Google Analytics & Creating Good Content for Your Website

August 31, 2012 No one denies the need for a company to have a website, but like every piece of marketing that a business undergoes, the website should be well planned for your business' marketing objectives and then held to those goals. That's where Google Analytics (or any of the other analytics tools, though Google is nice enough to offer it for free... for now.)

A Tool for More than Just Measuring Web Traffic

Most people with basic knowledge of Web Analytics tools know that you can track visits, page views, time on site and bounce rate all on your dashboard. These are very useful metrics for measuring the effectiveness of your website as well as any other inbound marketing efforts you may be doing. More advanced tracking can be done as well to measure conversions from your marketing, which then can be extrapolated to measure the return on investment. This article in Social Media Explorer talks about another useful way to use your Google Analytics data. With enough historical data, you are able to produce more engaging content that will increase all of your key website measurements.

Here are three ways that marketers can use Analytics to improve content and user experience on their websites:

Increase blog engagement by using Content Drilldown. Measure blog articles by pageviews or time on page and use the top performing blogs' topics as guidelines for creating fresh new articles.
Improve your landing pages by viewing the Visitors Flow and determining the most common navigation paths and exit pages to improve content and calls to action on those pages. This will help direct users to content you want them to see.
Better understand your potential customers' technology preferences in Audience sub categories, such as Demographics, Technology and Mobile, to determine ways to improve your site structure and building out a mobile site with key features for an increasingly mobile user.

Unsure how to look at your analytics data? Want a second opinion? Blue Sky Marketing is here to help.