SEO TIPS

By Gabriel Gervelis

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So your website is ranking well, but you know it can be better. After reading the SEO TIPS blog you understand how to research SEO Companies, find a quality firm, and hire them. You just launched a 6 month print campaign in a niche magazine and you want to find a way to monitor the Revenue generated from SEO.

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Have no fear, Google Analytics is here!

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Any reputable SEO company should have enough knowledge to provide this information, however this is how you can set up your own benchmarking.

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1) Using Google Analytics set up a goal funnel to monitor your shopping cart check out process, make the “Goal” page the “Thank you for shopping with us”.

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2) Assign a dollar value for a goal conversion (usually your average sale amount)

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3) Log into your Google Analytics account and click on the Traffic Sources tab (left navigation)

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3) Click on the search engine that you want to monitor

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4) Below the main title you will see 3 text links that read: “Show: total| paid | non-paid” and select non-paid.

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5) On the top of the content box holding the keywords and site usage information you will see two tabs a) Site Usage b) Goal Conversions

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6) Click on Goal Conversion tab

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This information will show you what keywords generated traffic that leads to goal conversions (sales). Make sure you have enough data collected before you hire the SEO Company; I recommend at least 2-3 months. This way you can monitor total goal conversions generated VIA search engines, giving you a way to use Google Analytics to Measure ROI from and SEO campaign!

By: Gabriel Gervelis

Understanding the Google Analytics dashboard

Google Analytics is a free program offered by Google that allows you to answer two main questions.

1) How are visitors coming to your website?
2) What are visitors doing once they are on your website?

Once you’ve installed the free Google Analytics program within the code of your website, if you don’t know how to use the program, there is no added value. Understanding the language of Google Analytics will empower you to get the most out of your SEO campaign.

The first thing you see after logging into Google Analytics is the dashboard. Understanding the terms used on the dashboard is key to understanding Google Analytics.

The Basic Google Analytics Glossary

Visits
The number of visitors entering your website. Keep in mind that visits are recorded by IP address, so this figure is not unique.

Page Views
The number of web pages within your web site have been viewed. This is the total amount of page views from all visitors within a given amount of time.

Pages/Visits
The number of pages the average visit generates. This is an average number.

Bounce Rate
How many visitors bounced off of your website. A bounce is a visitor that enters your website from any entry page, the exits the website with out visiting pages deeper within the site, or clicking on any links. For Example: a visitor that enters your website from a search engine, spends 35 seconds on that page, then exits with out clicking on any links is considered a bounce.

Avg. Time on Site
How long the average visitor stays on your website. You may want users to have a long time on site or short time on site depending on your goals.

% New Visits
How many of your total visitors are new visitors versus how many of your total visitors are repeat visitors.

Other Google Analytics Resources:

Mahalo Beta
This post shows how to install the free program, and other basic functions of Google Analytics.

Google Analytics Blog
This is the official Google Analytics blog, if you can’t find the information you are looking for here, you can’t find it at all!

Good luck with your SEO ventures!