Google Analytics & Search Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how it affects our Social Media (Marketing) are my topics from this week’s Social Media for Business class - as well as how we can monitor our search engine and web-marketing results through the use of Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and other web based analysis tools.  

Search Engine Optimization is the art or science for getting your organization’s webpages (Home Page & Social Content) ranked high if not the highest in Google’s (and others) search results or rankings. These rankings are also referred to as SERPs or “Search Engine Results Pages.”  

I am not going to go into how SEO Optimization works in much detail here with this student blog (beyond linking to some articles), because it is a highly technical and an ongoing process for beginners like me, and probably you; where we will need to take some time to learn the use of the data and analytics, and how we develop our Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies.

The general idea is that Google has developed complex algorithms that help rank online web pages based on “Authority” (web page authority is ranked based on several factors); and the “Relevance” of your webpage(s) content (how well it matches to your potential customers “key words” used in their online search queries).

When you optimize your website/page content to achieve higher organic ranking with Google’s SERPs; your content will need to match your key product or subject categories; and you should use your potential consumer’s popular key (search) words in your website content or text, and webpage titles, or subtitles, etc. This will help Google better identify what your content and webpage is about, and it will rank your webpages accordingly to the relevance of the researcher’s keywords; which will then be shown to those searchers who are located in your local business area. 

One of the several test factors used by Google’s search engine algorithms, to assess your webpage ranking authority, is to determine how much your webpage is getting linked to other authoritative webpages and/or social media content.  The more in bound links your webpages have attracted from other authoritative web places, the more likely you will be able to increase your search rankings on Google’s SERPs. 

The art or science of SEO Optimization takes a lot of practice as well as patience; and the use of content experimentation with your social media marketing will be constantly needed. You will need to always do regular analysis of your consumer’s actions and of all your webpage activities; to measure the conversions (those who become customers), and to see how your other social media factors (goals/measures) or results are showing any progress, or are resulting in any (ROI) Return On Investment.  

Google Analytics is a free web analysis service, which measures many technical factors online, regarding data such as advertising clicks, and webpage visitors, or potential consumer’s activities; including your customer’s engagement or activities on your business pages and other social places.

 

There are many data points offered for analysis by Google Analytics (GA) to a web based business or online organization; - way too many and some way too technical to cover for this student bloggers expertise in SEO at this time. 

However my assignment today was to research some of the Google Analytics (GA) tools and its features for Business webpage analysis; as well as determine how some of them might be useful for my organization The Sabrina Keller Foundation (SKF).  

First off Google Analytics (GA) offers a customizable “Dashboard” feature which I like – where you can arrange your data points and graphs or other metrics as you feel fit, to do your own webpage and content analysis. 

One of the GA features that I feel would be useful to SKF would be the reporting tool found under the Advertising & Campaigns Performance Metric; called (SEO) Search Engine Optimization. This SEO tool- or report - will give you statistics on what are the most popular or not so popular search queries (paid or organic) your page viewers or users have used to search for your website(s) or your competitors content.

The SEO metrics will also give you the number of impressions (views), as well as (the mouse) clicks on to your website URL’s - which are seen by viewers in the Google Search Ranking Pages (SERPS). The report also gives you the average position of your page rankings (the URL)- or how it was ranked/listed in the results page; and also there is a metric telling which landing page the visitor had ended up clicking to on your websites or other social webpages.

This would be a good tool for the SKF Foundation to use to see what search terms our organic visitors are using before they find our webpage and social pages. We could use this information to better identify what our page visitors were looking for; and then make our homepage or social content even more relevant to their search queries.

In fact I have a just got a personal epiphany about this concept even without having SKF registered for the GA service at this point. As one of our social page visitors last month had made a comment that she found our Facebook Page through her search query under “college scholarships.” I could take this theory and use the GA SEO optimization report to confirm if other visitors have found our pages through a Google search using the key words “college scholarships.”  If this turned out to be a trend then I would conclude that we should make content more often that tells our visitors more about our scholarships, the recipients, and what is being offered to Girl Scout participants each year. 

Another feature-tool or report on Google Analytics which the Sabrina Keller Foundation might want to use is the Audience Data and Reporting Metrics- which is essentially a demographics report that identifies your website audiences. Data such as their ages (breakdowns) and gender, as well as an overview of your web traffics interests (with consumer “categories” or “affinities”) are highlighted. There are many other variables to be analyzed that can be broken down and formatted or reported by dates, and segmentation, etc. as you feel may be needed for your Social Marketing and SEO analysis. 

The Sabrina Keller Foundation can use the demographics information to identify our most common visitors and design content specifically for them. Or even try to figure out ways to attract other demographics we may find we would like to pursue, such as developing more business interest and sponsorship in our projects for the community. 

Geography, behavior (engagement with websites), and user technology (what are the viewer’s using to view your content), are also organized into custom data sets for analysis on GA.

There are many other types of other Google Analytics Tools (data) available to a Business or organization which can assist with improving your SEO and online marketing strategies, such as a social reporting metric, data on traffic sources, and special tools for following your consumers use of their mobile applications to name just a few of the many tools/metrics that are available.

I invite you to look at the Google Analytics resources pages for more information on how it can help your business.