Everyone in the SEO industry knows the good ol’ tool of Google Analytics, and how useful it can be to a business’s, so let’s not kid ourselves; we would struggle without it. But as Google has updated this wonderful reporting platform, it occurred to me that there are a number of reports that people may not know about, or even worse, know about and don’t take advantage of. Here I’ll explain 3 of these and how to make the most of them;
1. Dashboards
It sounds simple doesn’t it? This is essentially your websites time line. You can swap and change the widgets you use within this enabling you to tailor your reports to specific client needs. For anyone that has a short attention span, this report will be another way of giving them the information in double quick time. For those that like to go into intense detail, it also serves as an overview of all the reports that you’ll be analysing further.
2. Location
Again, the idea is very simple. It tells you where your visitors have come from. This also will show you if you have a large international client base (if you didn’t already know).
Any companies running a local campaign can see exactly where the highest number of visitors is coming from. So if you are targeting SEO Southport, but you are getting 40% more visitors from Liverpool, is it worth considering a change in your strategy moving forward?
If you are a National company, this demonstrates the visitors from different cities across the UK. Knowing that can be beneficial as it shows that optimising on a National level does in fact bring in visitors from a variation of areas.
3. Events
Now this tab works when you apply additional tracking functionality to your site. This could be around your phone number, payment gateway button or some form of social sharing. Essentially, any form of goal that can’t be set up as a goal. So how will this help I hear you ask? If you are one of the many companies across the country that are seeing an increase in mobile and tablet visits but a decrease in desktop computer visits, you may also see your enquiries from the contact page take a dive.
But fear not, your phone calls may have increased, but you just don’t know why or where these people have found your number. Well now you do, because with this fancy bit of code, you also can find out how many people have clicked your phone number on your website, and it works on the same principle for PayPal and sharing buttons.
Deliver these reports to your clients and see their reaction. I almost guarantee they will engage with you afterward. If you have found any other reports that you use regularly that others may not, please feel free to comment below.
