Google Analytics and Search: How Are People Finding Your SIte, and What Can You Do About It?

I've been focusing in recent posts about core keywords and working on SEO to get those keywords into better position in Google search results. There's another side of this story, though. It's great to have the #1 result for a keyword that you find relevant to your site. But what do 'real' users think is relevant? Sometimes you are too close to the business to think creatively about keywords.

First of all, if you aren't using Google Analytics on your site, shame on you! Go there right now and set it up. It's free, and provides a wealth of information about your site and your users, and you can't begin to improve things until you have some notion of what it is you're improving. Remember the adage: "You can't manage what you don't measure."

If you are running Drupal site, as is KidPub, there are modules such as Google Analytics that automate tracking of your site.

One of the things that GA tracks is inbound clicks, and you can learn a lot about how users find your site from this data, as well as what they do once they've found you. For example, I've spent a fair amount of effort getting 'publishing for kids' into a strong position on Google. It's currently the #1 result.

When I take a look at inbound traffic, focusing on Google search referrals, 'publishing for kids' is high on the list, but not as high as you'd think. It's number 10 overall, and a surprising 83% of visitors hitting the site with that search phrase are repeat customers.

What's the top seach phrase for inbound traffic? It's 'new twilight book', second behind 'kidpub'.

When someone does a Google search for 'new twilight book', the first result returned is stephaniemeyers.com (she wrote the series). But the SECOND result returned is a link to a review of the book by a KidPub member. Amazon.com and MTV.com are farther down the list!

Analysis of the behavior of these visitors reveals a lot of room for improvement. Ninety seven percent are new visitors...they've never seen my site before. They spend an average of 30 seconds on the site (the review is short, so that's plenty of time to read it). Then they leave...the bounce rate is 85%.

I look at this data and realize that I'm blowing a significant opportunity here. The experience at KidPub for these users needs to be different than for other users. At the very least, there needs to be links to other Twilight-related articles on the site. I've chosen three out of dozens and included them at the bottom of the review. I'll post the results when enough data have been gathered.

The point of all of this is that YOU might not see your site the way that OTHERS see it. By using tools such as Google Analytics you can gather valuable data about how people are using your site that will help you think about your site in new ways and to spot trends quickly enough to take advantage of them.