Google Analytics can be a powerful tool to deliver precious insights — if used properly.

We need to get past the vanity report traffic view for the past 30 days. It is a vanity metric because, although it looks cool, it is not telling us anything or giving us actionable insights.

Let’s look at a few areas in Google Analytics that can help you drive your business online.

1. Where are visitors coming from?

Your business may be located in the United States, but that doesn’t mean all your traffic is located within your target geography. It is important to drill down on geography and dissect this data to see if you are driving the majority of traffic from the right geographic location.

Action item: Produce more content with keywords relevant to your geographic service area to ensure you are targeting customers based on what they search for and how they search online. Use Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends to break down keyword search volume and trends by location.

2. How do you rank for core keywords and is your rank improving?

You may know the keywords that drive the most traffic to your business, but have you tried improving your ranking on those keywords? If there are particular keywords that are driving lots of traffic with others, why not try to improve your rank with search engine optimization?

Beware; don’t be obsessive over the actual rank or spot of a keyword. Instead, focus on improving the rank overall and where you stand in comparison to top competitors (example: care more that you’ve improved from 10 to 5, not that you aren’t ranked 1 or 2). Ultimately, you want to try to rank above the fold on page one (typically ranks 1-4 or 1-5, depending on browser and screen size), as studies show these spots have a significantly higher click-through rate (CTR) than below the fold. Also, if a particular keyword is not driving much traffic, then don’t waste your time and energy trying to optimize content for it. You can learn more in this guide on how to rank for your keywords.

Action item: Focus on those keywords that are driving the most traffic and optimize your web content for these keywords to improve your rank.

3. Can you offer something extra?

Ever want to know which pages keep your website visitors the longest or convert the highest?

With GA, you can view your website’s pages and see which are visited most frequently. Ask yourself: can you add value to the content of those pages? Are there other products or services the traffic hitting those pages might be interested in? Make sure you have some call-to-action on those pages to keep your visitors engaged and increase your chances of capturing leads.

Remember, it’s easier to upsell your most engaged visitors.

Action item: Add related products, services, and/or content to your most-trafficked pages to keep visitors engaged with your site longer.

You can consult this guide on building effective landing pages to learn tips and tricks for driving more leads from your landing pages.

4. Are you making a good first impression?

If you are getting more traffic to your site, the natural assumption is more sales. However, you might be missing the forest in the trees.

If people are not staying on your site and “bouncing,” you may want to consider modifying your site’s design, layout, messaging or content to make it more attractive to visitors, thus enticing them to stick around longer.

Action item: Lower your bounce rate and increase conversions by making your web content intriguing and engaging for your visitors.

Do you have any other tips for extracting actionable insights from Google Analytics?

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