Analytics data can give businesses a clear picture of what actions are required for enhancing the performance and efficiency of local SEO. For that, learning Google Analytics is probably the first best step you can take. Knowing your customers’ interests let you strategize site’s SEO content and SEO title. Alongside, you can also plan the method for utilizing SEO backlinks.
Google Analytics was launched in 2005. Soon after its release, it became the most preferred tool for measuring the traffic of websites and making the best use of SEO. Till now, it is dominating over other platforms as a perfect tool for calculating the online performance metrics. The best part about Google Analytics is: it is free of cost. It means – all you need is a Google account to use for measuring the performance of your website(s).
You can do many tracking activities to identify and analyze the behavior of visitors on your website, such as: how they reached your website, how many times they landed on your web pages, where they clicked, etc. Many firms are using this tool to get accurate insights. So that they can make the required changes in their marketing strategies. Rather than outsourcing website tracking, startups are now taking the charge of their Google Analytics account themselves to avoid possible SEO mistakes.
Even professionals make mistakes while analyzing Google Analytics insights for SEO optimization. Thus to be sure about SEO mistakes to avoid and about the difficulties in managing a Google Analytics account, here we have picked up 5 biggest Google Analytics blunder many people commit. Make sure you are investing enough time and efforts for avoiding such SEO mistakes to get a competitive advantage.
Moving forward without goals
Not setting goals before moving forward is one of the most common mistakes that most businesses do before using Google Analytics. Setting goals under SEO strategy can help in analyzing if your visitors are taking the desired action or not. This is considered as “macro-conversions”. And all the small steps visitors are taking to reach the goal is considered as “micro-conversion”.
Following are the examples of macro-conversion:
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When a visitor spends some time on your website.
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When a visitor clicks on the ‘add to cart’ button of a product.
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When a visitor enters the shipping details to purchase a product.
Micro-conversions help website’s admin to know about the problems that user faces on your website.
Incorrect code installation or leaving out the custom parameters
One of the most common problems that people face during SEO optimization is entering the wrong Google Analytic code. Usually while copying and sending the code to your developer, even a missing character or space can completely ruin the code. And it becomes useless even after correctly installing at the right place in your website. Thus, necessary search engine optimization tips should be followed to prevent unnecessary problems.
Sometimes, you may enter the URL incorrectly. It induces ‘Bad Default URL Error’ (it may also happen on URL change also):
Additionally, one of the main search engine optimization tips is: people forget that one size doesn’t fit all here. Every business is unique and hence, it needs customization of the parameters being tracked through Google Analytics. Apart from the common parameters you see on your dashboard, Google allows you to add as many business-centric parameters you want to track. For that, a bit customization in Analytics Script Snippet is needed. So, don’t miss out the specially-required parameters if you don’t want to lose the essence of uniqueness.
Incorrect use of UTM parameters
While doing local SEO for small business, marketers generally forget to add UTM parameters. UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameter is added into the URLs of your websites for better tracking. UTM enhances your SEO strategy by adding specific characters to the URLs which are identified by Google Analytics to provide detailed information tracked by these URLs into your account. You are definitely making a big SEO mistake if you are unaware of UTM parameters.
Taking it easy to manage Google Analytics
Business owners are often committing this sin; they underestimate the skills required to manage local SEO activities and Google Analytics account. It is quite easy to start using Google Analytics which makes a lot of business owners think that anyone can do it. However, a single wrong step can cause a lot of damage in the local listing in SEO. With regular updates in Google Analytics, it requires some skills to understand the insights, which are gathered, so that you could take right actions.
Not filtering your own website visits
Business owners and their team often visit their website for making changes in the SEO content, SEO title and SEO backlinks for increasing its efficiency. But while doing so, they fail to understand that their own visits were also counted along with the visitors by the Google Analytics. To avoid this SEO mistake, businesses can apply the filters for their accounts so that it only gives you the data of outside visitors.
Also, managing the dashboard’s interface effectively. So that you can view the main metrics effortlessly, is needed if you want to understand what’s going on there.
Conclusion
In this article, we covered 5 of the biggest Google Analytics blunders which businesses commit unknowingly. Though it destroys the effort of doing local search SEO. But it also keeps you on the back foot as you’ll not have insightful data about your audience. Apart from emphasizing on GA (Google Analytics), you should not forget to utilize local SEO citation. It refers to the local geographical address, business name, contact information and other such details. Adding such specifications in online directories may help your buyer locate you easily, making it an important part of SEO for businesses.
Traffic, conversion, user’s behavior – these parameters on your website can open up many secrets for you; you just need to learn to make the better use of Google Analytics. So before start working on Google Analytics, it is more important to be sure that setup is correctly done and everything is ready to go so that the best SEO results can be obtained.