When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), you can’t do much without analytics. They’re the multiple pieces of data, accessible through website logs, that can tell you whether your online marketing strategy is working. They provide a treasure trove of detailed information about your website and are parsed through the Google Analytics software for easier reading. But you have to know how to read that information. In fact, that’s the only problem with Google Analytics—sometimes it can be hard to parse just what all the numbers mean, especially if you’re not familiar with the metrics Google uses to rank your website.
When you’re having trouble figuring out how your website is doing based on analytics, it’s helpful to turn to Omaha SEO Experts that do this kind of work every day. At Big Red SEO, we read and interpret analytics for our clients on a daily basis, so we can create and alter SEO strategies in real-time. Today our local search engine optimization specialists will show you how to read your Google Analytics reports and explain why we’re your best choice for comprehensive SEO services.
The Metrics You Need to Know
To start assessing how your SEO strategy is working, you need to know a bit about the different metrics that are compiled in Google Analytics. Metrics are simply measurements of particular performance factors on your website, and these metrics tell you valuable information about how users are interacting with your company online. Here’s a breakdown of important metrics that you should be paying attention to in Google Analytics.
Visits
This basic metric is an important number for you to keep track of because it tells you how many users have visited your website in a given period. There’s no magic number of visits that signals success in SEO efforts, but in general, you want to see this number increasing over time.
Pages per Visit
This metric tells you how many pages each visitor sees before leaving your website. Why is this important? You want to know how many pages each visitor looks at because this gives you a good idea of how engaging your content is, as well as how easy it is for users to navigate to different pages that interest them. If your pages vs visit metric are close to 1, it could be time to start thinking about having local SEO experts like Big Red SEO develop content that will keep your readers hooked.
Avg. Time on Site
Depending on your industry, the “Avg. Time on Site” metric will be different. This metric simply tells you how long visitors are staying on your website. If the point of your website is to let users find your phone number and call you immediately for service, then having a low average time might not be a bad thing. If, however, you’re seeing low averages across the board in Time on Site and Pages per Visit, and you find that you’re not getting any phone calls or internet leads, you should rely on a local SEO expert for help in getting qualified traffic to your website.
% New Visits
This metric is very important because it gives you a more detailed story than just how many people have been coming to your website. This number tells you how many visits from unique users your business website has received during a specific period of time. Ideally, you’ll want this number to be high (but how high depends on the average for your industry)—a high percentage of new visitors can tell you that your content is drawing in users who have never heard of you before, and that’s a great thing for growing businesses.
Bounce Rate
The last metric our local SEO experts will talk about today is one of the trickiest for you to decipher on your own. Your website’s bounce rate is determined by the number of people who come to your website and leave after visiting only one page. A high bounce rate is generally a bad thing, indicating that a user didn’t find what they were looking for on your website (usually due to poor-quality content or a website design that’s hard to navigate).
However, if your ideal customers are those who visit your website, find what they’re looking for on the first page, then call you immediately, a high bounce rate isn’t necessarily indicative of a problem. Every situation is unique.
Contact Big Red SEO at (402) 522-6468!
Our Omaha SEO experts work for our clients every day to interpret Google Analytics data and create internet marketing strategies that help increase their online presence. When you have questions about how to improve these or any other metrics that you find in Google Analytics, contact our SEO experts at (402) 522-6468!