You want to optimize your online presence. To do this, you need to know who your audience is and what they are looking for.
Armed with this information, you can shape your voice to address your website visitors’ needs, improve your website content and rank higher on searches.
How do you get this information? Through Google Analytics. Analyzing your website traffic to understand your audience, their needs and what changes you need to make to your website to rank higher in searches.
I know, the words ‘Google Analytics’ may scare you. But don’t let it. Google is used by more than 65% of people searching online. Google Analytics’ data you can optimize your website.
Here is just some of the information you can glean from Google Analytics about your website.
Audience traffic
Using Google Analytics, you can analyze your website traffic to see how your visitors are and what pages they visited.
Google Analytics counts every visit to your site, so if you have repeat visitors, your analytics will count each of their visits. Google Analytics can tell you if visitors returned to your site. If they did, that’s a good thing. You want return visitors; it means they’re engaged.
What pages did they visit?
Google Analytics data will show you how many pages your visitors are browsing and how long they are staying.
Knowing how long your visitors stay on a page can tell you that your content is relevant to them.
Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate shows you the percentage of visitors that left your website without clicking anywhere. These visits show you that you may not have the information these visitors need right on the page they landed on or you may not be using the right keywords.
A low bounce rate is a good bounce rate.
Who is your audience?
You want to know who your audience is so you can speak to them using the right voice. If your audience is seniors, then using slang words that only a teenager would understand won’t get your senior visitors interested.
In Google Analytics you should check the Audience Demographics and Audience GEO to make sure your website is reaching the audience.
Audience Demographics will tell you how old your visitors are. Audience Geo will show you both the language and the physical location of your visitors.
Where are they coming from?
You can use Google Analytics to see where your visitors came from when they visited your website.
Did they come from using an organic search? These are visitors who found you using a search engine. If this is high, that’s good and it means you’re probably using the right keywords. If it’s not high, then you should revisit your website’s keywords and adjust them.
Google Analytics can track if your website visitors came from your newsletter or if they just entered your site’s address in their browser.
If you’re using social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, you can track your website traffic from your posts on these mediums.
Some of your traffic may be coming from referrals. Referrals are people who came from other websites that are linking to you.
If you are using ads online, you can track your traffic from all your ads to your site using Google Analytics.
What are they looking at?
The Behavior section of Google Analytics will show you what page of your website is most successful. Is your blog pulling in visitors? Are your products what people are looking at?
When you understand what pages are your most successful pages, you can manage the amount of effort you put into each page on your site and which ones need work to increase your SEO (search engine optimization).
Conclusion
Take advantage of Google Analytics to see who is visiting your website, what pages are most popular and where your visitors are coming from. This tool is free and can help you speak more clearly to your audience.