6 Simple Ways to Make Google Analytics Work For You

However awesome Google Analytics is itself, it can only go so far in the hands of a novice . A lot of its utility comes down to user proficiency. 

Worried? Don't be. While Google Analytics may seem intimidating and overwhelming to neophyte users, there are simple adjustments you can make within its tools that can contribute greatly to your site's SEO prowess.

Here are a few things you can start with:

1. Correct domain errors

Google Analytics helps you optimize your conversion points. Very often, the path that leads a user to an intended goal traverses multiple domains. Your analytics, however, can easily be mismanaged when dealing with cross-domain tracking.

If Google Analytics is unaware of your multiple domains, you’ll see what’s called a “self-referral.” This means that a new session has been generated when the user crossed domains, but it doesn’t provide you with information on where that user came from. And what you want is a track that follows the user across these domains. Otherwise, your data won’t properly reflect where your users are coming from and where they are going.

With Google Analytics'“autoLink” plugin you can eliminate this problem. Using autoLink, you will be able to tell Google Analytics which domains you want to track users across.

2. Track custom campaigns

While Google Analytics can provide the data, it’s up to you to tell Google Analytics how to sort through it all. Adding parameters to your URLs helps you break down your data into useful knowledge. If you’re looking for traffic coming from a particular ad or link, you can add that as a parameter. Then, when looking over your data, you’ll easily be able to determine how much traffic that ad or link provided.

3. Track offline campaign

You have offline as well as online campaigns. Why not track your offline campaigns using the same helpful program that tracks your online efficiency? One basic strategy for bringing your offline campaign under the radar of Google Analytics is to create campaign-specific URLs to include in your offline marketing. Any traffic to and from these URLs can be directly attributed to the leads your offline marketing is generating.

4. Fix HTML errors

The dreaded 404 page… something you never want a client to run into. With Google Analytics, you can be sure that your website is tracked for broken links. Properly responding to 404 alerts ensures that your clients travel freely through your web pages as intended. By not fixing your 404s, you risk losing conversions and generating a high bounce rate that doesn’t reflect your visitors’ behavior.

5. Pay attention to your bounce rate

A high bounce rate can be attributed to several factors. One concern could be that the wrong people are visiting your site. A simple fix is reworking your SEO. If your website isn’t optimized with the key terms of your specific industry or field, you could be attracting visitors who aren’t looking for your services. At the same time, the bounce rate could be positive—if the first page they land on provides what they were looking for.

6. Investigate conflicting scripts

Is your page view data a lot higher or lower than you expected? Check the Google Analytic Script you having running on any given page. It may be possible that you’ve installed multiple scripts to analyze a single page. This is not a supported practice by Google, as running multiple scripts can result in unreliable data.