How to use Google Analytics: A complete guide

Read this guide to get an overview of Google Analytics and learn how you can use all the data to your advantage to improve your SEO and digital marketing.

How can Google Analytics help my promotion?

Google Analytics gives you access to a huge amount of data related to how users find and interact with your website.

For example, you can see how many people visited a certain page, how long they stayed on it, where your users live, how certain keywords are performing, etc.

Google Analytics can be integrated into your site via code or the WordPress Site Kit plugin.

This information is vital for determining how effective your awesome SEO strategies are, as well as identifying areas where you can make improvements.

Getting started with Google Analytics (creating an account)

Go to the Google Analytics website and register or sign in if you already have a Google account. You will then see a page where you need to click on the "Sign Up" button. Next, create an account:

Choose whether to track: website or mobile app.

Come up with a name for the account that reflects its content. For example, if you have several projects, it is better to create a separate account for each one and name it with the project name.

Enter the name of the website.

Enter the URL of the site.

Select the appropriate industry.

Specify the country and time zone (where most of your site's audience is located) - they will be displayed in the reports.

How to use Google Analytics, tips from SEO promotion experts

We advise you not to uncheck the checkboxes in the data sharing settings. This will help Google improve its services and provide access to tech support specialists when needed.

How to use Google Analytics, tips from SEO promotion experts

Click the "Get a tracking ID" button and confirm the user agreement. A window with the tracking code will open:

How to Use Google Analytics, SEO Promotion Expert Tips

There are two ways to submit data to Google Analytics:

Paste the resulting code on each page of the website you want to track, under the < / head> tag.

Insert the Google Tag Manager code into your site pages - this will save time during setup and make it easier to make changes in the future. To learn how to set up site tracking via GTM, read our help.

Setting up your Google Analytics account

The first thing to do is set up your views, as they are your access point for reports. When you add a new resource to your account, GA automatically creates a first view for it without filters, with all available data. To view the most important information, you can create additional views and set filters.

Keep in mind that as soon as you enable a filter on a view, all filtered data will be lost. Therefore, it is extremely important to leave at least one view with raw, unfiltered data.

In the admin panel, section "View" - "View Settings":

Set the currency of the view to be displayed in reports. If you accept multiple currencies, Google Analytics will convert them to the view currency using the previous day's exchange rate. See the help for more details.

Enable bot filtering so that their visits to your site don't skew your traffic statistics.

Enable tracking of search queries on your site if you want to know what your visitors are searching for.

You can set up 25 views for the free version of Google Analytics. We recommend creating 3 main views to start with in addition to the view with unfiltered, raw data:

Working. Unlike the first view, this one uses filters to exclude unwanted traffic (e.g. from your home or corporate intranet) from your reports

User ID. Shows data only for users who have logged in to your site. For more information about the User ID view, see Help.

Test. It can be used to test any changes on the site before applying them in the working views. For example, this view helps you test functionality from test subdomains on your site.

To quickly set up any of these views, from the "View" - "View Settings" menu, select "All Data to Website" and click "Copy View". Next, rename it and add filters. Filters help you exclude internal traffic from reports, track activity in a separate directory, track subdomains in separate views, etc.

In Google Analytics, goals help you measure your users' profitable actions on your website, in other words conversions. When a website visitor fulfils a goal, Google Analytics records it as a conversion. Through the use of goals, you will better understand the steps users take before they turn into customers. You will also understand which source, campaign, ad or keyword brought the sale.

Goals are divided into 4 types:

Target Page. The specific page that was downloaded. For example, a user's visit to the Contact Us page.

Duration. For example, the user was on the support page for more than 15 minutes.

Pages/screens per session. The number of pages that were loaded per session. For example, the user visited a minimum of 3 pages on the site.

Event. Any interaction the user has with content on the site. For example, watching a video, filling out a registration form, etc. See the help for more details.

In the details of the goal, you need to set its conditions. Keep in mind that to create a goal type Event, you must already have at least one event configured.

The first two, "Category" and "Action" - are mandatory parameters. Here it is desirable to enter words that will help you understand what your goal is. For example, the category could be called "Subscription" and the action would be "Click".

The "Label" and "Value" parameters are filled in at your discretion. Labels provide additional information for events, such as the name of a button, video, or file to download.

You can assign a monetary value to each visitor action on the site. It is calculated individually. For example, 20% of your guests subscribed to the newsletter and made a purchase, and the average transaction amount is 10,000 rubles. So, the goal "Subscription" can be valued at 2,000 rubles (i.e. 20% of 10,000 rubles). On the other hand, if only 1% of subscriptions lead to sales, you can specify a value of 200 rubles.

Google Analytics provides a huge number of preset parameters and indicators. In addition, if you wish, you can create your own parameters and indicators to collect and analyse data that is not automatically tracked.

With the help of custom parameters, you can divide visitors into separate groups and analyse their behaviour. This segmentation helps you make the right decisions. For example, you can find out which filters are more often used for a certain product category and remove ineffective ones. Or you can offer more relevant products immediately, using sorting or default filters.

To create a parameter, go to Resource - Custom Definitions - Custom Parameters. Specify the name and level of the parameter:

Hit - one user action (page view or event). For example, page type, payment or shipping method, etc.

Session - all hits of one user session. A session is terminated in several cases: after 30 minutes of inactivity when navigating to a page without tracking code, leaving the site, or at midnight (help). An example of a session level parameter is the user's city.

User - a set of sessions with the same user ID. This level includes, for example, gender, user name and ID, etc.

Product - data for each product, such as brand, size or colour. The layer is needed to compare visitors' interest in products: number of views, additions to basket and orders.

Connecting external data sources. Linking Google Analytics with AdWords

If you have an AdWords account, link it to Google Analytics. By doing so, you'll be able to:

Understand how much of your traffic and sales are derived from AdWords.

Get more conversions at a lower cost. Importing goals and transactions from GA to AdWords will allow you to optimise bids with the Conversion Optimiser.

See what people do after clicking on your ad and navigating to a landing page. Analyse bounce rates, average session length, number of pages viewed per session, etc. This data shows how effective your campaigns are and helps you make decisions about budgets and ad text. For example, thanks to the CTR rating and bounce rate for a group of adverts, you can understand how well the site is meeting users' expectations. Read more in the help.

Increase the likelihood of conversion by showing ads to users based on their interests (games, pets, cars, etc.). To do this, create remarketing groups in GA and use them in AdWords for audience targeting (help).

To link accounts, go to the "Resource" menu - "Link to Adwords", select the desired AdWords account and click "Continue". Select the views you want to import Google AdWords data into.