Google Analytics for Small Business 101

Many of us grasp using Google Analytics to understand how our marketing efforts are performing can be a key to unlocking future success. Nonetheless many people are put off by the sheer volume of the data facing them. You need to begin with answering the right questions: what are my goals, and what do I need to know to achieve them. Google Analytics can certainly be a staggering mountain of data to decipher, and without having a game plan you could get lost easily. Let’s look at some ways to recognize which metrics to follow, and how to use Analytics to your best advantage.

Which metrics do you need?

While each business will present somewhat different needs, the more useful common needs follow.

• Total visitors - The number of both “unique” (first time) visitors, and total visits, which includes returning visitors.
• Keyword phrases - Which keywords are people typing in to get to your pages? This is critical data, and can enable you to know how to target your marketing.
• Most popular pages - See which of your pages are getting the most visits.
• Visitors country of origin - Where in the world are these people originating from.
• Referral pages - Seeing which pages are driving traffic to your site is very valuable information. This could be from affiliates, video, images, social media and many other sources.
• Search engines - Which of the search engines are delivering the most traffic to your pages.

Use these advanced Google Analytics features to help you sort the data

Three helpful advanced features are extremely useful for processing and understanding this data.

Custom reports will give you the cabability to create a version of Google Analytics just for you. You will be able to pick the data that’s relevant to you, and organize it any way you like.

Advanced segmenting lets you sort traffic into segments that highlight your data, such as segmenting out mobile or tablet traffic.

Intelligence events is akin to Google Alerts, and sends a you an email or text to your mobile device when anything remarkable happens on your site, such as a spike in traffic, either up or down.

Yes, Google Analytics is a LOT of data. And yes, you can make it do the job for you, with just a little effort!