Google Analytics Insights
- jeanna55
- 4 minutes ago
- 2 min read
If you are using a high-level analytics platform like Semrush or Ahrefs, you are getting data that goes far beyond Google Analytics and Google Search Console, but no matter where you are getting your site performance data, it is more than just numbers i.e. “We had more site visitors this week than last week.” Once you get comfortable with analytics and you’ve had some experience mining this data, you’ll uncover deeper, more useful insights such as these:
1. A traffic drop by itself isn’t necessary bad. For example, if Sessions and New Sessions are down, but Pages/Sessions, Engagement Rate, and Average Session Duration are up—this means that even though traffic is down, traffic quality is up—this is actually what you want to shoot for.
2. The Organic traffic statistic is usually solid, but Direct and even Referral traffic can be significantly affected by one or more toxic backlinks-anything that drives spam traffic to your website. This happens frequently. So, if only Direct traffic is up and it’s up significantly, it’s probably spam-related.
3. When comparing week-over-week traffic, factor in holidays—you can’t compare a five-day work week to a four-day work week.
4. When comparing month-over-month traffic, it’s not just how many days were in each month, also check to see how many weekends (and holidays) were in each month. It’s quite likely that one of those months will have had five weekends—meaning almost no traffic for an extra 2 days that month. Also, the first 2 weeks of August and the last 2 weeks of December are big vacation periods—expect traffic to be down.
5. Don’t let the donut graphics (i.e. Top Traffic Channels by Sessions and New Vs. Returning Visitors) fool you. Always look at the actual #s next to the donuts, instead. The donuts by themselves are misleading.
6. Everyone loves to see a high “New Visitor” stat, but the focus should be on Returning Visitors—i.e. quality over quantity.
7. While marketers have considerable control over most of the stats in analytics reports, there are some areas, such as a Google algorithm update and pages with 404 errors, that can have a profound effect on traffic and for which marketing has no control.
8. Not everyone plays by the rules. If you are benchmarking your website against a competitor’s and you notice that their traffic is climbing dramatically without ads, they are probably paying for backlinks.
9. The Google Analytics Metrics Chart is often overlooked, but it’s a great way to pick up on unusual traffic spikes—especially if you set it for 6 months.
Finally, be sure to log every day that your website was down for any reason and keep that data for at least a year. You think you’ll remember in a few months when you are looking at annual site data, but you won’t.
For a no cost discussion of your situation and how we can leverage metrics-based marketing to grow your business call 630-363-8081 or email jeanna@smartprcommunications.com.
