In this era of SEO and Digital Marketing, Your business is always under threat of being unable to maintain that online presence. For starters, it might be intimidating with so many sub-tools and services given. Google Analytics might be that one important weapon on your SEO arsenal going towards 2021. Well, everything starts with a wander and you can easily learn the basics. To dive deeper into it there is some fantastic tutorial with a complete professional demonstration of GA.
Although there have been so many tools out there doing a similar job. Software like Matomo, Woopra, FoxMetrics, and Chartbeat do some pretty great stuff but if you are looking for a complete organizer for a proper SEO, Google Analytics is the one at the top. It is never too late to learn and improve your web performance. Here is an outline of a guide even if you have never used or heard of Google analytics before.
What Is Google Analytics (GA)?
Google Analytics, is an analytical tool providing users with an in-depth look at your website or web app performance. In simpler terms, it is a tracker keeping your progress and performance that your website in real-time and offers you a visualization that is easy for anyone to understand. It integrates with the major Google marketing and Ad platforms which helps for anyone using multiple Google plugins and tools in their websites.
GA is very data-driven. For anyone investing their time to learn and do SEO, it can be extremely helpful. Similarly, professionals with the ability to analyze and act on the data provided by Google analytics can do a lot using it. A certain drawback or problem for many beginners is that GA might take some time to set up, and a bit more to learn, maintain, implement, and use. However, the marketing analysis options and amount of data given here for you to work with is more than others right now.
The paid version of GA and its latest price
Google Analytics has both paid and free versions available in the market. Both with their benefits, one can choose among them for the best fit for your business. The paid version of GA is called Analytics 360. For beginners and small businesses, the free version will more likely be enough with the features it has. However, Analytics 360 is highly recommended for Enterprise business as even small things can have a big impact at this level.
Analytics 360 is an expensive service from Google as it includes so much more than analytics. The Plan starts from 150,000/per year. It becomes obvious the worth of Google Analytics 360 providing you the raw data rather than the sample ones. For a big organization, valuable insights here are proven to be worth years of studies and analytics.
Comparison between the free and paid version
Paid Version always provides much more than the free options. It couldn’t be clearer than with Google Analytics. Here are the major points of comparison between these two: –
* Standard GA has a data volume capacity of 10 million hits per month. That goes up to 20 billion in the paid analytics.
* Both have data Export and Tracking API.
* Maximum Data rows peaks at 50,000 rows for general and its 3 million rows for 360.
* Ten times more custom Dimension and Metrics available for the premium users of GA.
* Data Freshness can be over 24 hours while fresh data is fed every hour in the paid version.
* You have the opportunity to own your data which was very limited in the unpaid Google Analytics.
* The social media, mobile, and video sections are almost similar in both versions.
* More and accurate Analysis tools are available for Google Analytics 360 users.
Analytics 360 completely outs the general version with support and you are more likely to pay more for these. Some of them are:-
* Dedicated Account Manager
* Discovery/Needs Analysis
* Implementation Audit
* Implementation Support
* Training from Google Experts
* 24×7 Emergency Support
* Friendly, Responsive Support
* Digital Measurement Strategy
* Analytics Maturity Assessment
* Data Integration Services
* Reporting Configuration
* Analyst Consulting Services
* Search Marketing Services
* Conversion Consulting Services
* Technology Recommendations
Set up Google Analytics with a stepwise guide to using it
To set up GA follow our stepwise guide below: –
1. Set up a Google Account. It doesn’t have to be new. i.e., you must possess a registered Google account email and password.
2. Now you have created your Google account, you have to register for Google analytics. Add the URL, company name, and industry of the website you want to track next.
3. In this step you have to add a view to your property. Name and select different types of views. After filling some other boxes you are good to go. Also, remember you can add a max of 25 views to a property in Google Analytics.
4. Step 3 will allow you access to a unique ID (for tracking) and global site tag marking the successful creation of your property. It is a necessary code you have to add to each page for measuring different visits. The data available to GA is due to this ID.
5. Now, paste this global site tag on the <head> tag of each page you plan in measuring. You can select the category of your site here for more precise data collection.
6. Return to your Google Analytics portal and check if the code is working. After verification, you are pretty good to use GA.
(Note* you are not required to add the GA code to every page of your website. As long as your other pages or even new page follows the same header module GA analyses that page. In case you have multiple page types, you have to copy the code and paste it to each header modules.)
Google Analytics Reports
The reports provided by Google Analytics is one of the most important outputs from all the hassle that you have been through. Take a look at the left-hand sidebar and you can find every type of report here. It could be overwhelming in the beginning but you can view and analyze one report at a time and focus on the results. Here are the generic reports provided by Google Analytics.
1. Real-time reports
It gives you real-time data i.e., what is going on your website at the moment. You can capitalize on a new post if it is doing great due to some reasons too.
2. Audience report
It gives you a very high-level overview of the type of Audience visiting your website. This is very important to know how you’re trending overall. Know the demographics of active users, lifetime value, and cohort analysis from this report as well. We suggest you check this report at least once a day.
3. Acquisition Report
The acquisition report simply breaks down the traffic received by your website. These are categorized by Organic, direct, social, email, referred, paid search, affiliate, and other sources. It provides you insights into which subset of traffic to work most on.
4. Behavior Report
It is the report that you are more likely to spend the most time on. It provides information on the Site Content, Speed, content Drilldown, landing-exit pages, site search, search terms, and much other stuff.
5. Conversions
As the name suggests conversion report shows the rate of objectives completed by the visitors visiting the site. For example, buyers buying stuff on an e-commerce site. It shows how your website is doing goal-wise across the board.
Advantages of using Google Analytics
* The general version is free of cost. The valuable output comes without any charges and a little effort.
* On good hands, this can be a game-changer for your business.
* Data Visualization helps you to understand the performance of your website easily understandable.
* Reporting allows you to draw meaningful conclusions. The data here will make sense.
* Real-time data to compare metrics and check performance on a different basis.
* You can pinpoint your target audience better.
* You can know the behavior and interests of the website visitors and make better changes in the upcoming days.
* It helps your website with better technology. SEO is helped a lot through Google analytics.
Now you’re ready to track
With all these done and dusted you are ready to track. An extra tip for you will be to join the digital marketing community in social media for updates and more queries arising from Google analytics. You can come back to this site again if the data analysis and SEO tend to get more sophisticated.