Affiliate Tips: A Google Analytics Intelligence Briefing
30-11-2020
Affiliate marketers know that Google Analytics is more than just a single tool—it’s a veritable treasure trove of capabilities that deliver a more complete understanding of marketing campaigns. Logging on to Google Analytics is not unlike famed (fictional) MI6 agent James Bond paying a visit to Q and his bustling lab of gadgets.
While Google Analytics won’t turn your car into a submarine or laser open a door, it will give you the data and reports you need to help run and improve your campaigns. At first glance it can be a bit overwhelming, but we’ve assembled a few useful tricks that will leave you with a view to a killer campaign strategy.
- Know Your Objectives by Setting Goals
Setting goals is important—and what’s great about Google Analytics is that you don’t just need to just write your goals on a whiteboard. Google Analytics has tools for setting goals so you can measure your KPIs with your goals in sight right there on the dashboard.
Google Analytics goals let you focus on specific metrics that are important to your strategy.
Here’s how you can set up goals in Google Analytics:
- Sign in to Google Analytics and go to the website you’d like to set goals for
- Go to the Admin panel, then go to the view column, and select goals
- Select the button that says ‘Create a New Goal’
From there, you can create goals that focus on metrics like pages per session, duration, or destination. You can also create goals for certain events, like the clicking of a CTA.
These goals will help you stay on target for your objects. They’re useful because you get to control them, making these goals for your eyes only.
- Customize Your Dashboards
Even though Google Analytics is used by millions, it can still feel unique to you with features that let you customize it to your preferred data metrics. You can create multiple dashboards that are set in ways to help you follow your key performance indicators.
How you’d like to customize your dashboard is up to you. There are pre-created Google Analytics dashboard forms that you can select or download that focus on segmentations like SEO, social media, landing pages, and more to put a world of analytics at your fingertips.
But if you are someone for whom the world is not enough, you can build your own customized dashboard by selecting which widgets and data sets can be viewed. Either dashboard will put you in the driver’s seat of your site’s Google Analytics.
- View Critical Reports
With all the effort of setting up your goals and creating dashboards to view your most important data sets, it becomes essential to keep a close eye on your data reports. There are steps you can take to get Google Analytics to email you specific reports that you want to keep tabs on.
Similarly useful for reviewing your data sets is the ability to compare different data sets, which can help you better understand what is happening with your traffic and site visitor behaviour. Comparisons can shine a light on which of your strategies are worth pouring more attention into, and which ones you should live and let die.
You can access these comparisons by using the “Compare To” checkbox on Google Analytics to review past reports and current data sets. Seeing how you are faring compared to past numbers will give you a crystal-clear view of whether or not you’re on the right track.
- Monitor What People Are Searching For
Google Analytics can share plenty of metrics about how many people visit your site, how long they stay on it, and what pages they visit. As useful as those metrics are, they can’t quite tell you what your site visitors are thinking. Fortunately, your search bar can do just that.
What people search for on your site is another level of insight: it can tell you what might be especially important to visitors. By visiting “Site Search” and “Search Terms” in your Google Analytics, you’ll get a concrete view of what your audience is interested in. Getting clear data on your audience’s search habits gives you a solid foundation to make changes, which is better than playing guessing games and chasing a spectre of an idea about what your audience wants.
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