My blog site does not have much traffic yet, so I will be
focusing less on assessing the measurement tools that I find valuable in
analyzing my blog site, and instead on which tools I think will be valuable
when there is a bit more traffic to analyze.
I will also include some insight based on the tools that I find valuable
in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the website for the accounting
firm where I work. As an accounting
firm, we are obviously not selling products; therefore do not run an ecommerce
site. We are interested in two types of
visitors: current clients and prospective clients. We want both audience segments to read
postings to our news and announcements section as well as our events
section. We also want both audience
segments to explore our thought leadership, shown through various articles and
client alerts posted on the website. We
want the prospective clients to also be able to find the information that they
need to show that we have the appropriate level of expertise for their needs.
Entry Page and Organic Search Traffic
“First page in the visit regardless of how the sessions are calculated and
should not be equated or confused with a home page or a landing page (Perley
Isaac, 2012).”
The entry page measurement is one that can be used to assess
keyword usage in content or in advertisements, if used. When combined with data found in the Organic Search Traffic Report, it is
possible to use this information to make changes to improve SEO performance and
to gain a reputation as a blogger with valuable insights:
·
“Run a new keyword analysis to find more
relevant target keywords for content pages (Gurd, 2012).”
·
“Improve the landing page to make content more
relevant to the keywords that are driving traffic and improve calls to action
(Gurd, 2012).”
·
“Remove the landing page from the search index
and 301 redirect to the most relevant webpage (Gurd, 2012).”
Site Duration
“The length of time in a session.
Calculation is typically the timestamp of the last activity in the
session minus the time stamp of the first activity of the session (Perley
Isaac, 2012).”
If users are visiting the site and leaving quickly, they are
not staying long enough to read and absorb the content you are providing on
your site. Of course, if users are
visiting the “locations” page and exiting the page rapidly, there is probably
no cause for concern. If visitors are
visiting your blog posts and leaving quickly, this could mean that the content
and keywords are poorly correlated, causing search engines to incorrectly
direct people to your site content. It
could also mean that your content is poorly written or displayed and the
visitor is bored or overwhelmed before they read much of your blog post. Use of this measurement must keep in mind the
types of pages that are being viewed and which ones are the exit pages.
Frequency and Recency
Frequency is the “number of times an action was performed by a unique
visitor (Perley Isaac, 2012).”
Recency measures the “time since a unique visitor performed a specific
action of interest to the analyst (Perley Isaac, 2012).”
These measurements give you an idea of how long it has been
since a user has visited your site and how often they visit. This report gives someone analyzing website
data the ability to measure engagement.
The amount of time between website visits is going to vary greatly based
on the website itself and the update frequency.
Obviously, one cannot expect the audience to visit frequently when
nothing has changed. One can hope to see
people visit a blog site on a fairly regular schedule. If content is updated weekly, then the
administrator should hope to see no more than a week or so between visits,
however is content is updated daily, this amount of time is not frequent
enough.
Page Views Per Visit
“The number of page views in a reporting period divided by number of visits
in the same reporting period (Perley Isaac, 2012).”
This metric, especially when shown “vs. % New Visits,” can
be valuable in showing how interested new visitors are in exploring your
website. New visitor who are intrigued
by the content they found on their entry page are likely to continue browsing
through the site, to find out more about the author or to read more
content. However, if page views per
visit is a relatively low number, especially if there is a particularly high
percentage of new visits appearing, this likely means that the user was not
intrigued enough by the content they landed on to bother reading more.
In summary
There are many different metrics and reports showing various
combinations in Google Analytics.
Determining the best ones to use for your website should be based upon
the unique goals set for your page.
References
Gurd, J. (2012, February 28). Weeding out poor performing keywords with the help of Google Analytics. Smart Insights. Retrieved June 25, 2012, from http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-optimisation-seo/seo-strategy/weeding-out-poor-performing-keywords-with-the-help-of-google-analytics/
MalleckDesign.com. (n.d.). Set goals or die. Retrieved June 24, 2012, from http://www.malleckdesign.com/blog/set-goals-or-die
Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, West Virginia University (2012). Lesson 2: Basic Web Analytics, Retrieved May 21, 2012, from the WVU eCampus website: https://ecampus.wvu.edu
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