Tips for Employing Google Analytics in Your Small Business

Many of us are aware that using Google Analytics to understand how our marketing efforts are performing can be a key to unleashing future success. However many are put off by the incredible volume of the data facing them. You might want to begin by asking the right questions: what are my goals, and what do I need to know to achieve them. Google Analytics can certainly be an overwhelming mountain of data to decipher, and without having a game plan you could get lost quite easily. Let’s take a look at some ways to recognize which metrics to track, and the way to use Analytics to your best advantage.

Which metrics do you need?

Each business has its own needs, or course, but there are a few common needs.

• 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 folks coming from.
• Referral pages - Seeing which pages are driving traffic to your site is extremely valuable information. This may 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 sort the data

Three advanced features are incredibly useful when it comes to deciphering and sorting the data.

Custom reports enables you to craft a version of Analytics to suit your business specifically. You select the data that’s helpful to you, and organize it any way you need to.

Advanced segmenting offers you the ability to view various segments of your traffic, like mobile or tablet traffic.

Intelligence events, similar to Google Alerts, sends a notification your phone or email when anything significant happens on your website, such as an up or down spike in traffic.

Don’t make the mistake of not using Google Analytics. Take the time to make it work for you!