Five Ways You Can Get More From Analytics

I don’t know about you, but when I first learned about Google Analytics, I sort of became obsessed with my numbers and statistics. I was checking Analytics daily if not more frequently.

All of the frenetic checking made me anxious about my blog’s growth, but it also taught me how to get the most out of the free tool. Today, I am sharing a few ways on how you can get more out of Google Analytics too.

1. Analytics is about more than page views. Page views may be all a PR firm is interested in, but they’re very superficial and may not help you grow that much. There isn’t a whole lot of insight you can gain from the number of page views your receiving. Instead consider time on page, bounce rate, loyalty, traffic sources and search terms.
2. Set at least one analytics goal. What good is site data if it doesn’t help you figure out if you’re meeting your goals? It’s likely that you want to push users toward a particular page(s) on your site. For instance, maybe you want to increase email subscribers, increase the time visitors stay on your site, or the number of pages per visit.
3. Compare year to year progress. You can check numbers for any time frame, but you can also do a comparison with the past month (or any other date range you choose). Wondering if traffic is always this slow in the summer? Interested in seeing how quickly you grew? When the comparison is completed it will calculate the difference for you.
4. Use the advanced segments feature. This is a great way to track traffic from a particular source. For instance, you can watch how many visitors come from a particular social media outlet so you can figure out where to best spend your time.
5. Set up custom reports. One of my favorite features is the ability to create automated reports containing key data. The best part? You can have them emailed right to you. No more heading over to check Analytics every day!

So fess up. How often do you check your Analytics and what stats do you pay the most attention to?