Use Analytics to Increase Your ROI by Charles Lewis #361

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I'm not Chris Burris, but I am, in fact, Daniel Gildersleeve, a.k.a. that guy from podcast number 341, also known as your content results specialist. Awesome. My name is Charles Lewis, your client results advocate. Welcome to today's edition of the podcast. This is number podcast 361. Boom, 361. And, of course, we do have a tip from our last podcast, and that tip is take advantage of easy, relevant link building opportunities. Look, take advantage of your easy, relevant link building opportunities. So whatever industry you're in, find the corresponding manufacturer sites where you can link to that are relevant to your business. They're easy, easy hanging loaf fruit, and they definitely work. Boom. We are filmed live here in Houston, Texas, and we are your friendly neighborhood Top Position Snatchers. Our mantra has not changed, even though Chris is not there. And still, do not be a douche. Don't be a douche. It's not a good look at all. We've got a great article today. Got a great article. I'm so proud about this article because I spent so much time inside analytics. Today's article is seven Google analytic reports to help understand your web traffic. This article was penned by yours truly. So we'll dig right into it and see what my day-to-day activities typically look like and how these reports can help you. It's going to be a great article. And please don't forget to connect with us online. You have made us the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes, so thank you for that. Appreciate it. But if you're new and looking to find us online, you can go to facebook.com slash ewebresults. YouTube.com slash ewebresults. Twitter.com slash ewebresults. Instagram.com slash ewebresults. LinkedIn.com slash company slash ewebresults. Those will all take you somewhere where you can shiko us. Yes, please shiko us. A shiko is an ewebresults branded term for social engagement. It stands for shares, likes, and follows. Yes, please do that. Do we have any AlgoCat today? No AlgoCat today. No

AlgoCat today. All right, but I do think we've got some news for you. Yeah, we've got some news. You go first. All right, well, the first news is Pinterest hires a head of Google Senior Image Search. That is none other than Randy Keller. The company announced the hiring of Randy, who until last month was the senior engineer with Google Image Search. I think he'd been there about 10 years. 10 years, yeah. And, yeah, he was there for roughly a decade and is part of the Image Search quality team. It'll be interesting to see where he goes with Pinterest, what new features they build into it. What type of image search features, because Pinterest is really kind of becoming that. Like, you know, they never really was. In social network, they've always been about scrapbooks and images and things like that. They literally may become the new image search in general. And I could totally see them going direction with that kind of hire, for sure. All right. Our next bit of news is also from Google. Google's bringing back emojis in the search results for relevant queries. Yeah, so I only saw a couple of emojis actually in search results, but I totally get it. Matter of fact, if you do searches for, like, Pizza Hut, back then that pizza emoji would show in the search results for them. And now they don't show anymore, so maybe that type of stuff will come back. So that's pretty cool. I got one piece of news also. So Google is implementing a new anti-piracy code in the search results by June 1st. That's, like, in a few months. So what you want to do is come along, they say, because Google is finalizing an agreement to implement the anti-piracy code in its results. And the code would effectively eliminate the presence of links to copyright infringing material in the search. So there's anybody out there searching for pirated albums and things like that, artwork, games, movies, things like that. Those links, those torrents, they just won't show

in the Google search results no more. Or they're doing some things about that. So that's what's up. Ain't nothing worse than getting bootlegged. Yep. All right. For you regular listeners out there, we will be skipping this next section because we did get enough shikos. And we got two reviews. Our first review is from none other than Ken Davidson at Empire Industries. And, of course, it is five stars. Punching the face of Ken. That's what's up. Kevin. Sorry, Kevin. After working with Chris for just a short time, it is obvious that he knows web design and SEO management. I guess that is why he has the most watched podcast in the industry. I will be doing business with eWeb results very soon. And I recommend you do, too. Punch in the face to you, Kevin. Thank you very much. Punch in the face, Kevin. Appreciate you, man. Catch you at BEF next week. And I got a punch in the face also. This actually review comes from a guy on iTunes. This review is also five stars. This is from Ricky G. Butts. Oh, Ricky. Yeah, Ricky G. Ricky G. Butts. Hey, I had a good time laughing at your name today. But appreciate the review, man. He says, I want to punch Chris and Charles in the face for real. These guys are probably my favorite podcast in regards to marketing and design. There's enough comical substance not to make the podcast monotonous and bland. The potatoes also break up the monotony, especially for me as I listen to a number of podcasts. I love the fact that there's a podcast that doesn't take itself too seriously, but still manages to be one of the most useful and knowledgeable podcasts you can find. Thanks, guys. Ricky G. Butts, dude. Punch in the face to you, man. Thanks so much. I'm glad you're tuning in. Hit us up, man. I'll be interested in knowing what you're working on, how that's helped, how it hasn't helped, and so many other podcasts you're checking out. Always good to

stay up on the competition. But, again, punch in the face to you so much. All right. That is the potatoes of our podcast. So now it is time to dig into that meat. So punch in the face to Charles Lewis, a.k.a. the SEO rapper, a.k.a. the poetic prophet, a.k.a. the guy standing next to me, for publishing this post on the importance of Google Analytics called 7 Google Analytics Reports That Will Increase Your ROI. So I posted this article on our blog because I spend so much of my time inside Google Analytics. Every client of ours get what we call a monthly results call. And the purpose of this call is to go through their analytics, evaluate their leads, figure out where this traffic is coming from, how it's converting, how can we make it better. And the only way you can do that is if you're familiar with how the people are engaging on your site. So one thing I started off with was understanding that the data in Google Analytics provides is essential to making the right marketing decisions. And it is. If you don't know how your traffic is engaging, what pages they're looking at, what pages are ranking, which pages are not, then you won't necessarily know where you should be putting your efforts in that. But I also say this before getting started with Google Analytics, make sure that your account is configured correctly. I say that because this is a challenge we see time and time again with new clients who come in. They have Google Analytics. It's not quite set up. And so you want to make sure that it's synced with your search console. Make sure that the Webmaster tool, your search console is synced with your Google Analytics. You want to make sure that your AdWords is also synced with Google Analytics. So that way, if you're doing any paid ads, you want that data, that statistical data inside Google Analytics. You want to identify what your website objectives and goals are so you can configure those

in Analytics also. So that way you can know how many people actually complete the goals that you want them to do. So let's get into the seven reasons. My favorite seven reports in Analytics that you can use to help increase your ROI. The first one is the All Traffic Report, Google Analytics All Traffic Report. And now this report is one I frequently visit. It allowed me to understand which sources are sending the most traffic. And so when you look at the All Traffic Report, it's going to tell you that you had 2,000 visits and 1,000 came from Google. 500 came directly. 150 came from Yahoo. Some came from Yelp. Some came from Bing. Some came from Bing ads. You'll know all this information. And that's the information you need to know. So not only that, it'll also tell you what that traffic did, right? What type of engagement all of this traffic had, how much time they spent, which pages they looked out. Did they convert, right? Because at the end of the day, that's the most important number. Did these people from Google, Bing, Yahoo, or whatever the traffic source was, did they eventually complete a form or make a phone call? And you won't know that if you're not getting familiar with the All Traffic Report. Now, there's so many reports in Google, right? And it's hard to find all of these reports. Like, there's different places you can go to. So where can they find the All Traffic Report? So this is not your dashboard. This is not where Google sends you when you open up analytics. That overview you get is everyone on your website from any place possible. They might be in Pakistan. They might be a robot. They might be internal in your office. Like, they could be anywhere. So I'm going to tell you how to find this report. On the left sidebar of Google Analytics, there's several different fields to choose from. And this one is under acquisition. That's how people are finding you, where they're coming

from. Under acquisition, you're going to go to All Traffic. And then from there, you're going to go to Source or Medium. All of these ones, Google, Bing, Yahoo, those are sources. And you want to see where they're coming from. Definitely. Definitely. So number two. Number two. The second report that I frequent is the Google Analytics Device Overview. Device Overview. Like, what type of device is your traffic accessing your site on? I say the Device Overview Report is the fastest way to determine how users are accessing your site. So when doing internet marketing, it's important to know which device types people are using and, more importantly, how they engage with your site. Right? So this is extremely important. Like, for example, we have a local donut shop here in Houston, and 80% of its traffic is all mobile. Right? And so it's good for us to know that the bulk of its traffic is hitting its site from mobile devices from all these different places. And we had another guy who does custom dashboards and app development. Like, 80% of his traffic is all desktop. Right? And so for us, we understand that the people who access the site are likely in an office environment. They're using a desktop or a laptop device. And so therefore, we present the content and our messaging differently. Understanding the device that your website visitors is using is so important, especially when you have your goals in place and set up. Then you can find out information like people on mobile devices convert faster than those on desktop devices. Good information to have. Especially if you realize that most of your visitors are mobile, then you should stop optimizing for desktop. Right? You just need to know that. Now, one of the things you've probably heard on this podcast from Chris and Charles many times is do not fall for the myth of mobile-first marketing. Exactly. Mobile-first marketing says that you should always do a design for your mobile customers because you're going to have more mobile customers. And what

we're trying to say is, nope, look at the data. Look at your data. Make an educated decision. And this report here, the device overview report, is going to tell you whether your visitors are on desktop or mobile. It's going to tell you if they're on tablet devices also. And just like the our traffic report, this will also tell you how much time they spent on your site on that device. You'll get information like your desktop visitors spend three or four minutes looking at multiple pages. Meanwhile, your mobile visits only spend a minute and a half, which is okay because the mobile experience should be faster, should be a little bit easier. Daniel, where can they find the device overview report? All right. Again, to find this report, go to that left sidebar in Google Analytics. Look for audience. Under that, you're going to find the mobile dropdown. And under that, you're going to click overview. Audience mobile overview. Awesome. My third favorite Google Analytics report is the new versus returning report. Like, it's really comparing how many new visitors you have to how many return visitors you have within the same time period. I'm going to say that the new versus return report is a great way to analyze how new website visitors engage compared to the return website visitors. If your sales process requires multiple steps and multiple contact points, understanding how your return visitors respond is extremely important. Look, there's so much value in understanding that the actions your new visitors take compared to the actions your return visitors take. If your new visitors land on site have a really high bounce rate, don't engage much, and don't convert well, but your return visitors have a really low bounce rate, engage extremely well, and convert at a high rate, then it's up to you to do the things necessary to generate more return visitors. You may want to be more active socially. You may want to implement an email campaign. You may want to activate some remarketing ads or something like that that

will bring in more return visitors. Now, on the flip side of that, maybe your new visitors are engaging really, really well. They're converting really, really fast. Then you should probably simplify your sales process so you can capture their lead information a lot faster because your return visitors are likely pretty low. What I realize is that it's kind of based off the industry and the type of service you provide. If you're selling a really cheap product or that's plentiful for everyone, you won't have many return visitors because they're price shopping, they're window shopping. But if you provide a service that comes with a certain set of value, your sales process is a little bit longer, then you may have plenty of return visitors and you want to take advantage of that. And I'll say this, know your buying cycle because on analytics, you control the time period which you are looking at. If you know that customers buy your products every three months and you want to know who's returning, then set your analytics for three, four, five months to see if people are coming back when they need to come back. Definitely. And I'll also give you something of a pro tip. If you want to get a little more advanced, you can segment this into paid traffic and organic traffic. It's very important to know if those paid visitors are coming back. Yep. And what you'll usually find is that, you know, especially, I was talking to Chris about this the other day, how much attribution we're dealing with lately. We're seeing it more and more with our clients where a client originally clicked on a paid ad and then visited your site. And because we had an audience there, they ended up on our remarketing list and a week later clicked the remarketing ad, which is another paid click, and came back to the site. And this time they downloaded a newsletter and then they left, but they were able to just come back directly to the site because they got on our

email list. And so then they eventually converted. And so this person came through two paid clicks and an email click to finally give us the conversion. Who do you really attribute? That's why they call it attribution. Who do you attribute that of the original lead source to? If you don't have analytics in place to kind of understand that data, then you won't know. You may go saying, oh, my, my, my email campaign did it. And you put all these resources into your email campaign. But if it wasn't for that paid click and that getting them on your remarketing list, then they would have never downloaded the email. Right. So you could say, oh, it was my paid click that did it. Huh? Maybe they didn't convert the first two paid clicks. It was the email conversion that got them back to the site and made them convert. And so the key is not necessarily debating over that data. It's just understanding that data. And you can do that with Google Analytics. And you can only do that if you segment that data, which is an advanced analytics technique. Anyways, you can find this new versus returning report under audience. Then select behavior. Then new versus returning. That's audience, behavior, new versus returning. Awesome. My fourth favorite Google analytic report is the is the channel report. Like the channel report. What's the channel report? Well, the channel report is a great overview of which marketing channels are performing the best and which ones aren't. Right. So not traffic sources like Google organic. And then Google paid and being organic and being paid. And then Yelp. And then, you know, Twitter or Facebook. Those are different profiles. Those are those are marketing. And so we're not necessarily talking about those type of channels. Instead, I'm talking about the channels like your referral traffic is a type of channel or your social traffic in general is a type of channel. Your paid search traffic is a type of channel is a paid channel is a social channel. And

so understanding which channels are working for you is a great way to figure out where you should invest resources. If you realize that that all of your paid strategies are or have really high site engagement and low conversions. But you realize your social channels have really low site engagement, but they convert really, really well. Then you understand what you need to do. You also understand that your paid people are probably researching and these social people are already in a personal decision. And so you can change your call to actions. You can make the right adjustments based off of which channel is performing the best. And remember, you're only going to be able to make that decision is if you complete your analytics goals. Yeah. Without goals set up in analytics, you're not going to see the conversion rate. And you might not know the difference except volume of traffic. You might know you have more organic than paid or vice versa. But you need those goals to find out what they're doing. Let's talk about goals for a minute, because we've seen this before. I've inherited plenty of people's existing analytic accounts. And I'll say make your goals relevant. Make them goals that actually report back to ROI. Like time on site is a goal I've been seeing a lot lately from new clients we get. And I'm not entirely sure why that's a goal. Unless you make money by having people stay on this page the longest, then time on site is really one of those kind of subpar goals that just makes the numbers look good. Because once everybody hits a certain threshold, the goal is completed. I would encourage you to set some real goals. So maybe you want goals that are consistent with your call to action. Okay, so maybe if your action is called and you're using a tracking number, then you set up an event as a goal. And so that way that can be tracked. Or maybe you've got a contact form you want somebody to fill out.

And so they land on a thank you page. You set that thank you page as a goal. And the only way they can get to that thank you page is if they fill out the contact form. Or maybe you're offering a free download through MailChimp or Constant Contact or whatever your email program is. There's kind of a tripwire to get people on your email list. Well, once they subscribe and they land on this thank you for subscribing page, we tell analytics that that page is a goal. And so that way when we look at the data, we can tell which traffic sources or which channels even engage the most and which goal that they need to. You may learn that your social channels tend to download your newsletter, but your paid channels tend to fill out the contact form. And your direct channels make calls. That's good information to know. But if your goals are set up, if your analytics isn't configured correctly, then you just won't have that data. Absolutely. Goals should be related to revenue. Video views, making it to a certain page on your website. These should not be goals. Not in AdWords. Not in analytics. One little tip I want to make is phone calls. Do not set every phone call to be a goal. Yeah. 10-second phone call, no. We sort of use 30 seconds as a good margin. Buffering it. I was having a conversation with one of our clients the other day, and we found out by studying his phone calls, and we use call tracking to see what's going on in these calls, that every phone call over 60 seconds was a legitimate phone call for someone interested in his service. And every phone call under 60 seconds was either a hang-up on an after-hours voicemail system or someone hanging out in the main menu trying to figure out where they're going. So find out where that is in your business and set your phone call goals accordingly. Yeah, so a page visit could be a goal.

It could be a goal if that page visit generates income. So, for example, we have clients who offer loans, right? And one of the main call to actions on that site is get pre-qualified. And on the pre-qualified page, after you click the pre-qualified button, there's a page where you can download applications. And so I am tracking how many people click the link and make it to the get pre-qualified page because that's the start of the sales process. Now, in that kind of case, yes, definitely track the page view as a goal. But don't set, like Daniel said, the amount of time spent on this page as a goal or every kind of random page on your site. Those aren't necessarily goals at all. All right, to find this report, the channel report, you're going to go to acquisition, then all traffic, then channels. That's acquisition, all traffic, and channels. So remember, the all traffic report was all traffic by source medium under acquisition. This one is all traffic by channels in the same acquisition section. So number five, my number fifth favorite Google Analytics report is the Google Analytics Pages report. We're just talking about pages. I love the Pages report. The Pages report identifies the most visited pages on your site. You can view a secondary dimension if you want and see the traffic source of those pages. Knowing which website pages get the most interaction and the engagement on those pages can help you make decisions about new pages to add, content to update, and overall website interest. Look, it's important to know which pages on your site get the most activity, how they get visited, how long people stay on them. That way, you can go back and revisit what the content is about on this page. How can it be better? Or how is it worse? Do we need to scrap this page? Can we improve it? Do we need to merge multiple pages that have similar content? And all of this and more data you can find on the Pages

report. And if you don't know how people are interacting on your pages, then you can't make the changes. Maybe you have a great product. Maybe you spent a lot of time writing a great blog post and it has, you know, a thousand words on it. You spent all this time creating all these images, yet this page has a high bounce rate, right? And then maybe you have another page that doesn't have all the glitz and glamour of your blog page, but it has a really low bounce rate and high engagement of people converting. Well, then you, if you're not looking at the data, you would think that your blog page is the one generating the traffic and the leads and converting when it's actually this other page that you didn't apply that many resources on. And so with this type of data, you can go back and make the page adjustments. And so now the long page kind of resembles the shorter page that's converting more. And since the longer page was getting more traffic, it'll begin to convert better than the other page. The point I'm making is if you're not aware of which pages are getting what type of engagement from what type of source, then you won't be able to move forward and make the right type of changes on those pages. And here's a tip. This is a conversation that's been a very high priority this week. If one of your pages that is getting a lot of traffic is your FAQ page, your frequently asked questions. That's why the way you should have one of those. You need to ask yourself, what information are people hunting for and how can I get that information to them? Does it need its own page? Does it need its own tab? So if FAQ is ranking really high, try and figure out why that is and give the people what they want. Definitely. Definitely. Number six. Oh, wait. How can they find the pages report? On the left hand sidebar of Google Analytics,

you're going to find behavior, site content in all pages. Again, that's behavior, site content, all pages. Awesome. Awesome. My sixth favorite Google Analytics report is the locations report. I love the location report because it can include the entire world or a selected country or just a state or even your city. And if you provide service in multiple areas, this report will help you identify which area is visiting your website the most. This is important, ladies and gentlemen, especially if you have multiple locations in general. Across the city, north side, south side, east side, west side, then you want to know what part of town or what communities are visiting your site and how long are they visiting your site? Maybe you're thinking about opening up a new location, right? And so you're getting traffic from places where you currently don't have a location. If you get a lot of engagement and conversions from a location where you don't have a physical spot, that could be an indicator that that may be where you want to open up at. The point is understanding where these people come from and frankly, what time you may notice that your west coast people tend to come later in the day or east coast people come early in the morning based off of time zones and things like that. And then you can kind of structure your marketing where you start sending out tweets and email blast around these certain times because you understand where these people are coming from. More importantly, if you tie that into the previous report, we talked about your device overview or really any other ones, you can segment that data. It's awesome to know how many devices, how many mobile users you have from a certain area compared to how many desktop users you have from a different kind of area. Good information to know which area uses Bing and Google versus which area is finding you on social. Just good information to know. And if you're not tracking your locations, like where this

traffic is coming from, then you won't know that information. And remember, this report here defaults to country. If you're not interested in traffic from multiple countries, you need to click cities to make sense of this report. And you can find this report by going to audience, geo, and location. That's audience, geo, location. My last report, we're talking about the seven Google analytic reports to help you understand your web traffic. My last one is the demographic report, right? You got to make sure you have this enabled up front or you won't even have that data. But the demographic report outlines the types of visitors the website gets. So the types of visitors, not the device types, but the types of visitors that the website gets. So understanding the gender and age of your website visitors can help you convey your message with the right tone to the right audience, right? You need to understand, um, is your site being visited by, by baby boomers or Gen Xers or Gen Yers or millennials? Are they male? Are they female? Are they between this age range or that age range? Like if you have that data, then you can present your content the right way. For example, if your site is being visited by predominantly baby boomers, then a text heavy site loaded with bullet points and random images will probably work because that's how they're used to engaging in this content. However, your website's being viewed by millennials, then you better have video and bullet points because that's about the length of their attention span. And so the key is you have to understand the engagement you have. Maybe your site is predominantly female visitors, but you have this hardcore dark and earth tones and straight lines. And you wonder why your site's not getting engagement. Maybe you should go with some curved lines, go with some, uh, uh, spring colors, some curved edges, lighten it up, make it a little more female friendly because that's the bulk of your audience. And if you don't understand what

your demographic is, then you can't really make the change. And so it's necessary that this report is so necessary to understand how you visit. Maybe, maybe you're e-commerce and you're selling products, right? This is a good way to know that if bulk of your visitors are millennials or gen Xers, then you need to have multiple methods of payment, preferably PayPal or some stuff that they can do digitally. But if the bulk of your audience is a little bit older, uh, then, then, you know, your standard e-commerce will probably be fine because that's what they're accustomed to. And so the point is use the data, use this data that, that, that the demographic report provides so you can customize your site to tailor to your audience. Right. This report is really where traditional marketing meets online marketing, where brand management comes in. We're understanding demographics. If you don't understand who's buying your things, talk to the people who bought them, ask them what they like, ask them what other things they buy. Where can we find the demographic report? The demographic report. Again, Charles said it in the beginning, you need to enable this report. It is not available by default. It does not go back in time. Uh, you got to check the box that says enable this report or it just won't collect data. Right. And you can find this under audience demographics overview. Again, that's audience demographics and overview. So I want to close with this, man. Uh, without understanding, without proper understanding of your internet marketing performance, you will never be able to maximize your return on investment here. If you don't know what you're doing and what's working, then you can't maximize it. You'll find yourself spending money on, on, on banner ads when you should have been investing in search network, or you'll find yourself rolling out other type of campaigns when you should have been doing social media, or you'll find yourself rebuilding a total mobile friendly site when bulk of your traffic is desktop. The point is understanding

your data will help you make the right decisions and the right choices that'll generate the most ROI for your website. This is the beauty of online marketing. This is the game changer, knowing how people are interacting. This is what magazines and TV and movies could never achieve. And if you're not using analytics, you're not going to get this information. Now, uh, let me close with this. Anybody who may be tuned in, listening or watching right now, uh, maybe you have a website, right? And you probably even have analytics on this site, but you don't know what that data looks like you, when you log in, it's all charts and numbers and Greek to you, hit us up, go to ewebresults.com, click the free web analysis. Chris will get in contact with you. We'll be glad to go through that data and help you understand what's going on on your site. All right. And don't forget if you're interested in growing your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet, the internet call ewebresults at 713-592-6724 for increased revenue in your business. Until next time, I am Daniel Gildersleeve. I'm Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now. Yo. SEO Podcast 361. Chris had to leave, so me and Daniel getting it done. Today we talk about traffic. Can you handle it? My best way to track traffic is Google Analytics. Yeah, let's go. SEO Podcast 361. Boom.