A Quick Guide to Google Analytics: SEO for Beginners

SEO (search engine optimization) is important for a variety of reasons, including brand awareness and online presence. More importantly, SEO makes your company’s website more visible to potential customers and targeted audiences. SEO is compromised of a few essential elements: site content, local SEO, keywords, and off-page SEO. These elements all play a role in how you gain clicks and visitors beginning from the initial search engine. Understanding these roles is vital for content creation, social media, and other forms of content marketing.

If you’ve been in the digital marketing industry for a while, it’s likely that you’ve heard of Google Analytics. Google Analytics is an incredible tool for analyzing data that will later be used for SEO strategy. But before we dive into a beginner’s guide of Google Analytics, there’s another platform that you would be wise to utilize: LinkGraph.

LinkGraph has created an online guide to SEO on-page content optimization. LinkGraph’s SEO ebook covers the best practices for applying content optimization: keyword research, optimizing web pages, using tools such as Google Analytics (more on this star tool below) to monitor your optimization, how to build and define your SEO content, and so much more. LinkGraph’s ultimate guide will show you the importance of content, search engine optimization, and how to use organic search to bring your target audience to the great content your website has to offer. This comprehensive guide is a great resource to use for reference while creating your SEO strategy.

Back to Google Analytics! Here is a beginner’s guide on learning about this essential SEO tool:

So, what exactly does it do?

Google Analytics is a free service that provides in-depth analytics of details surrounding the visitors, clicks, and attention your website is gaining. These details include:

• How long people are staying on your website
• Most viewed pages
• What activity is being done on your website (links clicked, tabs opened, comments and/or likes, etc.)

These valuable insights act as a definitive guide while planning your search engine optimization strategy.

How is it so convenient?

Let’s be honest…Google has always been a convenient tool. There are several great reasons to utilize this additional service of theirs:

• Automatic collection, configuration, processing, and reporting of data. How great is it that Google Analytics does all the work for you?
• Simple integration with other platforms (such as Google AdWords and Google Search Console). Having a tool that plays well with all of your devices is definitely a win.
• Checks the performance of all of your social media platforms to determine what’s working and what’s not. Imagine how efficient you and your team can become when you understand those factors better.
• Keeps you on track for achieving your business goals. It’s always nice to receive accountability (even if it’s from software).

On top of all those fantastic reasons, Google Analytics is also free. All of those features for no cost? You must take advantage of this tool if you’re looking to boost your SEO.

How to get started:

For a tool that does a lot of complex work, getting started is pretty simple!

You can find the full guide on how to get started here, but here’s a quick breakdown:

• Create/Sign in to your Analytics account
• Set up a property
• Set up a reporting view for your property
• Add a tracking code to your website that so that your property can collect the analytics.

And there you go! Google Analytics also provides guided tours, so after you’ve played around with the tool for a bit, you’ll become familiar with how this resource can help you improve your digital marketing.