I'm just getting started with Google Analytics. I know I'm late to the game but I'm hoping to get some good tips from this forum. Can someone suggest a book or some other guide that might help me get up to speed?
Hi Buddy!!! I am new in this topic but i hope it all happens by Google algorithm.. Thanks For sharing.. byeee...???
Today I've been reviewing my full year 2009 results, and asked myself "Where is my promotion time best spent durig 2010?" amongst about 50 other questions! Here was how I answered that question with GA. Hundreds of people on DP, and other forums, will recommend ways for you to acquire traffic. Post in link directories, forums, social networking sites, optimise for Google, setup a trade script etc etc. Naturally we all spend time doing these things... and provided all the lines in GA go up we assume we're spending our time well. The graphs in GA are pretty, and will mislead you into thinking ALL this time is well spent. Ask yourself this question. Is it better for my site if I spend 2 hours making forum posts, or 2 hours making social bookmarking plugs, or 2 hours optimising my content with more keywords? Which brings more traffic may be clear, but which brings better traffic can be far more important. Here's my approach to figuring it out using GA's advanced segments, meaning I can spend my hours acquiring better traffic for my site over the coming months. To get an idea of how confusing traffic can be, browse to the following in GA; Traffic Sources / All Traffic Sources If you're anything like me you have hundreds of sites sending you hundreds of thousands of clicks. I have 410 sites sending me 300,000 hits and using this standard view is impossible. It tells you little about actual traffic behaviours. Let's segment & aggregate this data to get a better view of how each kind of traffic is performing. N.B I use sample data, and the example of comparing social networking traffic to forum traffic in this example. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In GA browse to "Advanced Segments" which is near the bottom of the left pane. Now create a custom segment by clicking "+ Create new custom segment" in the top right. We're now going to group all of the traffic we get from Social Networking sites together. We can then repeat this process and compare social networking sites versus forum traffic in ALL GA reports we ever do. On the next screen setup the filters as I have done in this screenshot. Bear in mind mine is an example, you may have different sites or an entirely different "type" of traffic. Simply drag and drop the green bars (Traffic / Source) into the space in the main pane, and pick all sites relating to your segment (facebook, myspace, bebo etc). Once you're finished name your segment and click Ok. This segment is now ready for use. Now complete this step for another traffic type. I have also setup a "Forum" traffic segment which groups all traffic sent from forum posts I have made, but you could have segments like "Search Engine" / "Image Traffic" / "Paid Traffic" / "Friends Traffic". The list is endless. Now we'll compare these segments, to get a much better view of how each type of traffic is working for us. Complete the following steps in GA; Click Visitors in the main navigation Click Overview In the top right is a dropdown named "Advanced Segments" Tick the 2 new segments you've created in the list Click apply You'll see a report like the one below; Notice the standard GA reports are now split by your segments so you can see in a much clearer way what is going on. In the sample you'll notice I have lots of Forum traffic, but in fact they don't perform as well as Social Bookmarking traffic in some metrics (Time on Site, Ave Pageviews, % New Visits). After adding 5/6 good segments you can ask yourself questions like; Where do I get more traffic like segment A? How long does it take me to acquire 1,000 clicks of that segment? Why did I bother buying traffic from there? And make decisions like; I'm going to spend my time acquiring visitors from forums, they perform very well I'm not buying any more plugs at that site, they have too high a bounce rate That trade script brings me the best traffic I've ever seen, I will promote it to more of my partners ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Good luck out there people. Any specific requests for report problems or analysis people would like can be put below. I'll respond if there is sufficient demand, and I as long as i know the answers!