give you a wide range of data to help improve your campaigns and to understand the success of previous and ongoing campaigns.
Search console is a great way to find out which of your pages are ranking well in googles search. You can also see your CTR and impressions without going to search console itself. It lets you know the average ranking of your pages as well as the impressions and clicks they have received.
Behaviour
Behaviour is a great place to find out more about your audience.
The behaviour flow is tricky to look at, but it is interesting to see where people will drop off with sessions. You can also segment by source (e.g. social) to create a more detailed view about what those people are doing once clicking on a twitter link.
Site content can help you to understand which of your posts are getting the most attention, and keeping people on the page. You can see whether a post has had hundreds of clicks, but if people are getting bored before 30 seconds and leaving. This can help you decide which posts you can go back and work on.
Site speed is important as people will leave if your site doesn’t load fast enough. So, being able to see which pages are slow is great because you can then try to fix them. Using the speed suggestions tab, you can do this straight away from the google console.
Using the events tab you can also check on which outbound links are being used. This is great if you’re using affiliate links to monetise your site.