Last updated on March 30th, 2024 at 07:09 pm
When it comes to the business analytics of start-up SEO, nothing is going to help more than Google Analytics. The service is streamlined by the sultans of the search engine to assist internet marketers in understanding the ways in which certain sites and pages can make money. Despite being such an important part of independent internet marketing, Google offers the service for free. The lack of price comes with a small cost, however; you won’t have your hand held when working through SEO possibilities like you would with a pay-service. With that said, simply remembering the following tips about Google Analytics can help any fledgling SEO get started:
READ WHAT GOOGLE GAVE YOU
The first thing to remember is obvious: read everything Google gives you analytics. The support pages are packed with information. In fact, the rest of the tips provided below were mined from GA support, and only represent important start-up guidelines. There’s much more to learn, and you won’t make it far without learning it all.
TRY A TEST PROFILE FIRST
Every Google Analytics account can have up to 50 profiles. You can benefit greatly from sampling features and add-ons through a fake profile filter first. That way you don’t have to worry about skewering data during your opening experimentation. Anything you like can be imported from one profile to another.
SEEK OUT GRAPHICAL DATA
One of the best things about GA is that the guys and gals at Google do a great job providing users with emotionally-invoking data graphs. Traffic down by 6.8 percent within a month looks a little different when the difference is presented in an overlay. Date comparison graphics are an incredible thing to have for free when you’re an SEO.
DON’T SETTLE FOR EXPORT LIMITS
Google automatically limits Excel exports to 500 lines every download. It’s easy for you to accumulate anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 lines of data even with a modest pagerank. If you put “&limit=” behind the URL, then you can export as many rows as you have into Excel. Depending on your version of Excel, the process can fumble at first but recent versions should handle the transfer without worry.
KEEP INTERNAL TRAFFIC OUT OF YOUR DATA
The most important thing to remember is that anyone associated with the site, such as yourself or a co-worker or developer, needs to make sure they remove themselves from the data pool. This can only be done by blocking the proper IP addresses. It can be tough when internal traffic comes from remote sources frequently, but it’s essential when preserving proper records of your site’s traffic.
Follow these guidelines and you shouldn’t have a problem improving your SEO strategy using Google Analytics.
