Hey You! That’s right, I’m back but instead of SEO, I’m talking about voice and local search. Do you frequently talk to Siri? Maybe you’re more of a Google or Cortana person. Whoever you love best, you know the coined phrase “Hey___”, hence the beginning of this blog “Hey you”. Well, voice search is on the rise, so read on to find out more about voice and local search.

What is Voice Search?

Voice search is exactly what it says; completing a search using your voice. Every time you search using your digital assistant (Siri, Cortana, Google), you are participating in using voice search, and now, more than ever, people are searching with their voice.

Have you ever told Siri to search for you when you’re driving? As much as I hate to admit it, I have done this, and I am guessing you have too. All these things are a part of using voice search, and by 2023, it’s predicted that 8 billion voice assistants will be used. That’s a lot of voice searches!

Why is it Important?

Voice search is important because of the number of people that use it. If you think about it, voice search is the type of search that people should use. This convenient, hands-free solution to asking a question works for all different types of people. Little kids can now learn the answers to their questions and older adults can search things like never before. The necessity to optimize your website for voice search is not something to be ignored. I often find myself asking Siri to look up answers to questions that I have. She also sends messages, makes phone calls, and looks up directions for me too.

Optimizing Your Website For Voice Search

You should optimize your website for voice search using Search Engine Watch’s six easy steps to optimize your website for voice search.

1. Featured snippets: Featured snippets are selected search results that are featured on top of Google’s organic results below the ads in a box. These are important to voice search optimization because 30% of 1.4 million tested Google queries contain them and voice assistants pull their answers from there.

2. User intent: Tells us the actual reason a person typed their query into a search engine.

3. Long tail keywords & questions: Helps optimizing both VSO and SEO. Key phrases that contain more than two keywords face less difficulty and provide higher chances to rank at the top.

4. Page speed: If your page doesn’t load fast, people will not have patience to wait for it.

5. Structured data: Helps search engines crawl and quickly read the content on your website. Local SEO: Most people use VSO for finding local businesses, so having effective information about local businesses will increase the likelihood of your website being seen.

What is Local Search?

Local search marketing is “anything you do on the web to promote a physical business that makes face-to-face contact with customers. It applies to both single-location small and medium businesses, national enterprise brands, and chains.”

Local Search’s Importance

Local search is important because it is SEO that focuses solely on local businesses. It’s important because:

• 50% of people who searched a store actually went to a physical store.

• 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale within one day

• 60% of American adults conducted searches for local services or product information on tablets and smartphones

• 50% of searchers on their mobile phones who conduct local searches are looking for things LIKE a local business

• 97% of consumers looked online for local business in 2017, 12% look online every day

How To Optimize for Local Search

Local search is conducted by optimizing your website for its users. HubSpot’s blog walks through the steps that explain how to optimize your website for local search.

1. Optimize for Google My Business: This is an important first step because Google My Business is the TOP of local search. It allows your business to meet Google’s needs, so it is verified.

2. Improve your internal linking structure: Internal linking supports website navigation. It also assists with information architecture and website hierarchy. It also distributes page authority and website hierarchy.

3. Optimize URL, title tags, headers, meta description, and content: This is important because it makes it more likely that search engines will optimize the content on your website.

4. Add location pages to your website: Provide readers with critical information about your business.

5. Create local content: Local authority for your industry by promoting local industry.

6. Ensure your website is mobile friendly: If your website is not mobile friendly, it will not be functional to consumers.

7. Ensure name, address, and phone number are consistent online: This is where you NAP. You should ensure that your name, address, and phone number are always up to date.

8. Optimize online directories and citations: If Google can’t verify your information, it will not show your business is available and real.

9. Get inbound links with relevance and authority: This helps boost your local SEO which allows search engines to explain to consumers that you are real.

10. Engage on social media and add posts to Google My Business: Share your Google My Business page on social media so that people know about your business.

Conclusion

Voice and local search are frequently used search methods. Every day people use their voice search assistants to answer their questions and search for local businesses and restaurants. Understanding the importance of optimizing your website for voice and local search will greatly increase the visibility of your website. As we wrap up search engine week, it is important to understand the extreme importance of search engines because a lack of understanding them will lead to poor visibility for your business. Stay tuned for my next blog and see what we’ll be learning next about digital marketing!

I’m back, and this week in #wwudigimark, we’re talking about search engines, but more specifically, SEO. Have you ever wondered why it was so important that you typing the correct words into Google’s search engine matters? Read on to find out how one word can make all the difference when you’re dying to find the right answer to your ever-persistent questions.

SEO

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO), is the practice of increasing quantity and quality of your website’s traffic. It is also the exposure of your brand through organic search engine results. So, it is bringing consumers and awareness to your website through optimizing the spot that your website will rank when someone searches for your product/service on a search engine. Does your page show up in the top spot on the first page of Google? Well, if it does, then you are performing some great SEO.

Why is it important?

SEO is important because it allows your website to have more visibility without having to pay for it to appear at the top of Google. Organic search results through a search engine cover more digital space than paid ads. Also, most people don’t click on paid ads. Therefore, it is important to use SEO to boost your website’s presence on search engines. SEO assists in building brand awareness and relationships with present and potential consumers. While it may seem like all of the modifications that you are making to your site may be small, they add up to equaling large improvements. SEO is critical in maintaining visibility, however, it is important to do it correctly to maximize the exposure that your website receives.

How do you do it?

While it is not an exact science on how to perform SEO, it is critical to do it correctly so that the website can maximize its visibility without deceiving consumers. The most important parts when performing SEO are:

Keywords are important because putting in the correct words will greatly increase your chance at being seen

Content helps in engaging your audience and helps you reach the broadest audience possible

Off-Page SEO helps external optimization that happens when people are not necessarily on your site

Local SEO is important because 57% of all searches are from mobile and they are looking for something local, whether that be a restaurant, bar, hair salon, or grocery store.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is important because it shows ads that are paid for. This includes Google Adwords, Google shopping ads, display ads, and more.

It is critical that by trying to optimize your website, you do not deceive consumers in the process. Google has a guide to effectively performing SEO, and in it, it advises that you follow a few basic principles:

• Making pages primarily for users, not search engines
• Don’t deceive your users
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whenever you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website to a Google employee.
  • Another useful test is to ask “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?
• Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging

The ability to effectively perform SEO was coined by Google: EAT. This stands for:

• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

This is another way to ensure that you are effectively performing SEO. Having a high-quality page will be measured by having a high level of EAT as a quality evaluation.

Mozlow’s Hierarchy of SEO Needs

MOZlow’s Hierarchy was created by Rand Fishkin, founder of MOZ. He designed it to explain the steps necessary to effectively using SEO. If utilized correctly, this gives the necessary steps to effectively utilizing SEO for a website.

Link Building

What is Link Building?

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. Just like a spider, Search engines are essentially using these hyperlinks to crawl the web between links of individual pages on your website and also links between entire websites as a whole. This is very difficult for SEO specialists because it is hard to do well and hard to do effectively to give your website a competitive edge.

Link Building and SEO

Link building is important in SEO because search engines use links in two ways.

1.    To discover new web pages

2.    To help determine how well a page should rank in their results

If the links do not signal that they would be useful to answering the question, then they will not be able to use those links to direct others to your website. If the link does not signal to the search engine that it will sufficiently answer the question or be a useful resource to a person, then it will not be ranked well.

Important Issues in the World of SEO in 2020

According to Search Engine Watch, there are 8 trends in 2020 that may be difficult for all SEO.

1.   Voice search

• People search as they speak making it difficult to correctly identify keywords.

2.    Featured snippits will continue to dominate search results

• Search engines may display the featured snippit over the organic and paid result because of convenience.

3.   Leveraging Influencers for SEO

• Much of a budget for some companies is spent on “influencers”. They have a lot of power in terms of visibility of a product or service.

4.    BERT Won’t Leave

• Affects queries and question’s that are asked

5.  People Want Digital Experiences

• Pages will not load as fast hindering the patience of a potential consumer.

6.    Video=Content King

• Video is 50% more likely to show up for a search result first.

7.    Content Length

• Only high-quality content will beat page 1 ranking.

8.    Mobile Search

• Mobile Search will increase as more people depend on their mobile devices to surf the web.

Conclusion

SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing that can potentially make or break your website’s success. Having the ability to improve the position of your website so that it is being seen by a large audience is important because it allows the company the ability to effectively communicate to an audience before they even know that they have a question. I hope that this blog has allowed you to see and understand the importance of SEO and what a necessity it is for a business. Next, we will be talking about voice and local search, so I’ll see you next time for the next blog in #wwudigimark!

I’m back, and this time in #wwudigimark, we’re talking about paid social media. That’s right, all of those ads with the subtitle “sponsored” that you continuously scroll through in your feed, that’s what this blog is all about. While you may find it very annoying to see all of these paid social media ads, they actually do a lot to move consumers through the purchasing funnel. Keep reading to find out how paid social media will help your business.

What Is It?

Paid social media is like the “wonder” section of the Venn diagram. It is the perfect combination of art and science, so if you’ve ever wanted to be both an artist and a scientist, then this is perfect for you. Paid social media is the display of advertisements on popular social media channels that target specific sub-audiences. These are all ads that have been paid to be placed in the location that they are. While organic social media is great because it is free, there are many benefits to paying for your social media ads.

Investing in Paid Social Media

This right here is why you should invest in paid social media. Investing in paid social media is very important. Paid social media is the only way that social media can really make any money for your business. Organic social media is great, but it is rarely seen by many of the people you have as followers. Paid social strategy = social ROI. While brands continue to use social media, it is actually seen that most people are not engaging with it as much even if they use it. Instagram ‘s interactions dropped 40% in 2015 even though companies continue to post while their engagement was only around 2.19 interactions per post. It is important to invest in paid social media because two billion people are using it every day.

Brands that decide to not engage in social media risk falling behind because every other brand is already continuously using it. In 2019 it was predicted that in the US market, social ad spending would top $31 billion making up 29.4% of digital ad spending. This is very important in understanding why companies should invest. Investing in paid social media allows for companies to pay for visibility. Social media ads that get customers to stop and convert or become a lead allows companies to gain more visibility. Paid social media also gives you the opportunity to pay for your audience. You have the opportunity to be selective in who sees the ads and which groups of potential consumers you want to target.

Core, Custom and Lookalike Audiences

There are three different audience types that you can target using paid social media. Facebook Business has described them as core, custom and lookalike. These categories help target these audiences by customizing the type of audience that sees your ad.

• Core audience: You can set the rules for where the ads are delivered. The audience can be adjusted to be as broad or well-defined as you want, based on the criteria of location, behavior, demographics, connections, interests

• Custom audience: allow you to connect with people who have already shows an interest in your business, whether they’re loyal customers or people who have used your app or visited your website.

• Lookalike audience: are a fast and effective way to connect with people likely to respond to your ads. All you have to do is create a source audience of people you know. The ads will then reach people with common interests and traits.

These predefined audiences are another way for companies to maximize the exposure of their company with individuals who are most likely to convert.

Facebook Ads and Their Benefit

Facebook Manager Ads allows the creation and management of paid social media ads. I currently hold the position of marketing assistant at a local nonprofit organization. Part of my role is to monitor and create ads. These ads can be targeted to specific groups of customers. These three examples of ads that I have created will benefit the camp because they each have a different call to action and they also show the difference between advertising to different audiences.

The first ad example would be one that is advertised to a core audience because it is generic, and it can be broad and sent to audiences based on criteria of location, behavior, demographics, connections, and interests.

The second ad can be used to be advertised to a custom audience. This could be to people who are most likely to view the website or based on people who have been identified to have previously visited the website.

The last ad could be used to target a lookalike audience. This could be used for this type of audience because it is sent to people who are likely to respond. This ad shows that there is a way to get involved and gives an outlet for people to become involved with the ad.

Conclusion

Paid social media is one of the best ways to advertise your business. Social media, as we have learned can be very beneficial and while it is nice to have the option to do it for free, paying will pay off in the long run with an ability to generate ROI from the ads. Hopefully this blog has answered all of your questions that you might have as to how to effectively use paid social media. Stay tuned for next week’s lesson in #wwudigimark and don’t forget to pay for some of your advertisements!

“Follow me on Instagram.” “I sent you a friend request on Facebook did you accept it yet?” These are things that we ask people after making a connection with someone. We fill our spare time scrolling through various social media channels. We also follow pages of businesses that we like and every so often, have our feeds interrupted by an ad that a company has paid to be there. This time in #wwudigimark, we are talking about organic social media. No need to pay for those ads when you can create and post content for free. Let me teach you about how your company can use organic social media to their advantage-oh yeah and did I mention that it is free?

What is Organic Social Media?

What if this sign flashed before you as you posted on social media? Did you know that you’ve basically been creating organic social media for as long as you’ve had an account or profile? Organic social media is content that is created and posted on social media that is not boosted or sponsored – so in other words, like the sign says: it is free. Organic social media is primarily seen by followers and loyal customers of the brand because it is not being promoted financially to be shown to people not following the brand.

Organic Social Media Strategy

A good organic social media strategy answers all customer questions. It includes informing your customers with updates, links, images, and anything that will inform them of how the brand is doing. A good organic strategy should increase the word of mouth marketing from your customers. Creating organic social media content allows for connecting with your customers and this can only become possible once they are followers of your account. A good strategy should:

• Create engaging content that followers want to see

• Should answer all their questions they may have about your company and your brand

• Utilizes all of the free services and tools that each social media platform provides to its users

• It should build followers of your organization or business

• Interact with the followers that you continue to have to ensure that you continue to keep the relationship you have with current followers

A good social media campaign should be integrated into the marketing plan. It should give the company feedback as to what it needs to change and what the consumers are looking for.

Organic Social Media or Brand Building?

Organic social media is more than just brand building because it is all about creating a community for your company.

While it is important to represent your brand well through social media, you should use organic social media to entice customers to understand your brand. If a customer finds you through a paid social media ad but has no information about what it is they are looking for, then organic social media should answer all of the questions that they may have. Social media is a tool that enables customers to understand exactly what they are getting from a brand. People follow their favorite brands on social media because they want to be the first to know when something happens to that brand.

Value of Social Media Management Platforms (Hootsuite)

Hootsuite, a social media management platform is very beneficial to building a strong organic social media campaign. Hootsuite allows you to manage all your social media platforms from one site; scheduling posts, filtering comments, and tracking engagement on your posts. This is extremely valuable when using organic social media because it allows for consistent posting across all your social media channels. It also assists in integrating the social media into your marketing campaign.

Shit that I Knit and Lessons for Organic Social Media

Shit that I Knit – a company that was started by Christina Fagan after her hobby of knitting became more of a career path started out when Christina started a blog about her projects. The social media channel for the company promotes all sorts of products that they have as well as consumer posts that they have tagged the company in. It also promotes current events such as thanking healthcare workers for their work in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Their Instagram channel is very organized so that consumers can watch their stories and learn more about the company. The company stays true to their mission through their posts and continue to promote their brand, their influencers, their customers, and their company.

Conclusion

Organic social media is extremely valuable to a company. It allows information to be passed on to customers through one given location that is easily accessible for them. It also is FREE! Organic social media allows for customers to follow their favorite brands so that they can keep up with the latest and greatest that have been happening to the company. Who wouldn’t want some free advertising for your company as a way to create and maintain relationships with your current customers? Stay tuned for next week’s blog in #wwudigimark, and remember, always utilize your free advertising!

Is anyone else Team Gryffindor? Have you taken the Sorting Hat quiz? During the first part of week 3 in #wwudigimark we’re talking about and answering your questions that have to do with inbound and content marketing. Stay tuned to learn more about I’ve learned about inbound and content marketing and how it will help you and your business.

Inbound Marketing

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a business methodology that attracts customers with valuable content created and tailored to them. It forms connections and solves problems that the consumer might have by using an inbound marketing strategy. Broadly, inbound marketing is built on the foundation of the idea that it’s not enough to just attract people to your website but you have to ensure that they continue to feel supported and valued to keep them as customers.

How to Use Inbound Marketing

You can use inbound marketing to control your online presence. According to a blog written on Marketo, through content, inbound marketing focuses on keeping customers engaged and creating a brand for themselves while potentially creating up to three times the amount of exposure than a regular marketing strategy could.

Inbound Marketing Used in Blogs

Did you know that the most successful blogs are not only informational, but they are also informative too. Blogs should answer the readers questions. In fact, when trying to use blogs as content in the inbound marketing strategy, it is important to answer all of the questions a potential customer might have. The most effective blogs are those that have identified the audience that may be interacting with them. They have assessed and determined all of the different types of questions that customers may have and attempt to successfully answer them throughout the blog. It is also important to engage readers in the blog. They should be engaged by hooking them in the introduction. They should also have interactive pieces in the blog or additional information for visitors to click on that is linked throughout so that they can supplement their knowledge.

Content Marketing

What is Content Marketing?

As Bill Gates would say, “Content is King!” Content marketing is the strategic approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately to drive profitable customer actions.

Goal of Content Marketing

The goal of content marketing is to encourage engagement with consumers in hopes of developing a relationship that ends in a conversion. Content marketing is actually a popular tactic often used in inbound marketing because content is used heavily when performing inbound marketing.

Content allows for so much exposure for a company. The exposure of a company is vital to its success and creating multiple different types of content provides the ability to attract and convert multiple different types of people. Content marketing is used by leading brands in the industry. It also helps organic search.

What Makes Content Marketing Successful?

Content marketing is successful because of its ability to show the customer just exactly what the brand is. It shows the customers what to expect and what they can be getting from each brand. It is also the new form of marketing that almost all companies and businesses are using because of today’s tech industry. It is successful because it is too valuable for consumers and businesses and the maintenance of the relationship created between them. Every great brand has a wealth of valuable and relevant content that connects with the company’s audience. It creates a trust because consumers can see what they are getting and the content that is provided is actively being created to convert the customer.

Hubspot Academy and Harry Potter

Through the Hubspot academy inbound marketing course, I learned that it is important to use the three important steps in an inbound marketing campaign. Those steps are:

• Attract

• Engage

• Delight

One way to do this is through content. In the Hubspot content marketing course, it teaches about the ability for content to tell a story.

Does taking the Sorting Hat quiz make you as nervous as it does the characters in Harry Potter? Does it seem like this quiz will define who you are after you are assigned a house? The quiz asks a series of questions that ultimately almost create a character for you. The end goal assigns you one of the four houses in Harry Potter:

• Gryffindor

• Hufflepuff

• Ravenclaw

• Slytherin

The questions that you answer will decide your strengths and weaknesses and also describe the type of person you are; brave, humble, courageous (all characteristics of a member of Gryffindor). This will then create a character profile that is used to describe what type of house you belong in. This content connects visitors to the characters and gives them a deeper connection to the story of Harry Potter. They now can align themselves with the characters in the book and feel a deeper connection to the story line. This content has the power to convert the average fan into a loyal fan or even a person who has never seen or read the books into someone who actively can now go and seek that connection.

Conclusion

Ultimately, we live in a world full of content and inbound marketing, and whether you know it or not, you too have been influenced by it. Companies are using these strategies to connect with their consumers and create bonds that will last in the long-term. I hope that through this blog you were able to understand the importance of content and inbound marketing and how it is being used by businesses to create connections with you in your everyday life. Stay tuned for the second half of week 3 in #wwudigimark and I’ll see you next time!

Option A or option B? This is a question that you’ve probably been asked for as long as you can remember, but how does this relate to marketing? A/B testing and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) are tools used in digital marketing. You don’t have to be a scientist to run these types of tests, so stick around to find out what we’re learning about this week in #wwudigimark, as I talk about everything A/B Testing and CRO.

What is CRO?

CRO is much like all the people running through this funnel. The goal is to change site visitors into conversions. It is defined as “the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action.” A conversion (aka goal) is measured in micro-conversions and macro conversions. CRO is measured by calculating a conversion rate.

What is A/B Testing?

Also known as split testing, A/B testing is a way in which companies can compare two versions of a website to figure out which performs better. This is nothing new, as the method of A/B testing has been around for almost 100 years! A/B tests show which version of a webpage is performing better than the other so that website conversions can be optimized. This is determined through statistical analysis that shows what variation of the webpage has been performing best for the conversion goal of the company. A/B testing is a tool used by companies to not only optimize their conversion rate, but also to optimize user experience. The easier it is for a user to interact with your site, the more likely they are to convert. Using A/B tests are another way to also understand consumer’s behavior and their preferences as to what makes them to pursue an interaction or conversion with a webpage.

Measuring CRO

The way to measure CRO, is by finding a conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who take a desired action). This is calculated by dividing the site traffic by the number of times a user completes a goal then multiplying it by 100.

Performing A/B Tests

Listen to this little girl! A/B tests are science, but you don’t need to be a scientist to perform them. The test follows a similar layout to the scientific method, but it will be unlike any chemistry experience you may have had to do in a gen chem class. According to Optimizely, the steps to start running an A/B test are as follows:

1.      Determine conversion to improve

2.      Hypothesize change

3.      Identify variables/create variations

4.      Run experiment

5.      Measure/analyze results

When performing the experiment, half of the traffic is shown the control (original) variable and the other half are shown the variation (modified) variable. The engagement with each page is collected, measured and then analyzed through a statistical software. It is important that the users receive the page randomly, as A/B testing is a randomized controlled experiment.

Why use CRO?

Paying special attention to CRO is important because ultimately the interaction site visitors have with your webpage is crucial to continuing to profit as a company. The more likely a visitor is to interact with your webpage, the more likely they are to convert and use your site again. It also benefits SEOs. According to MOZ, there are five ways that CRO benefits SEOs. They are:

1.      Improved customer insights

2.      Better ROI

3.      Better scalability

4.      Better user experience

5.      Enhanced trust

This is important because while CRO may not directly affect SEO, it gives you more insight into how to best use SEO. CRO helps a company make the most of their webpage and get the most out of the current traffic that they already have. If you don’t use CRO, you are most likely not maximizing the use of your webpage and therefore you are wasting money! It is important to use CRO because it will also assist your sales team. If you consider the conversion of visitors to your webpage, it makes it easier for the sales team because they will have leads which could make their job a little easier.

Why use A/B Testing?

A/B testing should be used because it gives you necessary data to ensure you are maximizing your marketing budget. It gives you major improvements with small and minor changes. There is low risk but high reward in using these types of tests, and they are useful to answer smaller questions and to improve small goals one at a time. They also better help to pinpoint exactly what was not allowing a company’s webpage to be most successful.

Who’s Done it Well?

Many companies use CRO and A/B testing as methods for their performance research. People who use A/B testing and CRO may work on email campaigns, paid internet advertising, e-commerce, in the travel industry, or at technology companies. Companies like The Discovery Channel, Secret Escapes, and ComScore have all successfully used A/B testing to increase the conversion rate through the help of the company Optimizely.

The Discovery channel was able to utilize AB testing to increase video engagement and improved ad viewing. This resulted in a 6% increase of click-throughs in the video content.

The company Secret Escapes utilized Optimizely to successfully double their mobile signup rate while optimizing their customer acquisition.

Lastly, ComScore was able to test Brand Validation and Social Proof to create a 69% increase in leads generated in many of the world’s primary enterprises, publishers and agencies.

Conclusion

A/B tests and CRO hold a special place in the heart of digital marketers. I hope that this article has taught you some basics about both unique tools that can be used to help companies optimize their online websites. Stay tuned for next week’s topic in #wwudigimark and remember, you don’t have to be a scientist to perform A/B tests, so don’t be afraid to try them!

Google Analytics

Do you understand what the amazing Leonardo DiCaprio is referring to? Read more to find out!

Google Analytics (GA), if you didn’t already know, is a very useful tool. As a future digital marketer, (and really just a marketer in general), having the skills and ability to use this “freemium” service is one of the most beneficial tools for the future.

It’s Important

You might ask yourself, “the name is so straightforward so why do I need to read yet another article on GA?” Well, while the name of GA may straight-up tell you what it does, there are many functions within GA that you may not know exist and can help you when trying to understand more about your company and its consumers. GA takes the numbers and metrics that people like me once never wanted to touch in their career and turns them into something that I do want to look at every day. Companies use GA to understand both current and new potential customers. THEY DON’T WANT PERSONAL INFORMATION; they just want to know about you and people like you! GA gives a deeper understanding of the customer and helps to build a bigger picture for your company using data while making the data work for you and not the other way around. GA also helps people working in SEO and not just people looking to analyze data as well.

How it Works

So, how does it work? First, you must create a Google Analytics account. After the account is created, it will bring you to your home page. This page will soon be filled with all sorts of numbers and metrics once you start tracking websites. GA helps companies move consumers through the purchasing funnel by acquisition, behavior and conversion. It uses the data to figure out how to get more customers to interact with their company. Companies such as Spotify, Airbnb, Dropbox, and Slack are just a few of the companies known for using this tool.

Google Analytics for Beginners

Next, you start tracking websites. Unlike this gif of tracking your location on a map, when you begin tracking website(s), Google Analytics places a Javascript tracking code to each page on the website. This tracking code ANONYMOUSLY collects data on the people visiting the website. (It is important to note that this data is anonymous). The tracking code can track the language of the website (code it was written in), type of browser, device accessed on, operating system currently being used, and traffic source (what brought the user to the source). It then groups the data into sessions. Each session is the interaction on the website within a specific time frame, and a session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity.

Organizing the Data

GA for Beginners teaches you how to keep the data organized. It is important to understand how to find and filter the data. There are three different views of the data. Raw Data, Test View and Master View. It is important to save all the data you may need because you cannot change it later. Filtering the data will help you find exactly what you are looking for when trying to answer specific questions you may have when reading the data.

Reports

Three of the most useful groups of reports that can be found in Google Analytics are titled Audience, Acquisition and Behavior.

• Audience reports will assist you in understanding demographic, behavioral and interest characteristics of users.

• Acquisition reports show which channels brought users to your site.

• Behavior reports showed how people engaged in the site. This includes which page of the website people land on and which page they exit from.

Google Ads and Google Analytics can be linked to track your campaigns. GA for Beginners teaches about how to track campaigns and goals you may set whether they be business goals or GA goals.

Advanced Google Analytics

Advanced GA dives into deeper water. It gives a more in-depth description on how to use the functions within GA and how to make them more specific and less generalized to what you might need to do. The advanced training in GA teaches about how GA categorizes its users and how to more clearly understand the data in ways that interest you. The advanced GA course will teach you how to:

• categorize into users and sessions

• organize and create advanced filters

• create custom dimensions and metrics

• segment and analyze data

• re-market to consumers

Understanding the relevance and importance of each of these functions taught in the advanced GA course will serve you well later down the road when using GA as a tool for your business.

Google Merchandise Store Demo Account

Throughout both the beginner and advanced course of GA, it takes you through a simulation using the Google Analytics Store Demo Account to understand and analyze the Google Merchandise Store. In the simulation, GA instructs what to do when trying to perform specific functions. It is here where you learn how to navigate through Google Analytics, understand both overview reports as well as full reports, how to share reports and how to set up dashboards and shortcuts. In the advanced GA sessions, you are taught how to analyze data by channel, audience, and custom reports.

Findings

When working through the simulation, the audience overview report shows audience metrics like number of users, pages visited in a session, average session duration, and bounce rate.

Pictured above is a screenshot of the audience overview report. The audience of the page was primarily new users and the primary language spoken is English.

Majority of the people that visited the site speak English. 65.63% of people spoke English from the United States. This is shown lower in the report as it shows different languages and the percentage of visitors that speak each language.

Conclusion

Whether you’re someone who loves or hates numbers, GA turns everyone into a friend of analytics. Google Analytics has taught me the value and importance of understanding data and what it can do for any company I may work for in the future.