One important factor of any digital marketing campaign is being able to measure return on investment (ROI). In fact, it is often one of the first questions that a client asks: “Where will my money be best spent?” or “How can we tell if this is working?” These answers can usually be found on Google Analytics—a platform that collects website performance data such as pageviews, bounce rate, and audience demographics. These insights provided by Google Analytics help us decide where to focus your business’s message. There is a wealth of valuable insight to be gained from Google Analytics, and Media Venue uses three of these key data categories to understand user flow through your site. Knowing how users move through your site allows us to prioritize message placement. These three KPIs are Channel, Device Category, and All Pages.
#1 Channels
In Google Analytics, Channels signify how users are visiting your website, such as organic search, paid search, direct, email, and social. (To locate Channels, go to Acquisition>All Traffic>Channels.) In addition to the variety of channel groups, Google Analytics also provides insight into the acquisition, behavior, and conversions of each group.
Essentially, by utilizing Channels, you can see the number of sessions (or site visits) coming from each source for a specific period of time and how the audience coming from each Channel engaged with your site. Since Google Analytics data is stored, there are multiple opportunities to better understand which advertising methods are bringing in your audience.
#2 Device Category
This section of the analytics (which can be located by going to Audience>Mobile>Overview) reveals which devices are used to view your content. The amount in each category can vary industry to industry. For example, Media Venue, a business-to-business (B2B) category, has about 2/3rds of our visits coming from a desktop device. Therefore, we prioritize content layout, image sizes, the font size for desktop while still being mobile-friendly (an important SEO factor).
However, a restaurant or retailer may find the opposite to be true for their business and may need to optimize their page layout and content for mobile users.
Similar to Channels, Device Category also provides data on the acquisition, behavior, and conversions of each device category. This offers helpful insight into how people visiting your website from each device category engage with your website and content.
#3 All Pages
The All Pages section identifies the most popular pages that bring individuals to your business’s site. To locate All Pages within your own Google Analytics dashboard, go to Behavior>Site Content>All Pages. The All Pages section also pulls from a certain date, which allows you to filter and see the changes in visitors across certain time spans. You can also see any peak times throughout the year that your website receives more visits. This feature can help identify a potential cause of an increase in pageviews, bounce rates, etc.
The All Pages report provides many opportunities to better understand the audience visiting your website. The table depicting analytics will include details such as time spent on page and bounce rate. These elements let marketers understand what content may be appealing and bring users to your site, but lack the engagement factor to keep them there.
How to Utilize Google Analytics in SEO and Marketing Campaigns
Based on these three categories, Media Venue can gain a valuable picture of how users come to and engage with your company website. Knowing this information can facilitate building a strategy to increase organic SEO as well as shape paid messages and landing pages. This data is invaluable but constantly changing, which is why checking your website’s analytics on a regular basis (and making changes to the website when needed) will boast a more successful SEO campaign.
At Media Venue, we understand Google Analytics and how to translate the data to shape a strong digital strategy for your business. If you are ready to leverage this information for campaign success, give us a call at 502-855-4783 or email Sarah Kelley—our SEO and Content Manager—at sarah@mediavenue.com. Enhance your marketing investment with Media Venue!
