For Google Analytics novices, the amount of data you are presented with can seem daunting. With such a wide and overwhelming range of metrics available to you, it can sometimes feel like you can’t see the woods for the trees. Here’s our guide to making sense of some of the most important parts of Google Analytics...

A good place to start when determining the success of your SEO campaign is to take a look at the ‘Keywords’ and ‘Search Engines’ sections of the Traffic Sources tab. This will show you the search engines your traffic is coming from and for which search terms. If you’re running a paid search campaign (a.k.a. Pay Per Click) as well as organic SEO, then you should be sure to click the ‘Organic’ tab, which will ensure you are presented with the data derived solely from organic traffic. On this page you will be presented with the keywords that have brought you the most traffic, with the number of visitors decreasing as the list progresses.

In this list the keywords your website has been optimised for should appear. If the keyword research you carried out in the first instance was accurate then the key terms chosen for your homepage should be at the top, or certainly very close to it. This list will also show you variations of your key terms that brought in traffic, including those that have been entered in a different order or pluralised etc. There can be thousands of variations used, and as you’re not paying for each click as you would in a pay per click campaign, then the more the merrier!

An important method of measuring the success of an SEO campaign is to understand which of your pages are attracting the traffic. It may be that a product specific page which has not been optimised is bringing in a good proportion of your visitors. In most cases it will be the category pages or homepage that visitors are landing on. Firstly click on the ‘Content’ section, then under ‘Site Content’ you can choose to look at the landing pages and see those all important page specific stats. If the entrance pages are those that have been optimised, then your SEO strategy is showing signs of having an effect.

Blog posts are an excellent way of using long tail keywords to attract particular niches. This traffic can often have a high conversion rate as customers are specific about the product or service they are looking for and at a more advanced stage in the buying decision. It is important to see how much of an impact your blog posts are having. If they aren’t brining in traffic then maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the keywords being used when writing them, or time to build some deep-links that go straight to them.

On closer inspection you may find that guest blog posts you have written for external sites, industry specific links you have obtained or reciprocal links from related businesses are bringing in good quality traffic. This is a key side-effect to SEO work that is often overlooked in headline statistics.

Of course the primary aim of most websites is conversions. Conversions can vary widely from site to site; some will regard a purchase as a conversion, whilst others may ask customers to fill out a request form. So long as you have set-up your Goals, by clicking the ‘Conversions’ tab you will very quickly be able to ascertain which keywords have the highest conversion rates. As conversions will have a direct impact on your business’ bottom line, you may well decide to focus your SEO efforts on your best performing keywords, depending of course on the available budget.

For further information from a specialist and experienced online marketing team why not give us a call on +44 (0)29 2076 6467 or email info@libertymarketing.co.uk

Another in a long line of great internet marketing tools from Google is Insights for Search.

It allows you to see search trends for keywords across the globe. You can filter results by country and search term and it has an indicator of news related to chosen keywords, so you can see the effect the media had on search volume.

This is the kind of toy that digital marketers and webmasters play around with for hours, but is it of any use to the small business owner?

Almost certainly. It can help you identify large areas of traffic and see if the number of people looking for what you offer is growing or shrinking.

Pretend you run a magazine and website that reviews cars but you don’t really know where to best spend your time. Using the Google Insights for Search tool will allow you to see the kind of cars that people are interested in exploring further, and therefore the ones you should dedicate more space to. For example, search on “BMW” and add “Mercedes” as a second search term, filter the results to the UK in the past 12 months. The figures show that a lot more people in the UK search for information on BMW models than they do on Mercedes. You now know that, everything else being equal, reviewing BMWs would make your site appeal to a larger audience that one that reviews Mercedes.

You can use this tool to get an idea of where a market is heading and can see if your business is keeping up. Keywords surrounding Payday loans have risen almost 300% in the past 12 months. If your business offers other types of loan then is this an area that you should consider expanding into? If your business already offers Payday loans but your enquiry levels haven’t risen then shouldn’t you fire your marketing team?

One word of caution though. As the tool is still in BETA testing phase I’d take the figures with a pinch of salt and not bet my entire marketing budget on the results shown.