Ever With The Times: A Google Analytics Update That'll Be Invaluable in SEO Improvement
Latest News and Trends • 18th May, 16
Nobody who spends more than twenty minutes on the internet needs to be told how fundamental Google is to, eh, everything. Sure, when we say we’re going to “run a search”, we could be referring to one of those search engines that aren’t Google…but we’re not. And, if we’re honest, “search engine optimisation” could, in most cases, just as easily be called “Google optimisation”; presumably the “GO” acronym’s already overused.
But in all seriousness, though some of us may like to deny it, most of our approaches to search engine optimisation is informed specifically by Google – and, consequently, it’s no surprise that Google’s fully conscious of just how important the art of the SEO is in digital marketing,
A few days ago, an announcement was made that Google Analytics – that overbearing dominator in the realm of web analytics – would be integrating metrics from its Search Console, formerly a separate app that had to be connected via configuration, into its reports.
The “Search Engine Optimisation” tab will be replaced with “Search Console”; this section, which previously only showed acquisition data – click-through ratio, impressions, and whatnot – will now also display behaviour and conversion metrics, divided into four sections titled Landing Pages, Countries, Devices and Queries (which, as the names suggest, divide the analytical metrics into landing pages of the site, countries from which the traffic originates, devices used by site visitors, and queries made by visitors, respectively).
And what, precisely, does this mean for your business’s online presence?
Well, aside from being a lot more convenient – no more fiddling with app configurations and the like – this new manifestation of Google Analytics’ SEO tool will allow site owners to easily break down the elements of their site and its views, thus sharpening their perception of their users’ activity and, by extension, how they can improve their experience.
Users can, thanks to this new presentation of metrics, now use Google Analytics to gain insight into precisely how their sites are succeeding in drawing in viewers, and precisely how these viewers are engaging with the site.
In particular, Google emphasises, site owners are now granted greater insight regarding the relationship between the click-through ratio and the user engagement of their landing pages. Put more simply, site owners are now able to pin down precisely which landing pages draw more clicks on a Google search, but which users do not interact extensively with after their initial viewing of it; and, conversely, which pages users engage with the most, but which do not draw as many clicks on Google searches. Insight such as this will allow site owners to fine-tune the site to improve both viewing rates and user experience by allowing them to tackle the issues on individual pages (in this particular case, sites with low user engagement would require a reworking of their content, while sites with low click-through ratio would require improvement of their search engine optimisation), as well as issues with the site as a whole.
Summed up? Well, it goes without saying that this little tweak to Google Analytics is only going to be useful if you, as a site owner, engage with it right – if you are properly cognisant of the implications of the metrics it presents to you, and react to them accordingly. Do that, though, and this small change – already being spoken highly off by the experts of the SEO world – could well be the key to sending your site’s viewing rates through the roof.