What is the best way to learn google analytics?
-
Hi I'm trying to get my head around google analytics as a first time user.
Can any suggest the best place to start after I have taken a look through the whole thing, how do I go about managing and tracking performances on my website?
eg: Registrations/sign ups, conversions all that sort of thing
Some advice will be much appreciated
Thanks
-
Hi Justin,
I can see that you already got good answer from Dirk & Christy. I would also like to share few Google Analytics resources on my personal experience
http://www.lynda.com/Google-Analytics-tutorials/Google-Analytics-Essential-Training/160343-2.html
http://www.lynda.com/Analytics-tutorials/Google-Analytics-Tips-Tricks-Tutorials/135364-2.html
Currently 10 days free trial available on Lynda.com**
Thanks
-
Thank you Christy
-
I second Dirk's recommendation for Google Academy. I would definitely master the first two lessons in order, which will give you the skills you need to get started tracking the performance of your own website, and make use of the supplemental forums and videos for each course. Self-study is available year-round, and group study, facilitated by a Google staffer, is held a few times a year.
When I first started working with Google Analytics 7 or 8 years ago, I thought that Google Analytics was fairly intuitive, and most people could dive into it head-first (trial and error style.) However, I would not recommend anyone just getting started with GA today take that route.
-
Thank you Dirk
-
Google Academy http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/index.html would probably be a good starting point. Or just trial/error with some support from online help. It's pretty self-explanatory.
rgds,
Dirk
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
-
Search Analytics update in Google Webmasters Tools? Where can we find search queries bringing traffic to website?
I just got up and see Search Analytic's being updated today totally. Their is no option to see old reports. As Search Analytics only share 999 keywords.
Search Behavior | | csfarnsworth
Whats next now?
How can a webmaster finds all search queries bringing traffic to his website?
Any paid or free tool?
Google Analytic's > Acquisition > Search engine optimization > search queries will this area helps? Whole question revolves around. Any good tool that will help you find all the queries bringing traffic to my website?0 -
Personalised Geo-targeted results - How does Google pass link juice?
Hello, Many websites now serve specific home page offers based on the location of the customer, my question is, how does link juice flow around a site when the links (this case from the homepage) are served up based on a visitors location? Internal links from your homepage are valuable for ranking that product well in the SERPs so how does Google deal with this? So, for example, a car hire website based in the UK. If you arrive on the care hire website sat in Manchester (Northern UK city), on the homepage the website serves offers of car hire deals in Manchester, Leeds, London and international destinations. If you arrived on this website from London (Southern UK City), you would not see the Manchester link at all but London, and other cities in the South. In this case, when Google crawls the car hire website, it will see internal links but a)which version and b) is there any way of sharing this link value around? Basically, we want to understand if Manchester in this case will get the benefit of an internal homepage link from Google even though we only show Manchester to people FROM Manchester, OR, do Google only give juice based on one version of the website, a generic UK version? Or to put it another way, is there any way of cashing in on both geo-targetting the customer based on their location AND getting link juice from those geo-specific home page links? Perhaps there is some code or way of telling Google that people from Manchester (a certain % of our visitors) will see a homepage internal link for Manchester that will pass some small % link value?
Search Behavior | | xoffie0 -
Has anyone found a best practice for ranking a client who has one central office location, but a large, regional service area that they want to rank for?
All the most recent local search ranking is based upon physical addresses, but what happens when someone provides services and has staff 100 miles from that central office location, but no physical address to work with?
Search Behavior | | BehrDesign0 -
Google reconsideration nightmare
Hello and thanks in advance The website has had a penalty on it for a while now, around 10 months, it was worked on by an agency who bought bad links to it but before then it was worked on by other agencies that may have done the same. I cleaned up as many bad link (according to many posts read) and filled for reconsideration and was told to get rid of a whole bunch of links which i did not know existed. Downloaded WMT links as instructed by Google admin person and contacted a heap of people which took a lot of man hours and cost us a fortune. Resubmitted and again was shown a handful of links by the Google admin person and told to contact and remove. The funny thing is that a few of them I disavowed in my list so they should not have pointed these out. I emailed back and showed that everything I could do was done and am happy to disavow any other link which they though violated their terms. This was not enough and I was told to show more efforts in removing links and then resubmit for reconsideration. I have done as much as I can on the website, I cannot see any more links which show violation, if there are some I am happy to remove but am now at a stage where i need direction from others to tackle this matter. Any advice would be helpful; I cannot start over from scratch as it's a brand and not a small website.
Search Behavior | | Benbug0 -
Google analytics realtime reporting same keywords with different capitalization
I was just looking in my analytics and I saw something I have never seen before. Maybe its old news but its new to me. I have attached a screen shot. I have 2 keywords listed which are the same but are capitalized different scrabble dictionary Scrabble dictionary Does Google really consider these different? PlstfwR
Search Behavior | | cbielich0 -
Google Local
I am new to Google Local and just bagged a project. Can somebody guide me how to go about it. Is Google Local all about listing the business in Directory and Classified sites with complete address and profile? Any help will be highly appreciated.
Search Behavior | | KS__0 -
Google Penalisation - Any help would be appreciated!
Hi,
Search Behavior | | ChrisHolgate
We’ve recently received a Google notification of unnatural linking along with a confirmation that we're being penalised. There were a few other sites that we owned that perhaps had too many links pointing to our main domain so we trimmed them down and submitted a reconsideration request and got the following back: "Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team" I want to stress that we have never in the past and do not currently buy any backlinks. The problem that we face now is that our site has been online for best part of a decade, there are thousands of people linking to us and I have absolutely no idea where to start. We don’t use an SEO Company but in the past few months have been using SEOmoz to improve our on-page optimisation. I know it’s a massive ask but if could a member of the SEOmoz community or a staff member quickly take a gander and let us know if anything in particular sticks out like a sore thumb it would mean a great deal to me. Of course, if needed we’ll employ the services of an SEO company but I’m hoping one of you guys will see something immediately obvious that could really help us out! Thanks in advance. Kind regards Chris0 -
Google Location - Taking Away Our National Reach?
Hey, I was just noticing that we achieve #2 ranking on Google for one of our customers for one of their primary keyword phrases. But then I noticed the traffic analytics were not matching what we should expect from that keyword phrase. Then I noticed, in using "Chrome's Incognito Window", that our location was automatically selected for our main geographical city area. I then went and changed that location from Denver, to San Diego & Also Chicago, just to see what would happen, and I noticed we instantly dropped from #2 to #7 when changing our location. I don't know what my question is, but I guess I feel like that is preventing us from achieving the results we need to sell ecommerce products. Is there any info on this or suggestions anyone has on how to tackle this issue? It feels like Google is pulling the rug out from underneath our feet and trying to spread rankings more to localized areas, rather than offering someone the opportunity to capitalize on good rankings for a national audience. I understand why they would do it, and I don't say I disagree. But it just seems to affect our work as SEO's doesn't it? Since we can't be as effective for customers that have a global audience instead of strictly a localized one. I'm curious to see what people have to say about this issue. Thanks!
Search Behavior | | JerDoggMckoy0