How to understand Google Analytics + INFOGRAPHIC

If you’ve got a website or a blog, the first thing you must do is link it to a Google Analytics account.

Google Analytics gives you useful data and analytics so you know how your blog is performing.  

If you are monetising your blog, or planning to, is very important to understand how your blog is performing so you can implement or understand which is the best money-making strategy.

How to understand Google Analytics

Understanding how Google Analytics works is quite simple.

I must be honest, I love analysing data so I find it quire easy but I can understand it can be a little tricky at the beginning. Even for me it has been tricky at the beginning.

But nothing to worry. If you get the logic behind the system, plus you know which are the data you need to monitor, it will be easy as a pie!

The main three reports I recommend to focus on are: 

  • Audience
  • Acquisition 
  • Behaviour

Audience

Audience refers to your users. Total number of users, new users, total number of sessions, bounce rate, page views, number of session per user and average session duration.

how to understand google analytics

What is important to keep under control

Generally, if you are a blogger or a small business owner these are the things I recommend to keep under control:

  • Page views are important if you monetise your blog with Adsense or Mediavine. If you are paid by views, the high your views are, the more money you’ll earn.
    (Want to learn more about how to monetise your blog? Read this post on how to make money blogging.)
  • New users are important if you’re aiming to gain new readers or customers. 
  • A Session is a period of time in which a user is active on your website. If the session number is high than the users it means that they keep visiting your blog/website because they like what you’re offering.
  • Pages/Sessions tells you how many pages are viewed during a session, on average.
  • Demographics show the age-range of your users, as well as they are female or male. It can be very useful if you target only a certain category.
  • Geo>location is important if you are targeting only certain countries and you can check if your strategy is working.
  • Technology>browser & network shows what browser is used to visit your blog/website.
  • Mobile>devices are very helpful to identify if your blog/website is visited via desktop or mobile. If you notice that an high number of users are using mobile phones, make sure your using a responsive theme. 
    (Make sure to check the best responsive theme for your blog/website)

Acquisition

Acquisition refers to all the methods which your traffic is generated: organic search, direct, referral, social, paid search, etc..

how to understand google analytics

What is important to keep under control

Depending on the strategy you’re implementing, you’ll see different results. But in any case is important to know that:

  • Organic search is the traffic generated by people who inputs keywords on a search engines. For example, if your strategy is to drive traffic with SEO, that should be at the first place. If so, it means your SEO is working properly.
  • Direct is those traffic generated by a direct link to your website. 
  • Referral is the traffic generated from other websites. For example, if you do guest posts, you’ll notice different referral traffic from the website were you guest posted.
  • Social is important if you’re using your social media accounts to drive traffic to your blog/website. You can check the strategy is successful or not and do something about. 
  • Paid search is important to see the ROI of your ads on Google (Google Ads).

Behaviour

Behaviour refers to what users actually do once they’re on your blog/website. It shows the number of page views, the number of unique page views, average time on a page, the bounce rate, etc.

how to understand google analytics

What is important to keep under control

Some of the data are already in the audience reports, but in this section they give you an overall idea of how your website is performing. For example you can understand if users like the content of your website and which are the most visited pages.

  • Bounce rate is important to understand if they remain on that page or leave immediately. For example, if your blog is under spam attack, you’ll see an high bounce rate due to the fact that spammers don’t spend time reading your post.
  • Exit refers to the percentage of users who leaves the page they’re reading. If the number is low that means they keep navigating through your website/blog.
  • Page shows the URL or slug of the most visited pages on your website. If you prefer, you can sort them by page title, but it’s very helpful to understand which content is the most popular and which is less.
  • Site search>search terms is important to monitor if you’re selling something on your website. For example, you can see which is the most common search terms so you can understand if people is searching for what you’re selling.
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In conclusion

I really like to analyse my website’s analytics cause it’s a free tool to understand how you’re website is performing.

I can have almost real-time feedback on what is working and what is not, so I can change accordingly or push on the best strategy. 

How’s your Google Analytics experience? Are you using it or planning to use it? Let me know in the comments below. 

Isa Lillo

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