What are website traffic analytics?

Website traffic analytics are software programs that allow you to visualise how much traffic a website receives and how people interact with it. The most widely used analytics tool is Google Analytics. This is free software provided by Google which can link to a host of other systems.

How to use Google Analytics?

First analytics needs to be installed in the code of the pages of your site. You can find out how to do that here. A small piece of code is added to each page allowing your site to send the data back to Google. A Google Analytics account is created for your website where you can log in to view this data.

What kinds of things can Google Analytics show you?

It can show you how much traffic you receive from different sources on the web as well as which pages users land on and how long they spend on each page. It can also show you how many people leave your site fairly soon after reaching (bounce rate, engagement rate) it and which pages they exit on.

What elevates this information is conversion tracking, which can tell you which traffic sources your sales and enquiries are coming from.

What are conversions?

When a user buys a product or completes an enquiry form this is counted as a conversion. There are other types too but these are the most common. Tracking conversions makes it possible to analyse your data and see which traffic sources are responsible for your sales or enquiries.

Why is this the most important part of SEO reporting?

Conversion data is so important because it can show for example, whether your sales are coming from Facebook or Google. It can show you which pages on your site are directly leading to more sales. Let's say your business has one advert on a news website and another ad in Google. By looking at Analytics we can quickly see which of the sites traffic results in sales or enquiries. Then you can work out whether the cost of that traffic source is worth it or not.

It can quickly become apparent that not all traffic sources are equal. Some can be a waste of resources while others can help to grow your business.

With this information it becomes possible to focus on improving and increasing the traffic, rankings and content that's bringing in sales.

We don't just provide raw Google Analytics reports

If you have ever used Google Analytics you will know that it contains a huge amount of data about your sites traffic. Knowing what information is and isn't important is key to getting any meaningful benefit out of it.

We use analytics data to pull out the pertinent data to produce meaningful, actionable SEO reports. We produce a monthly spreadsheet showing historical traffic, ranking and conversion data plus a PDF overview of how the campaigns going. The historical data can be used to compare your company's progress year on year.

Example of a clients monthly SEO reports

Heat Mapping

Analytics can tell you a lot about what content and pages are helping to drive traffic. Heat mapping is another incredibly useful tool. When combined with analytics it can provide some valuable insights as to which parts of the page are getting the most attention from users.

This allows us to see how users use the site, then create new versions of that page and A/B test them until we end up with a page that's easier to use. Doing this can lead to higher user retention and more conversions.

Below is an example of a page that was analysed and improved to better guide users to the most popular products. Note the bright spots where user interaction is highest.

Client heat map example

Data really can shine a light on what is and isn't working on a website and our SEO and heat map reports helps us to continually improve a sites layout and content until it performs better than ever.

If you'd like us to have a look at your sites performance get in touch below.

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