What basics should we be looking at in Google Analytics?
-
We have GA set up on our site for a while now. However, we do not look at the data.
We did today and it's quite overwhelming.
Is there anything in specific we should start with? A top 3 items we should start to monitor each week and try to improve?
Bonus Question: Is there a way to use analytics to find out who are competitors are?
-
Touching your bonus question:
GA will not tell you who your competitors are, however they did roll out a feature somewhat recently that allows you to see how you're doing in comparison to businesses in the same industry as you. You can find this:
Audience > Benchmarking > Channels
Select your industry vertical, region, and average number of daily sessions to find out how you stack up to what probably amounts to your competition.
Hope that's helpful!
-
You're right, GA data can be overwhelming if you've never looked at it before, Icarus. I almost always find the most useful place to start is the Channels report **Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. **It will show you your current traffic divided out by the primary sources, and will also show you the comparable bounce rate, time on page etc for each.
The other report that's pretty well always essential is the Content report Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages. This will show you which individual pages are getting the most visits on the site.
Use the date selector in the top right corner to review the last month's data, and then to compare it to the previous month, or the same period of the previous year. The latter is important for sites that have seasonally-variable traffic, as it might not be sensible to compare Christmas traffic to November, for example.
Beyond that, it's going to depend on why type of site (e-commerce, lead gen, publishing) and what elements of your site you're working on to improve, to determine what might be most useful to look at.
And for the bonus, no, nothing in Analytics will tell you about your competitors. GA is for showing you what's happening on your own site.
Hope that gets you started?
Paul
P.S. Once you get going with your data, you're going to want to set up some shortcuts (quick ways to navigate to reports that usually take a number of clicks,) and Dashboards (collections of information you've decided you want to check frequently in one place instead of having to navigate through the interface each time.)
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why Won't Google Update My Title?
I have waited plenty of time. Google has cached several pages with the updated title placed in the <title>tags.<br /><br />However search results, continue to show otherwise.<br /><br />I read the following (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en)</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>If we’ve detected that a particular result has one of the above issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources. However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query. Once we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site. Users are scanning for their query terms or other signs of relevance in the results, and a title that is tailored for the query can increase the chances that they will click through.</em></p> <p>The reason I want to change my title, is because there seems to be a relevancy issue (as pointed out my other community members here.) Google is having trouble recognizing understanding what our site is about.<br /><br />So instead of a title that reads, "Felix And Fingers: Dueling Pianos" (as Google continues to use) I prefer "Dueling Pianos - Felix And Fingers"<em> </em> I don't believe Google is recognizing us correctly as a dueling piano company.<em><br /></em>Google doesn't seem to like that. Any idea why or how I might go about getting this updated?</p></title>
Competitive Research | | osaka730 -
I am looking to find the top pages based on traffic volume on my competitors websites, does anyone know of any good resources?
I want to know how which pages on my competitors websites are the most popular based on the traffic volume. I do not care how many links or directed to that page or any other metric. Only thing I am looking for is the traffic volume. It would also be nice to know the length of time spent on that page.
Competitive Research | | kanteenboy0 -
How to check Google Keyword rankings?
Hey, So I recently watched the DuckDuckGo commercial about Google's results bubble. My question is how can you get the actual keyword rankings of relevant key phrases without Google taking your locations and search history into account? Would it just be a case of clearing your cache & history from the beginning of time or is there an accurate tool (other than SEOmoz ofc that I can use? Best regards, Dan
Competitive Research | | Sparkstone0 -
Advice on using google analytics and webmaster tools....for noobs?
I was wondering if anyone could suggest any resources on how to use GA and webmaster tools? I just sort of look and see my stats, etc...but I'd like to learn how to find my low hanging fruit, and try to help it rank better. I don't really use those tools as well as I should. I know there various spreadsheet's you can use, etc, but I haven't found a good (and easy to understand) resource that helps you learn how to use those tools together well. Thanks
Competitive Research | | NoahsDad0 -
What is the best way to know your accurate ranking on google? what analytics are most trustworthy?
with seomoz, i rank on google in one spot. With market samurai, I rank in another spot, With KPMRS (or whatever) i rank another place. But then when i just type my keywords into google, it puts me in a whole different world... am confused... and the client i am trying to help rank higher is confused. Thanks for any help you can offer be blessed bd
Competitive Research | | creativeguy0 -
What are the competition's Google Places pages optimised for?
I'm doing some work on a client's Googe Places page, and wondered if there's any way to see what a completitors Places page is currently optimised or categorised for? Basically, we're trying to rank for 'Bathrooms Edinburgh' and almost all of the page 1 SERP's are (unsurprisingly) full of Places results, with #1 Organic slot right down at the bottom of the page. In short - we NEED to get our Places page kicked into shape, and pronto! So, is there any way to find out how the competition's Places pages are ranking so well? e.g. What have they categorised themselves under? Cheers in advance folks, JM
Competitive Research | | JamesMio0 -
How does a site get to no 3 in Google with no KW in their links?!!
Hello everyone, my first post - ahhh I'm investigating a niche and there is a site that should have no right being there in my view. It's no. 3 Google UK for 'company formation' with a small site with 65 weak links from only 7 domains and hosted in the US. But more importantly, the Open Site Explorer says there is not 1 link with that term in its anchor text. This I find crazy and makes me suspicious. But before I go back to my client saying "oh they must be black hat" I would like your expert views. I'm not sure whether to tut or congratulate them and for the first time I'm not sure what reasons to give for their amazing performance! What's your views?
Competitive Research | | GOYMedia480 -
Google Places - Top Listing & Strange Analytics
Hello, we have been working with this customer for a few years, doing their PPC, organic marketing, and we had established one google places listing for them as well. I guess the owner got sold on having someone else work with us to do google places for an additional office location they recently set up, and for whatever reason, they bypassed having us do it. This company never gained FTP access to the website. And despite heavy competition (apparantly), they have that new location listed in the #1 - A spot, without making any changes to the website. And, to top it off, when you review the Google places performance, there is a weird result I had never before seen labeled as "* loc:". You can see what I'm talking in both screen shots. Is there any guidance you can offer, first as to what that listing label means, and second, do you have any ideas how to 'reverse engineer' how they were able to get top listing so quickly for our customer like that? local_results.jpg local_analytics.jpg
Competitive Research | | JerDoggMckoy0