Since the birth of the internet and the rise of digital marketing, having a solid online presence has never become more critical. But today, having a website isn’t enough, as it’s equally important to understand how your website performs and how you can make significant changes to improve it. To do that, you need Google Analytics.

Google Analytics can be an incredibly effective tool for business owners. It collects large amounts of data about user behavior and traffic on your website. With it, you can make better business decisions and take your business to the next level.

This critical tool also allows you to measure your website’s performance by generating key performance indicators relevant to your website’s execution. This can help you achieve your business goals. Whether to scale, expand, or become the gold standard in customer experience, an analytics tool can assist you.  

Many companies also opt for website optimization software like Hotjar besides the integrated web analytics tool. It gives a more detailed and comprehensive report with more advanced features like heatmaps, session recordings, and user feedback.

It’s ideal for enterprises that want to elevate their user engagement on the website since it helps identify areas of friction and optimize the user experience. If you’re contemplating between Google Analytics vs. Hotjar, you may check online reviews comparing them to get the best recommendations.

However, while the amount of data you have access to with Google Analytics is impressive, you do not have to track every single thing it can present you with. In fact, attempting to do so is likely to end up being a waste of time and energy with no tangible results.

So, what key metrics should you pay attention to in Google Analytics? You will find the answer to that question in the article below. Once you are done reading, using Google Analytics to grow your business should become a whole lot easier!

First, it is essential to establish what a metric is. According to search engine optimization experts at Widoczni, a Google Analytics metric is a quantitative measurement of a website’s performance. For example, it could be how many times a particular page was visited or how much time people spent on it.

While Google Analytics gives you access to more than one hundred metrics, only three types of the said metrics are actually helpful for tracking growth.

Google Analytics metrics that you should track

Conversions

In short, conversions are actions that convert website visitors into subscribers, leads, or customers. These might include making a purchase, submitting a form, or signing up for a newsletter.

In the latest version of Google Analytics, GA4, these key actions are labeled as conversion events.

The Google Analytics interface makes it possible to categorize existing events as conversions, set up different conversion events, and dig into conversion metrics with the help of detailed reports.

By keeping an eye on them, you can easily track where your customers are coming from and what paths they tend to follow once they reach your website.

Later on, you can use that data to monitor whether your website visitors are successfully moving through your sales funnel.

To better track conversion, you can set up conversion goals on your analytics tool, which will automatically track it. The insights you generate can be beneficial in helping you adjust your strategies accordingly to help you meet your goals.

User engagement

In Google Analytics, user engagement metrics help monitor visitors’ actions on your website. By studying these actions, you should be able to develop a much clearer understanding of their customer journey and develop better ways to keep your customers engaged.

There is a wide range of metrics related to user engagement you could track. Ideally, you should go for the ones that match your business type and goals.

The most valuable metrics to track include average session duration, bounce rate, sessions per user, and conversion rate. Aside from these, you could also track cart abandonment rate, customer churn rate, and traffic sources.

When deciding which metrics to track, consider your target audience and campaign objectives. Doing so should help you determine which metrics are of utmost importance to you and which ones are not worth paying attention to.

Users

The users metric in Google Analytics tracks the number of people who visited your website during a specific period of time. These people are then divided into new users and returning users.

Tracking this metric should give you an idea of whether your marketing campaigns are bringing in website traffic and contributing to the growth of your business. Just keep in mind that the data it gives you might not be as accurate as you want it to be.

The reason for that is simple. The first time someone visits your website, they are assigned a unique identifier. This identifier helps Google Analytics differentiate between new and returning users. If they revisit your website later, they will be labeled as a returning user.

However, there are some instances where a returning user can still be counted as a new user, although they have already visited your website. For example, they might have visited your website on different devices or browsers.

Nevertheless, the data that this metric can provide you is quite valuable. While it is not one hundred percent accurate, it is a reliable indicator of how successful you are at generating website traffic.

Tracking Google Analytics metrics — best practices

Have a reason for tracking something

One of the most common mistakes people make when using Google Analytics is tracking metrics without a clear reason for it. If you generate reports on a regular basis and have no way to relate the said reports to your business, you are wasting your time and energy.

So, before you start tracking a particular metric, explain to yourself why you are doing it. Aside from that, you should identify potential ways in which it could help your business grow.

Configure everything properly

After setting up your Google Analytics account, you should make sure that you are tracking all the essential metrics. It will make the data you are getting more accurate, as well as give you access to additional tools that you could use to analyze your website traffic better.

Here is a short list of things that you should configure:

• set up and start tracking events,
• start tracking campaigns,
• set up e-commerce analytics,
• set up the site search feature,
• enable interests and demographics reports,
• start tracking site speed and keywords.

Create custom dashboards

You should create a few custom dashboards to get the most out of using Google Analytics. For starters, create one or two that focus solely on the metrics important to your business goals.

That way, you will no longer have to waste time looking for the data you need most, switching between different tabs and tools. Everything you need will be compiled into one tab, making it easier for you to stay on top of things.

In conclusion

To sum up, Google Analytics is a handy tool for business owners. Still, it can also be quite confusing and off-putting. The amount of data it can provide you with and its technical jargon can make you feel overwhelmed, to say the least.

Luckily, you do not need to know the ins and outs of each and every metric in there. Instead, to grow your business, you could focus on just a few key metrics, such as the ones related to conversion, user engagement, and users in general.

While keeping track of that data can be tiring and boring, remember that it is definitely worth the effort. It will aid you in making better decisions as a business owner and give you a quick and easy way to monitor the growth of your business.

Google Data Studio is an excellent online platform that converts data into personalized and customizable detailed reports. The visualization it provides makes the report easy to comprehend while being an informative one.

What makes it more excellent is that data from different sources can be easily integrated into it under a dashboard and it promotes interaction, collaboration, and easy sharing. The tool is also free which anyone can use anytime and anywhere.

On the other hand, Google Analytics Report is another great online tool that allows users to track and monitor different metrics under a single dashboard. It obtains metric data and it can be visualized and comprehensively reported by using Google Data Studio.

Why Should Analytics Data Be Visualized In Data Studio?

Analytics data can perform the following when paired up with Data Studio:

• Connected easily to the different data source
• Collaborated along with other reports with team members
• Visualized with presentable tables, charts, and graphs
• Speed up data creation processes
• Shared along with the user’s insights to team members and other personnel

How Is Google Analytics Report Visualized With Google Data?

Introducing Google Data Studio

The picture presented above shows the home interface of Google Data Studio. To create a new report, use a google analytics dashboard template if you are still a novice.

There are already ready-made templates for creating a report for Google Analytics Data. Simply choose the desired template among the many templates prepared by the Data Studio Team.

Integrating Data Sources In Data Studio

After choosing a template, you will need to choose a data source. A data source is what will be integrated into Data Studio to create a dashboard and report.

The data comes in numerical metrics and forms that will be turned into an informative report and presentation by Data Studio.

As shown in the picture above, Data Studio has a lot of built-in sources that can serve as data sources, including Google Analytics.

Adding Google Analytics As The Data Source

Clicking on Google Analytics as your data source will show you a set of data that you can choose from to integrate into Data Studio.

Google Data Studio Visualization Tools

After you have chosen your data set, it’s time to explore Data Studio’s visualization tools that you will be using for your report. Data Studio provides numerous ways to design and construct your reports which might be a bit complicated if you are still a beginner.

As mentioned before, you should start with a template to make it easier for you.

After you have chosen your template, know that you can easily edit and construct it accordingly for further adjustments.

From there, you can make use of the toolbar above the template. The interface is easy to function as Google Docs. Clicking on the “Insert” button in the toolbar will show you numerous visualization tools that you might like to use.

These are the following visualization tools that are commonly used by Data Studio users:

• Time Series Chart
• Column Chart
• Combo Chart
• Pie Chart
• Table
• Bubble Map
• Filled Map
• Heat Map
• Geo Chart
• Scoreboard
• Scatter Chart
• Bullet Chart
• Stacked Area Chart
• Pivot Table
• Treemap
• Gauge

Moreover, you can add lines, text, images, and other shapes.

You can then edit different filter controls and adjust the data options. All your data inputs and other options can be seen on the right side of the interface. There are lots of options to choose from so explore them.

For example, the provided picture above shows the data input options on the right side after clicking the chart. You can adjust the options accordingly.

Strategizing The Report

It is important to take note that reports should not be done without any strategic designs or structure. Analytics reports have a lot of data so you should know what are the important questions and areas of your business that should be emphasized in the report.

More Designing Tips For Analytics Report In Data Studio

Other than the data input options of a certain visualization tool, it also has a style option. This feature allows you to customize and design the appearance of your chosen visualization tool.

Designing includes the type and orientation of the visualization tool, such as a chart, font, background color, border width, border shadow, and header.

Here are more design tips for your report:

• Prioritize clarity of presentation of data over aesthetics.
• Make use of grid lines to emphasize and observe proper spacing to avoid confusion of data.
• Know your target audience and construct your reports accordingly.
• Label all data clearly. Provide brief explanations if necessary.
• Make your reports as simple but efficient as possible.

Summary On Visualizing Google Analytics Report In Google Data Studio

1. Create an account in Google Data Studio.
2. Prepare your data from Google Analytics.
3. Choose a template. (You can design your report by clicking on the “Blank Report” option in the home interface.)
4. Select the data source for Data Studio to process.
5. Edit the template accordingly. Make use of the visualization tools.
6. Explore other settings to further improve your report design.

Conclusion

Google Data Studio is one of the most excellent data report designing tools which you can use for google ads also. It is a user-friendly software and anyone can use it, anytime and anywhere.

It is also fun to use and complication-free but effective and powerful software to use. You can share your final report with your team members by utilizing the edit and share button found on the Data Studio interface.

Start visualizing your Analytics report with Data Studio now.

Author Bio:

Author Name: Sidhant Mehandru

Siddhant is a data analytics professional and runs a consulting agency name Eaglytics that specializes in providing end-to-end data services under one roof. His firm primarily works with digital marketing agencies and provides marketing analytics and insights services. Before this, he worked at JPMorgan Chase as a business analyst and graduated from the one of the top engineering colleges in India. Outside of work, he’s a hardcore audiophile, loves playing golf and is a licensed scuba diverл

Social Link: LinkedIn, Facebook

Continuous innovative discoveries are one of the characteristics of the modern era. Every year there are more and more opportunities related to a particular industry. Using them to the full, you will be able to reveal the unknown facets of the virtual space, embodying the most unrealistic desires.

Today you can carry out almost any transaction online, saving energy and time. Various marketing analytics tools will make your tasks even more efficient. Read this article to understand which of the latter you should consider first.

Marketing Software That Are Worth Paying Attention

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For this reason, it is necessary to start your work online by installing several tools responsible for your safety. The latter includes VPN for Firefox and other browsers that encrypt your network history.

Not to waste time looking for reliable resources to get acquainted with, see this here and deal with various details. By digging deeper into this topic, you can get the maximum.

A diversity of analytics tools for marketing is an indispensable component in the arsenal of representatives of several areas of specialization. Their modus operandi consists of:

• analyzing;
• measuring;
• and maximizing.

The latter functions affect different strategies to improve efficiency, providing the best return on investment. The primary objective is to make it easier and better to do business with the needs of consumers in mind.

If we say in detail, marketing software helps to collect data from various resources while synthesizing the latter and dividing them into categories. Thanks to this, you will deal with trends regarding both customer preferences and the state of the market as a whole.

Valuable materials intelligently interpreted for further steps contribute to developing your strategy with step-by-step actions and considering unplanned changes.

However, this is only a fragment of the factors determining the significance of data analytics tools. Despite this, an abundance of the latter and the specifics can confuse when choosing the most suitable ones.

During its implementation, it is necessary to pay attention to the presence of a free trial and other features. Such features expand the range of benefits offered.

We have put together a list of the best marketing software to save you the hassle of wasting time learning about their specifics.

Smartlook

The company offers a range of tools for tracking users’ behavior on websites and mobile applications. Over the years, this service has undergone many changes, becoming one of the most popular in its industry.

The list of features starts with the ability to try it for free and includes many pleasant bonuses. The knowledge base and blog allow you to follow the changing of the service as well as regular updates on official social media.

SemRush

This platform includes a spectrum of tools related to analytics advertising, social media, mobile marketing, and so on.

A huge base of keywords and domains will help you make your website stand out from millions of others by comparing it to your competitors and offering innovative promotion solutions.

There is also a free trial with plenty of offers, allowing everyone to choose the best option. Affordable prices are an equally pleasant component of the service. The latter demonstrates that professionalism and customer trust are the priorities.

More than ten million experts have already used the services of this platform and were satisfied, while world-famous companies also expressed their respect.

The Domo Business Cloud

This SaaS platform is the best choice for experts in marketing and management. It covers collecting data from various resources in one place, business intelligence, creating data applications, and much more.

Using data analytics tools, you will be able to develop the latest strategies to work on improving all elements of it in no time.

In addition to this, the cloud-native platform will allow every member of your organization to participate in improving the quality of work using only email.

It includes developing new paths and making the most effective decisions based on the analysis of the collected data. You can view demos and other materials on the official website to learn more about its activities.

BuzzBoard

The company specializes in providing a variety of services related to sales and marketing operations. Using the latter will allow you to develop new strategies for doing business by gaining access to a database of SMBs that is amazing in its scope.

Diversity of features, including installing a Google Chrome extension, integrations, and so on, make it even more useful.

Hubspot

The company rightfully occupies a place among the best marketing software, the features of which have long gone beyond an upscale CRM system.

Even if you decide to limit yourself to the free version, using the platform for the first time will open up a whole world of possibilities. One of the highlights of this service is its integration with many other systems.

The company specializes in providing the ability to store valuable materials about organizations and contacts. You can also track the network history of each of the latter by checking his activity on the site.

In addition, it is possible to assign calls and communicate with customers. At the same time, the understandable interface will allow you not to spend effort on researching different features of the site, immediately proceeding to work.

Mixpanel

Turning to this service, you will receive high-quality products designed by a team of experts who know their business. Different data analytics tools will not cause difficulty in using them qualitatively performing their functions.

The reports offered by the platform will help you forget about user drop-off forever by dealing with all the shortcomings. The result of this work will be the identification of all the roots of evil, which is the first step to improving the performance of your organization.

Among other things, the company offers different features that expand your knowledge base and ensure understanding of the specifics of the available functions.

Among them are the user community, blog, events hub, customer stories, testimonials, product updates, and many other elements that will make your time more enjoyable.

ClickDimensions

Next on our list is the marketing automation service tied to Microsoft Dynamics. It enables a range of analytics tools for marketing to help attract and retain customers. Here you will find applications, services, and analytics that will help you grow and increase interest in your organization.

Representatives of the company took care of ensuring the protection of all transactions, which occupies the highest position in the list of the most significant aspects.

Every day, the platform gives thousands of customers invaluable marketing experience, opening up all the ways to achieve their goals.

Google Analytics

This service from a world-famous company covers a spectrum of functions for the comprehensive analysis of mobile applications and websites. The collected data will form the basis for statistical reports on the audience of the selected resource.

Despite the fact that this marketing software is quite difficult to learn, understanding all the nuances of use and regularly honing the acquired skills, you will be able to compete with the true masters of their craft.

Act-on Software

For almost fifteen years, a platform has been offering a variety of analytics tools for marketing. It does not matter how long your organization has been working or what field you are an expert in. Everyone will find here something that will suit his taste.

You will be able to achieve heights in the shortest possible time, while other services need months to implement the latter.

Familiarization with the history presented on the official website confirms the professionalism of the platform and the tireless work of specialists to eliminate any shortcomings. Remember that you can always ask supporting agents for a hint or clarify anything that interests you.

Adobe Analytics

The last company on our list provides different abilities that are as good as the above. In addition to a thorough analysis, plenty of features include predictive tools and much more.

The features are interconnected, eliminating any reason to doubt the quality of the service.

A few more words

Every day, many innovations appear, the primary task of which is to facilitate work in a particular industry, brightening up any activity. However, it is necessary to give preference to reliable tools that can not only do the tasks better but also provide reliable protection.

To implement the latter, this can be dealt with with the capabilities provided by the VeePN and others.

We analyzed in detail the features of different marketing software. The best of them became the part of the list compiled by us, guaranteed to help you improve and promote your business.

Save your time and check out our extensive analysis to pick the best analytics tools for marketing.

Performance marketing, or performance-based advertising, is the concept in digital marketing of optimizing your marketing campaigns depending on the desired results – the number of sales, clicks, subscriptions, or overall interactions you aim at.

Over the past couple of years, there has been a lot of interest in performance marketing as a new strategy for customer acquisition, engagement, and conversion, so it is definitely an approach worth exploring.

One of the most significant benefits of performance marketing is its cost-effectiveness compared to traditional marketing methods – it allows you to pay for results achieved instead of paying in advance without a guaranteed return on investment.

In addition, you can find a great variety of handy software tools that make it more manageable – from AnyTrack for convenient attribution reporting to end-to-end solutions like Fintel Connect for managing partnerships.

In the article below, we explore how performance marketing works to help you make the most out of it.

How performance marketing works

In order to stop wasting money and get the most out of each advertising channel, it is crucial to take into account the main components of performance marketing.

These include in-depth data analysis for determining campaign goals, selecting digital channels, developing campaign strategy, and measuring and optimizing your campaign to tackle the possible pitfalls and get the best results.

Here is an overview of each of the essential steps of performance marketing:

1. Data analysis

First of all, it is necessary to carefully analyze the company’s business indicators, as well as the product’s advantages and disadvantages, relevant market and competition – dynamics, trends, and forecasts.

This way, you will get a better understanding of how to improve the interaction between your company and its existing and potential customers and determine what to address in your campaign.

However, there are some more factors you need to consider in your in-depth data analysis, including:

• your target audience and where these users come from (e.g., contextual advertising ads, organic search, social networks, direct link, etc.),
• search results on target keywords,
• current conversion rate,
• transaction sequence,
• traffic sources efficiency.

2. Goal setting

Establishing goals is the starting point in developing a successful marketing campaign. Only with clear and precise goals can you select suitable advertising channels and tools, form a comprehensive strategy, and determine a budget and deadlines.

As such, the previously conducted analysis will help you establish realistic and less abstract goals, which is essential for achieving tangible results.

However, keep in mind that there are four main types of goals you should consider in your strategy:

• business goals (the company’s position in the market and its level of sales and profits),
• marketing goals (attracting new customers, increasing customer loyalty, introducing new products),
• communication goals (increasing brand awareness, stimulating sales),
• media goals (social media reach, impressions, budget, etc.).

In order to create a comprehensive marketing campaign, you should set SMART goals, meaning that they need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

For example, instead of aiming just to “increase sales,” you should formulate it more precisely – “double the number of sales of a specific product made from the website.”

3. Selection of channels

When it comes to selecting the channels for your performance marketing campaign, it would be best to diversify them. This way, you will be able to cover more campaign goals and expose your brand to a much wider audience. As a result, you can increase your campaign reach and increase your chances of success.

Some of the most effective performance marketing channels include social media marketing, native advertising, search engine marketing, banner (display) ads, and content marketing.

When deciding which one to choose, seek channels that will help you reach your target audience and suit your conversion type.

4. Campaign development and launch

You need to develop a performance marketing campaign that will appeal to your target audience in the most effective way possible. To do this, you need to determine your current customers’ and prospects’ pain points and understand how your products can solve them.

Next, you need to create relevant ads and messages to address those needs and grab your customers’ attention. The better you understand your audience and their needs, the better the content, design, and timing of your ad will be – it’s when the analysis comes in handy one more time.

As for the technical aspect of your performance marketing campaign, you should create ads’ sizes, character limits, and overall designs in accordance with a particular channel or social media platform you will be using them for.

5. Campaign measuring and optimization

After the launch of the campaign, it will begin to generate data – appeals, requests, etc. However, just counting them is not enough. It is essential to understand their quality level and how they are connected to the marketing channels you use.

Keep track of metrics and analytics to identify which of them eventually led to actual sales, how much money was spent on developing these channels, or the company’s overall profit received from these investments.

This way, you will see not only how to adjust your campaign or whether to optimize its individual channels for better results but will also be able to detect your best channels, audience segments and identify which objectives to optimize to increase your return on investment.

The bottom line

Performance marking is one of the most cost-efficient strategies you can use to attract new customers and make your business more profitable.

However, in order to make your advertising campaign effective, you need to follow several essential steps – from conducting in-depth data analysis to establishing campaign goals, developing an appealing ad copy, and measuring and optimizing the results.

While all these steps are crucial, you should pay close attention to the analysis and take it as seriously as possible, as it will be one thing you will be basing your whole campaign on.

As such, conducting a thorough analysis and drawing relevant conclusions from it will help you ensure that your performance marketing efforts will be tangible and bring you the best return on your investment. Good luck!

If you are keeping up with your website’s SEO metrics, you could be seeing a certain something called ‘DA scores’ in your reports.

And if you are a novice in the whole SEO biz, you could be a bit confused as to what these mean and how much of a value is considered good.

In this post, we are going to start at the bottom and learn what DA is, why you should measure it for your website and what checkers you can use for this purpose.

Let’s get into it.

What is domain authority?

Domain Authority is an SEO performance score developed by Moz. In simple terms, it is a way to measure the performance of a particular website in the search engine results.

According to Moz, the DA “predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages”.

DA scores can range anywhere from 0 to 100. The higher the probability of a website showing up in the results, the higher will be its Domain Authority. Let’s look at some examples to understand this a bit better.

We checked the DA score of two websites viz. Dropbox and Moz.

Both of them are internet giants, and as we can see, their DA scores are pretty whopping high.

What is the purpose and benefit of measuring DA?

Now that we know what this score actually is, let’s talk about why it is necessary to measure it for your SEO progress. Since examples are a great way to explain stuff, let’s use one here as well.

A typist knows that he can type fast. But if he does a typing test every now and then, he will know his exact word-per-minute rate. And when he regularly watches his rate, he will be able to determine whether he is doing above or below average.

Similarly, he will be able to set a target to achieve, for which he will work hard. The same goes for websites and their DA rankings. When we use the DA score to check the probability of our website’s appearance on the SERPs, we are able to quantify its performance.

We can match it with the scores of our competitors, and we can use it as a reference to see when the site’s performance is on a decline, or when it is on an increase.

Taking all of this, we come to the point that DA scores essentially let us monitor our progress in the search engine rankings.

In the next part of this article, we will look at some software that you can use to check DA in 2022. We will also try to cover some features and what makes them worth using.

7 recommended tools for checking Domain Authority

1. Prepostseo.com

If you are looking for a tool that can check the Domain Authority of multiple websites in a couple of seconds, Prepostseo.com is an awesome choice to go for.

During our experiments with this app, there were three main features that we really liked.

Pros

1. It is quick. The results are shown literally in two or three seconds. Of course, this could be affected if your internet connection is particularly slow.
2. We first tried the test with just two links. Thereafter, we added a couple more. And then we brought the number to a total of 8 links. The speed remained unaffected.
3. It gives more than just the DA score. If you are using the premium version of the app, you will get access to a whole host of useful metrics and options.
4. These include the spam score, IP address, ‘Pages in Google’ (this lets you load the link in Google’s search bar), and a ‘Guest Post List’ section where you can add URLs.
5. In the free version, these metrics and options will be shown only for the first two options. For the other URLs, you will only get the DA and PA scores.
6. URL capacity: In the premium version, you get a capacity of entering up to a whopping five hundred URLs per search.
7. The free version, however, allows for just 10.

Cons

As for the downside, there are a lot of ads on the website. If you want to use the free version and avoid spending money, you won’t be able to do it for long…in peace, at least.

2. Sure Oak SEO

Although Sure Oak SEO’s DA checker tool gives the DA score quickly and clearly, it does not give as many extra statistics and metrics as Prepostseo. It also doesn’t give the option of entering multiple URLs in one search.

Considering all this, you could be wondering why we have included it in our list, especially at number 2.

And the reason for that is that it is easy to use, and it has a no-frills design. The process goes to showing the DA process right away and that’s it.

You don’t even have to deal with any ads throughout the procedure.

Pros

1. Straight to business. There is no captcha, no annoying banners, or popups that you have to deal with when using this app.
2. You get a plain screen where you can enter the URL and then press the button to get the DA score.
3. Easy and Graphical Score Display: Instead of showing the score as a boring number, Sure Oak makes it a little pleasant on the eyes.
4. The score is displayed in a large font, placed in the center of a circular meter which fills up according to how high the DA is.
5. This little visual touch makes the user experience more enjoyable, and that is something that we think can make or break a deal when it comes to online tools.
6. No sign-up, no registration, and no downloads. With Sure Oak SEO, it’s a quick ‘go in, go out’ job.
7. You don’t have to do anything to use the tool other than adding the URL and pressing the Enter button.
8. Although it may not sound like much, reaching over to the mouse (or trackpad) and then going down to click the button can be a little arduous and annoying.

Cons

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. There is a downside to this tool as well.

The limitation on the entered URLs could be a little troubling for people who want to compare the DA of multiple websites at once.

3. Softo.org

Softo.org is a good choice for checking Domain Authority. It gives a decent number of metrics, has a nice link capacity, and is also free to use.

Although you can’t use this software for entering up to 500 URLs at one time, as was the case with Prepostseo.com, the 20-URL limit can still be quite sufficient.

As compared to Sure Oak SEO, it has a lot more features and additional stats as well.

However, the reason why it’s ranked at number 3 is the ads. Ads are, while understandable, detrimental to the user experience.

Pros

1. Stats Report: Softo.org is pretty generous when it comes to stats and metrics. Apart from the DA, you also get the PA, SS (spam score), and MR (Moz rank)
2. Downloadable Excel Report: Another great perk offered by Softo.org is the downloadable excel file.
3. This can be useful if you want to save the results of your test for later, or if you want to import them to a viewable file for sharing with someone else.
4. Exclude Same URL/Domain: By stopping the entered domains and URLs from being included in the check, you can make your results more accurate.

Cons

As we mentioned in the introduction, there are a lot of ads that you will have to deal with when using this tool.

4. Project backlinks

Project Backlinks is similar to Softo.org in that it also lets you add up to 20 URLs at one time.

However, the report does not contain as many metrics and scores. And the process also comes with the addition of a captcha verification…unlike that of Softo.org.

But, let’s not get biased. Project Backlinks is still an excellent app and it is way better than a lot of other tools in the industry. Let’s look at some reasons why:

Pros

1. Quick and Accurate: When we tested Project Backlinks with some popular domains, it gave accurate results within a single second…quite literally.
2. URL Capacity: Having a good and expansive URL capacity is something that you will appreciate if you look at some other basic tools on the net.
3. A lot of tools let you work with just a single URL at a time. Others may increase it to 2 or 3.
4. But with Project Backlinks, you can enter up to 20 links in the same search.
5. No Registration or Subscription: Although we have mentioned this point before as well, it does not mean it should stop being appreciable.
6. How awesome is it that you can just go to the site, enter a link, get the results, and say bye-bye?
7. You don’t have to worry about receiving annoying emails or promotional messages…which is something that almost always happens after you sign up.

Cons

One con that we found a little disturbing to the user experience was the captcha verification.

If there weren’t some tools that allowed you to search without first doing the captcha, we wouldn’t have mentioned this con because then it would have been an industry standard.

But since there are many apps that don’t require you to run a captcha before doing the check, it becomes a con that has to be highlighted.

5. Dapachecker.org

With Dapachecker.org, you don’t have to worry about navigating to a particular page or a section on the website to use the DA checker tool. There are some sites like Prepostseo.com that feature a lot of different tools and apps.

To use the DA checker, you have to first go through the listing and pick the particular tool, or you have to search with specific keywords on Google. This hassle doesn’t exist with Dapachecker.org since the site automatically and by default opens up to the Domain Authority checking tool.

Pros

1. Quick Load Time and Results: Aesthetic and dynamic websites are great and all, but when it comes to using tools, we live by the rule of ‘simple is best’.
2. The less snazzy a website is, the quicker it will load up on the browser. And this is something that dapachecker.org does pretty well.
3. And the quick loading times aren’t just restricted to the website boot. The test results also get generated in a matter of seconds.
4. Three Different Metrics: With dapachecker.org, you can get your website’s DA, PA, and spam score all in one check.
5. Accurate: When we checked dapachecker.org with our standard experimental searches, it gave accurate results in all three scores.

Cons

Although the speed and simplicity of this app are more than enough to qualify it as a top DA checking tool, we do have to stick to protocol and mention a con here.

And that is the ads. To be honest, our mention of ads repeatedly in this post could be making you just as annoyed as actual ads on a website…but we do need to be critical.

Conclusion

Checking the Domain Authority of your website can be a good way to understand how well it is performing in the search results.

DA scores are rated on a scale of 0-100. The higher this value is, the higher will be the chances of the website appearing in the SERPs.

If you want to check the DA of your website, you will have to use a Domain Authority checking tool.

There are a lot of these that you can use on the internet. If you are trying to find one, the five recommendations listed above can be a good place to start.

The more successful analysis and marketing are for a company, the better results it can achieve in terms of sales and recognition.

Marketing can go a long way for a business and help it grow tremendously. Still, the success of marketing depends on the analysis conducted in its planning and execution.

In other words, these two make the recipe for your business’ success online. Let’s see how they work.

Market analysis: the what, the why and the how

Analyzing your market and things like your buyer persona, their behaviors, the competition, and the current trends is vital to your marketing success. This involves the collection of data that will help you create a product or service, offer it to customers, and form your marketing strategies.

Since there’s a lot you can learn about the market, there are all sorts of analyses to be conducted. You need to monitor the market trends, figure out if your product idea can work in the market, and learn how people will respond to it. It also tells you what people need and what they’d like to hear.

That is what market analysis is.

The analysis is what helps you get ahead of your competition and gives your brand some value. People are far more likely to buy from you if you offer them what they want and need. You can’t really guess it – you need to research it to make sure that your strategies work.

This is why you need to do a market analysis. We’ll get more into it later.

The how is the trickiest part. When you do the research, you need to consider many things. You need to follow the social media marketing trends, learn how to present your product in an engaging way, figure out where to put the content for people to see it, etc.

Truth is, behind every successful company on any market nowadays, there’s a history of a lot of market research – both on customers and competitors. You’d have to be the luckiest person in the world to be able to make the best marketing for your brand on a regular basis – and have all your ideas pay off.

This is why we test ideas before we offer them, analyze the success of what we’ve made, and edit our strategies to attract more customers.

Businesses use a variety of tools and tricks at different stages of their research and marketing process. They don’t just perform research, form a strategy, and forget all about it. They work on this constantly to improve and succeed on the market.

Still, you have to get started first. So, let’s discuss the how.

How to conduct a market analysis

No matter how many guides and tricks you hear about, there’s no pre-written rule for analysis and research that will guarantee your business success. Your strategies will have to be adapted to your target audience, where you want to market your products, what types of products you have, etc.

Generally speaking, a market analysis must include the following:

• Analyzing your buyer personas and target groups
• Evaluating the quality of your product
• Determining if you have the right price for your offering
• Analyzing your advertising options and strategies
• Analyzing the sales you are making
• Analyzing customer experience and satisfaction levels

Whatever option you choose to get to this data, the results will determine your next moves and strategies.

In all those types of testing and analysis you can make today, one is applicable in every business and for every product, and can be irreplaceable in terms of research strategies. That is concept testing.

Concept testing and how to do it

Concept testing is what you use to validate your products or services, the design, and the marketing ideas you have early on. This is a perfect way to ensure that you minimize future expenses and errors, and plan for your future marketing strategies.

If you take a look at this concept testing guide by Maze, you’ll learn how to run a concept test, craft a survey, and get a pretty good idea of the information you’ll gather in the process.

There’s one thing that’s even better about this – you can actually use Maze to do all the testing with minimal effort and a bit of customization. The tool is popular for many different tests and analyses, but concept testing is surely something to strongly consider to begin with.

Source

Why you should analyze the market

The time came to go back to the thing that is essential to your success – understanding how important analysis and research are for you. If done properly i.e. if you use the right methods and collect accurate information, you can make your business grow tremendously.

This is a great way to achieve your goals – perhaps even the only way to do it. Here are a few reasons why you should analyze and collect data:

Better understanding of your customers

Market analysis will stop you from guessing what your customers need, where they hang out, whether or not they’ll respond to your marketing – and how. It’s a technique through which you can build the profile of your buyer persona (check HootSuite’s guide on how to do this).

It can help you determine the size of the market i.e. how many people you can reach. Lastly, market analysis will tell you about the specifics of your target audience i.e. their income (a great way to make a decision about your prices), their social media usage (learn where to promote your products), etc.

Analyze the competition

Your competition can help you a lot in shaping your marketing strategies and building your brand. You shouldn’t steal their ideas or their content, but you can definitely get inspired by the things that work with your target audience.

Successful brands in your niche are doing something well, which can be useful when you’re attempting to reach the same people.

Moreover, analyzing the competition can show you how people will react when you introduce something new to the market. It will also tell you what their weaknesses are and help you avoid them before you make the same mistakes.

Lastly, you can use it to determine the gaps in the market i.e. find the opportunity to offer something that is not there already.

Test your products before launching them

Product development, marketing, selling – everything costs a lot. If you have to fix it afterward, tweak your strategies, invest in repairing the opinions of your customers – that costs even more.

Market analysis can help you avoid all this and give you a higher chance of succeeding. If you know what people expect and want, how they would respond to your product or service when it’s introduced, you can fix and tweak it and make it the best it can be.

Data-based marketing: how it helps your business

When you have all the information on hand and know what people want, where you can find them, and more, it’s time to invest in your marketing.

In today’s digital world, not investing in digital marketing is a grave mistake. The online world gives businesses access to a wider audience than any other form of marketing can. It is also where many people shop, research, and make decisions nowadays.

If you do it right, you can expect amazing things thanks to marketing. That being said, here are the kinds of marketing you should be paying attention to these days.

Search Engine Optimization

Otherwise known as SEO, this is the key to marketing these days. Without SEO, you won’t be easily found online. In a busy market where everyone is trying to reach the audience, not showing up in search results is disastrous for your brand.

This is the starting point of your marketing strategy and the best way to bring success to your business.

Imagine that – you have a great marketing strategy thanks to all that research and rank higher in search engines. On the first page of search engine results, the top 5 results account for 67.60% of all the clicks!

Source

Great SEO marketing strategies can spread the word about your business faster than anything else. You can get hundreds to thousands to millions of customers with the help of it, but only if you do it right.

If you know little of SEO and want to get started, Moz’s beginner SEO guide is a great starting point.

Marketing on different channels

You’ll be doing tons of marketing across different platforms, by using different tools, and at different stages of your journey as a business. Right now, the most prospective ways for growing your business via marketing include:

• Social media marketing and advertising
• Pay per click advertising
• Email marketing
• Blogging

Wrapping it up

Every good strategy starts with analysis and is followed by marketing. Analysis and marketing go together and cannot work any other way. You use marketing to put the analysis results into action and you use analysis to get the idea of how to do your marketing. Together, they can bring enormous success to your business.

Still, whether you are looking to start a new business or expand an existing one, you need to analyze huge chunks of data. That is why you should consider web scraping.

What is web scraping?

Also referred to as data scraping, web scraping is the process of importing information from an online website into a local file on your device. These days, web scraping has become popular since it offers an easy and efficient way to get data on your computer from various online sources.

What is it used for?

Overall, data scraping is mainly used for the following:

1. Price Intelligence

The most popular use for web scraping is price intelligence which involves collecting pricing information from competing sites. The collected data can then help businesses make better pricing decisions.

2. Market Research

If you are running a business, you probably recognize the need for market research. After all, marketing should only be driven by accurate information that is highly insightful. So, by engaging in web scraping, you can get market pricing, market trend analysis, and research development.

Where is web scraping used?

Of course, aside from these, web scraping also has numerous other applications. Here are some practical examples of where web scraping is used:

1. In the retail industry

There are various ways through which data from web scraping can be used in the retail industry. For example, it can be used in competitor price monitoring since manually tracking prices can be tedious and time-consuming.

2. In financial research

The applications of web scraping can also extend to the financial field. In this case, data from web scraping is used in market data aggregation to yield meaningful intelligence of equity research. Moreover, it’s also used for extracting financial statements to evaluate the health of an enterprise and offer advice.

3. In Marketing and sales

Aside from this, data obtained from web scraping can also help derive data-driven marketing, which can be more successful. In addition, it also helps in content marketing by collecting data from various sites such as TechCrunch and Twitter.

Overall, web scraping is used in the marketing and sales industry for lead generation, competitive analysis, and SEO monitoring.

4. In Data Science

Data science also uses web scraping to yield accurate time analytics to offer timely insights as they are needed.

In fact, the real-time score is also essential for financial institutions as they can quickly make decisions on credit matters. It also helps with predictive analysis and natural language processing.

5. In risk management

Lastly, you can’t deny that there is always a waiting risk in every business, especially when dealing with new clients or employees.

Because of this, business people use web scraping to run background checks on new members through different data sources like legal databases, sanction lists, and corporate registers rather than ignoring the threat.

Types of data that can be collected through scraping

A common rule for most web scraping tools is that any information that can be copy-pasted from a website can be scraped. However, you can also scrape any data within the website’s HTML source, even if it is not visible.

In fact, you can scrape the following types of data from websites:

• Texts
• Links
• Images (through the Image URL)
• HTML codes (both inner and outer)
• Any other information on the site which is hidden

Sadly, most people assume that only links and texts can be scraped. This is why it’s best to note that you can also scrape images from a website if you need them. Read this blog post to learn how to scrape images from a website using Python.

How it can be helpful

Overall, there are many ways web scraping can be helpful. For example, it helps in the following areas:

1. Conducting research

A simple use for web scraping is finding data and extracting it into one document. Therefore, if you have identified a web page that contains an abundance of data you imagine will be helpful for you, an easy way to get all that information is by web scraping.

Furthermore, it is an easy process that you can make a routine if you often conduct research.

2. Gathering disparate data

Another primary advantage of web scraping is it offers you a chance to gather different data in one place. Crawling the internet, taking unstructured data from other sources, and collecting it in one place are advantages you cannot overlook.

Aside from this, suppose you have various websites monitored by different people. In that case, you can easily use web scraping to combine the sites into one feed.

3. Outputting an XML feed

Lastly, you can find web scraping particularly helpful if you need to feed product information from your site to another like Google Shopping. Outputting XML feed is essential, especially if you are in the e-commerce sector.

By using web scraping, you can automate the laborious process you previously used to update your product details, especially if you restock frequently.

Conclusion

With the internet continuously growing, businesses are becoming more and more dependent on data. As a result, data now acts as the basis on which crucial decisions about a business are made. In this case, web scraping offers access to this data anonymously, regardless of your location.

Overall, it is becoming clear that entrepreneurs who are making use of web scraping stand out from their competitors. Therefore, it can be a good idea for your company to use web scraping to your advantage and boost your business.

That being said, simply having a website is not enough when it comes to using the internet effectively. You need to ensure that you are making use of digital marketing and using the information obtained through different strategies to improve future campaigns.

Popular forms of Digital Marketing

There are many different means of digital marketing available, the most effective of which are going to vary depending on what your business does and how you want to convey that message to your prospective audience. Some of the more popular forms of digital marketing include but are not limited to:

Pay-per-click Advertising

This is a very useful means of marketing that is used to get as many people onto your website as possible. Essentially, you would pay someone such as Amazon or Google Ads every time an advert link to your website is clicked (hence the name).

You’re more than likely to have seen this kind of advertising in action as every time you search something on Google, the ads that appear first are all using pay-per-click.

Search Engine Optimization

Unlike pay-per-click, you won’t have to pay anything for SEO, but it does require a lot more time and attention. Essentially, this is where you optimize your website so that more and more people visit it.

This can be done by utilizing specific keywords that pertain to your business and the industry that you operate in. If you are doing this right then it means that when people search for a specific term that relates to your website, your businesses site will appear first. 

There are a few ways to optimize your website, firstly by writing good copy that uses the keywords you are hoping to rank for. You can also start a blog and create pieces that center around your industry and again incorporate those keywords.

All of these can be effective, but they require monitoring and updating if you are to use them efficiently. 

Social Media Marketing

The rise in social media marketing is well and truly underway and as such it is no surprise that businesses are using it to expand their reach. This can come in the form of paying for ads on social media, such as those that are found on Facebook and Instagram that many people come across.

Alternatively, marketing on social media can mean simply having a presence and communicating with your audience over social media. You will be able to answer any questions that clients have and also effectively promote new products that you are hoping to sell to people.

There are a lot of different social media apps so you will need to try and work out which one is going to be most beneficial to your organization as a whole. 

How to keep track of how your Marketing is doing

Of course, it is one thing using some of the above methods in order to market your business, but it is another thing entirely using them effectively.

There are a lot of businesses who view marketing strategies as simply throwing a lot of different ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks, but this is not an effective way to go about it.

Instead, you should be making the most of analytics in order to fully understand what strategies are working for you and which ones need more work. 

What are analytics and why are they important?

Marketing analytics are essentially the study of all of the data that is collected as a result of a business’s varying marketing tactics. They are used in order to assess which methods are the most effective and to also understand patterns in consumer behavior, regional preferences, a customer’s creative preference and much more. 

In the current landscape of marketing, where the digital world is more important than ever, having a clear understanding of your marketing analytics is absolutely vital.

Customers are now very picky when it comes to looking at branded media and choosing what they are most interested in engaging with. As such, understanding analytics and using them in order to create targeted ads based on your audience’s interests has never been more important.

You also need to make sure that these ads are being displayed on the right channels, be it social media, Google or elsewhere. 

What organizations look at when they study analytics

There are going to be many things that organizations study when they are looking at their businesses’ analytics. These will vary depending on what you are hoping to achieve with your marketing; however, some of the most popular items include: 

Which online campaigns tend to bring the most traffic and conversions

In order to effectively market your business, it is important that you have a full understanding of which specific online campaigns actually generate the most business.

This will mean that when it comes to running future campaigns, you are going to be able to run them in a way that is sure to generate clicks onto your website. 

You will need to track all of the different ads and places where you have promoted your business in order to have a better understanding of this and once it is done, you will be in a much better position when it comes to running future campaigns. 

Determine the location of your visitors

One of the benefits with establishing a strong online presence with your business is that you are able to market to customers from all over the world. You can use analytics in order to track where your customers are located. With this information you will be able to do a couple of things: 

• If a large proportion of your visitors are located somewhere you do not predominantly deliver to, then you are going to be able to change your metrics so that your targeted ads are only visible to people who will actually be able to engage with your business. 
• On the other hand, if you are getting a lot of traffic from one specific area, you could expand your business so that you are working more prominently in said area. Organizing delivery has never been more straightforward thanks to the likes of Shiply. Shiply provides a load board where your delivery job will be posted and then a range of different drivers will be able to bid for the work. This means getting stock over to the regions where business seems most popular is very simple. 

Learn what people are searching to get to your website

If you are using SEO marketing (as was previously discussed), then in order to create future posts, you are going to want to understand what people are actually using as a search term in order to come onto your site in the first place.

Choosing keywords can be tough but by tracking what is successful through analytics, you will make developing future content a lot more straightforward. 

How to begin measuring your analytics

In order to begin measuring your analytics and using said measurements in a way that will benefit your business, there are a few things you’re going to have to do. These include: 

Understand clearly what it is you are actually hoping to measure

Measuring analytics can be quite overwhelming because there is such a huge amount out there that you can consider. In order to begin measuring efficiently, you should first have a full understanding as to what you are hoping to keep track of.

Are these the amount of leads you have captured? Your conversion rates? The location of your customers? Know this before going into the measuring process. 

Establish what a successful benchmark will look like

You are also going to need to know what you would actually consider to be a successful campaign. There is no use going into your measuring stage if you don’t know what results you are actually going to be happy with.

Your success is going to depend on what you are hoping to achieve. For instance, if you want to improve your overall brand awareness, then if you have seen an increase in engagement, this can be deemed a success. 

Assess how your organization is currently doing

You will also need to have an understanding as to how your company is doing right now. Are there any weak spots within your business and if so, what are they?

Understanding what these are and knowing how you could potentially improve on them is absolutely vital when it comes to strengthening your business as a whole and strengthening how your business can market itself better.

Every organization has a weak spot so picking these out is not a negative thing, to the contrary, being able to see where your business needs to improve and acting upon that is the sign of a great leader. 

If I ever got stranded on an isolated virtual island and I only had to choose one tool for my business, that would be Google Analytics. Yes, I realize that this example doesn’t make much sense, but I just wanted to stress on how important it is for businesses.

But also, more important than having it is using it. So today, we will see the top 15 Google Analytics metrics everyone should be tracking.

Now, if you found this article by typing “google analytics metrics” on Google (got ya!), it probably means that you already have it configured for your website. Which is great! So, I am not going to waste your time explaining what Google Analytics is.

However, if you don’t have it yet, you can always hop on my article What is Google Analytics? Features & Pricing. Or check this article by Google for getting started with Analytics.

Now that I got this off my chest, we can move on to the fun part! And that is, taking a deeper look at what Google Analytics metrics you should track for your business. After all, it serves us no purpose having an amazing tool with incredible amounts of data if we don’t make use of it.

1. Traffic Source (Channels)

Google Analytics Metrics: Traffic Source

First on our list of essential Google Analytics metrics is the source of your traffic. You can access this report by clicking on Acquisition – All Traffic – Channels.

No matter the size or the sector of your business, the chances are that you are diversifying your Marketing budget. You are probably investing in paid ads on Google, advertising on different social channels, and maybe some affiliate networks.

Additonally, it is highly likely that you are also maintaining at least a couple of social media channels with regular organic publications. On top of that, I wouldn’t be surprised if you are also doing some SEO efforts to bring organic traffic from Google to your blog and/or website.

The point is, now that you are investing time and resources in all this channels, you need to understand how each one of them is doing. You can start by asking the right questions:

Which channel brings you the most traffic?

Knowing which channels bring you the most traffic will help you make better decisions. Such as where to increase (or decrease) your investment.

Are there any channels consuming a lot of time & money with low traffic?

Low-traffic sources are only worth it if you are not spending too much time on them. Unless, of course, they bring you a lot of conversion, which we will discuss in the next points. However, if this is not the case, you need to evaluate the time and resources spent on these channels.

Of course, this will also depend on how much time that you’ve been investing in them. For example, I am currently trying Instagram from my blog, and it hasn’t brought me a single visit since I created the account a month ago.

However, I realize that these things take a while to start gaining traction. And, because it only takes a couple of minutes a day to make a post, I don’t mind giving it more time before making any conclusions.

Which channel gives me the most engaged audience?

Of course, having a lot of traffic is not the whole picture. Apart from traffic by channel, Google Analytics also gives you data on how engaged users are from each channel. For example, how many time they stayed on your website, and how many pages they viewed.

And last not least, you can see these metrics by source/medium:

This way, you can get even more detailed data on which ones work the best for you. And now, let’s see another important one of our Google Analytics metrics:

2. Average Session Duration

Next on our list of Google Analytics metrics is average session duration. 

This metric is very important because it tells you how much time users spend on your website. Generally, it is considered that they more time they spend, the better. However, I want you to take this information with a grain of salt because:

• First, it all depends on the goal they have in mind when arriving on your website. If they want to get informed about your product, in some cases spending too much time means that they are not being able to find the information that they are looking for.
• Of course, this statement is still true in the majority of cases. More time means that they are interested in what you have to say. Especially if they spend a lot of time on your blog! This is almost always great news for you.

Misunderstood metric

Another thing to keep in mind with this metric is how Analytics calculates it.

According to Analyticsedge.com, “Google can’t measure the time a user spent looking at the last page of their visit to your site.” The way Google knows how much time you spent on a page is by measuring the session from the moment you arrived on a page to the moment you switched to the next one.

The problem with this is that, on the last page, there is no next page recorded, so the Time on Page would be unknown. Or directly recorded as zero.

What does this mean? Let’s say that someone landed on an article from your blog. He spent 15 minutes, read every single word from it, but then left your website. Google Analytics will record this session as zero because he didn’t visit another page.

Now of course, I am not saying that this metric is not true or relevant. It is, and that’s why it’s on our list of Google Analytics metrics. However, these are a couple of things to keep in mind when looking at it because some people stress way too much over it.

What is a good session duration?

According to DataBox, a good average session duration is between 2-3 minutes:

Google Analytics Metrics: Average session duration

3. Pages per Session

Next on our list of Google Analytics metrics that you should be tracking is the average number of pages per session. It is quite self-explanatory as it counts the number of pages that a user viewed during a single session. In Analytics, a session lasts until there are 30 minutes of inactivity. 

You can find this metric in Audience – Overview: 

Google Analytics Metrics: Pages per session

This metric is important because it gives us more information about how engaged are users with our website. And whether we managed to keep their interest after they landed on the first page.

If the average number of pages per session is high, it means that our content keeps user on the website as they get more and more interested in it. However, if it is rather low (as in this example), it means that they had no more interest beyond the landing page.

You can pair this data with a session recording tool to get a better vision of which pages they visit, and where they leave. A tool that I always recommend is Yandex Metrica, developed by the team behind Yandex, the biggest Russian search engine. It is also 100% free to use.

Once you install it, you will be able to record sessions anonymously. And actually see which pages get the most visits by your users, and what makes them leave.

4. Goals / Conversions

Undoubtedly, one of the most important Google Analytics metrics is Conversions, which measures the completion of Goals. You can find it by clicking on Conversions – Goals – Overview.

However, you will not find any data in this section if you don’t configure it first.

To put it simply, conversions are “guidelines” that you give to Google Analytics so it can count a valuable action on your website. Because businesses are different and valuable actions vary from company to company, you will need to define it for Analytics.

To do that, go to your Admin settings in the lower left corner. Then, under View, click on Goals, and after that, click on New Goal.

Google Analytics Metrics: Conversions

You will be taken to a new window. Follow the instructions of Analytics and configure your goal to define the valuable actions for your business. This can be a purchase from your website, the download of a resource, or filling out a sign up form. You can also configure multiple conversions if you want to track various actions.

Once you´ve done that, it will start generating reports for you in the Conversions section.

The reason why Goals are so important is because they are the single key performance metric to give you practical information on how each of your channels is doing when it comes to return on investment.

For example, a typical Goal / Conversion is a user who submitted their personal data using a form on your website. So, each time someone filled out the form, Google Analytics counts a conversion. This way, you can actually get quantifiable results so you can make better decisions with your channels.

5. Conversion Rate

One of the most important Google Analytics metrics that you will need to track is conversion rate.

Conversion rate is the percentage of users who performed a defined valuable action on your website divided by the total number of ad (or organic interactions). For example, if your Facebook ad was shown 1000 times, and 50 people converted , your rate would be 5%:

Conversion rate = number of conversions / number of ad or organic interactions x 100

Of course, it is completely normal that organic channels have lower conversion rate than paid ones. After ones, organic ones such as your blog and posts on social media are more about the value that you deliver to your audience with your content. Their main purpose is usually not to generate conversions.

While the main purpose of ads is to convert.

You will see this metric in many places across Google Analytics, as it is one of the most important by default. For example, I am currently here in the section Audience – Mobile – Overview:

Google Analytics Metrics: Conversion rate

Conversion rate is essential because it allows you to scale. For example, if you take a look at the image above, we see that conversions coming from desktop are much more than those from tablets. Which is true.

However, if you take a good look at the conversion rate, people seeing your ad or organic posts from a tablet have a higher percentage, 2.04% against 1.71%. Which means that, if you decide to scale your conversions per device, those from tablet should end up being more than those from tablet in theory.

Of course, this does not always remain true when scaling. However, it is a great metric to put things into perspective so you can get a better idea of what channel, device, etc. converts better.

6. Devices

Next on our list of Google Analytics metrics is the traffic percentage by electronic device. You can find it in the section Audience – Mobile – Overview:

Google Analytics Metrics: Devices

The importance of this metric lies behind a couple of aspects:

• Responsiveness – of course, a responsive website should always be a priority for every organization. However, having a better understanding of your traffic sources will help you adapt better to each device that they are coming from.
• Advertising – this metric will also give you a good hint on whether you are missing out on a device with good potential. For example, if you notice that the majority of your traffic and conversions is coming from mobile, you might want to enhance your ad investment in mobile formats instead of desktop.
• Conversion rate – we just spoke about conversion rate and its importance when it comes to scaling your investment of time and resources. This metric, paired with devices, will give you a great idea on which device is converting more for your business. For example, often times mobile brings in more traffic while having a significantly lower conversion rate.

For this reason, it is important that we look at this data in a crossed way. Which means not only at the metric itself isolated from the rest, but how it relates to the rest of Google Analytics metrics. This will give us a much bigger picture.

7. New vs Returning visitors

Another interesting metric to take a look at is the percentage of new vs returning visitors. You can find it under Audience – Behavior – New vs. Returning:

Google Analytics Metrics: New vs returning visitors

This metric is great because it gives you data on how many website visitors are returning to your website.

According to the rule of 80/20, 80% of your results will often come from 20% of your total efforts. Well, this statement is quite often true in business context as well. In other words, 80% of your earnings will come from only 20% of the customers.

For this reason, understanding what percentage of your traffic is repeat customers can be very valuable because:

• It will give you insights on how many people are coming back because they have gained interest in your business after the first visit;
• Show you how interactions differ depending on whether it is a first visit or a repeated visit. For example, in the image above we can see that returning visitors have lower bounce rate, longer session duration, and view more pages on average.
• It can enhance your retargeting efforts. If you are already doing retargeting, you can use this data to see if the percentage of returning visitors is increasing. And whether your costs per conversion are lower than those for new visitors.

If you are not doing any retargeting, this might be the right time to start. If you are not familiar with the concept, retargeting involves the creation of audiences so that Analytics can collect cookies from web visitors on your website.

Once you have enough volume, you can use this data to launch campaigns for users who have already visited your website. Before we move on with our list of Google Analytics metrics, you can read more on how to create your first audiences here. 

8. Page views vs Unique pageviews

Of course, one of the most important Google Analytics metrics is undoubtedly Page views. It measures the the total number of pages that users have viewed on your website over a certain period of time.

And I think it is crucial to keep track of it weekly and monthly to see how you traffic grows over time. This way, you can see if the channels that you have been investing in are bringing you the traffic that you are aiming for.

You can check the total number of page views for a selected time period by going to Audience, and then clicking on Overview.

However, what I like to do is check the number of page views per blog post. This way, I know which articles are driving me the most traffic. You can do that by going to Behavior – Site Content – Content Drilldown. Once you arrive at the report, you can also click on the pie chart icon to visualize your data in a better way:

Below is data from my own blog. Unfortunately, I can´t show you the exact articles because my blog is tiny, and competition is fierce. However, it gives me (and now you) a good idea of what percentage of my total traffic is coming from each article:

Google Analytics Metrics: Page views

The Behavior report will also give you data on the number of Unique page views per landing page or a piece of content.

Unique page views take into account the number of sessions during which a specific page was viewed at least once. It is counted for each page URL + page title combination.

9. Location

Next on our list of Google Analytics metrics you should be tracking is Location data. You can find it by going to your Audience reports, and then clicking on Geo – Location. 

Google Analytics Metrics: Location

This report will give you key insights on where your web visitors are coming from. This information can help you make valuable conclusions such as:

• In which countries you can enhance your investment as they are bringing you more traffic;
• Whether you need to adapt (or create) website content that is more specific to the countries that are driving you the most traffic. For example, translating your website to Spanish because many visitors are coming from Spain and LATAM.
• Re-distributing your campaign budget to countries that have the highest conversion rate. Or just show more interest by spending longer average time on your website.

Paired with the language report just above this one, you can extract valuable insights to make better business decisions. And focus your efforts on countries that have higher potential to bring you more customers.

10. Behavior Flow

Google Analytics Metrics: Behavior flow

Another really interesting report that provides you with valuable insights is Behavior Flow. You can find it under Behavior, right below the Overview report.

Behavior flow allows you to understand things such as:

• How your web visitors move from page to page on your website. In other words, what is their behavior after landing on the first page.
• Starting pages – which is the page that the majority of your users start from during their journey on your website.
• Internal link building – second interactions give you information on which internal link users clicked on within the page.
• And also, at which point did your users drop off their visit, and left the website because they lost interest.

Use this report to get a better idea of how users “migrate” from one place to another on your website. If you notice that many people are dropping off from the same page, you might need to revise it and see if something is not working.

11. Exit pages

Google Analytics Metrics: Exit pages

This metric can be found in the report Behavior – Site Content – Exit pages.

An exit page is the last one accessed during a session, and it gives you key insights on what makes users leave your website.

For example, let´s say that a visitor lands on your homepage. Then, he moves on to your category page, then to your product page, and ends up leaving. This will be counted as an exit on the product page, as it was the last one visited by the user during his session.

Source: hotjar.com

As a percentage, the exit rate for a specific page is calculated in the following way:

Exit rate = number of exits / number of pageviews (for that specific page) x 100

Just as we talked in the previous section, if you notice that some pages have a really high exit rate, it might be time for a comprehensive revision to see what is going on. On the contrary, pages with low exit rate are a good indicator that users are getting more interested in your product.

And, if you use a session recording tool as we discussed before, you will get an even better understanding of what exactly is making users leave on that specific page.

12. Bounce rate

Google Analytics Metrics: Bounce rate

In Google Analytics, bounce rate is the percentage of users who arrive to a page on your website, and leave without further interaction. They didn´t visit another page, nor clicked any internal link or banner. Just left.

Bounce rate is a good indicator that users didn´t find what they were looking for on your page. They just came, saw, and left. It happens a lot with blog posts that don´t respond to people´s questions immediately.

Or for example, when you just want to consult the price of a product, and the page talks about everything else but the price.

Misunderstood metric

However, bounce rate is also another misunderstood metric. And this is something to keep in mind. We already saw that with average time per session, Google can´t measure the time if there was no next page.

The same happens with bounce rate. Except that there is never a next page.

However, this metric can be a bit confusing and frustrating for website owners. Especially for blogs. The thing is, people who arrive to your blog posts are usually looking for something specific.

So, they might have read your post from start to finish, and loved it, but left without further interaction because their question was already answered. In these cases, having a high bounce rate doesn´t mean that your content did not serve its purpose.

You can find Bounce rate in the Overview section of your Audience report.

13. Site speed

Next on our list of Google Analytics metrics is Site speed.

One of the most important factors when it comes to Searching Engine Optimization is user experience. And the time it takes for a page on your website to load is crucial for a good user experience.

In fact, Google expects your page to load in under 3 seconds!

Google Analytics Metrics: Site speed

You can find this metric in Behavior – Site Speed – Overview. Use it to make regular checks on whether your website loads as quickly as possible to avoid high bounce rate.

14. Referrals

Google Analytics Metrics: Referrals

Referrals is one of the most underestimated Google Analytics metrics that shows you the traffic coming from third-party websites. Of course, here you may see webs such as Google and Facebook as your ad platform providers.

However, you will also see what platforms are talking about you on the Internet. In other words, if someone puts a link on their website taking users to your website, and people click on it, you will see this traffic here.

You can use this data to get in touch with referrals and see potential forms of collaboration. You can find Referrals under Acquisition – All Traffic.

15. Age & Gender

And last but not least, Google Analytics metrics such as Age and Gender can help you get a better understanding of your web visitors.

When we think about our target market, we usually have a specific profile in mind. And we make campaigns with criteria that we consider the most efficient to reach it.

However, a lot of times who we think our buyers are does not always coincide with who our buyers actually are. Maybe we think that our product would be consumed by people under 30, and it ends up being more in demand by people over 40.

Google Analytics Metrics: Age and gender

Or we are targeting a product exclusively to men while women would be as equally as interested in it. For this reason, having these Google Analytics metrics is great for getting a better idea of our actual visitors and buyers.

And that is all from me, folks! As always, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to let me know in the comments below. You can also send me an email to animitevabg@gmail.com.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article on the most important Google Analytics metrics that you need to track, and I hope to see you in the next one!

What is Bounce rate in Google Analytics?

Bounce rate in Google Analytics is the percentage of website visitors that landed on your website and left without interacting with your content. They didn’t click on any link or a button, nor they went to a different page of your website. They just came, saw, and left.

As a result, Google Analytics’ servers weren’t triggered by the website visitor who bounced. Which ended as a single-page visit.

Understanding bounce rate is really important for taking the right actions to fix it.

You did all the great work to actually make your target audience land on your website. Excellent! But you work doesn’t end there. Now that the user is there, you have to keep him entertained.

So why did he not interact with your content? Was the information not what he was looking for? Did the page take too much time to load? Was it difficult to navigate?

Today, we will find what are the different reasons a website visitor might bounce away. And when is the actual time to worry.

What is a good bounce rate in Google Analytics?

Before you panic about your bounce rate percentage, it is important to set up realistic expectations. It is absolutely normal to have some percentage of people who bounce away.

After all, users are different, and you can’t satisfy everyone at the same time. 

According to Hubspot, these are the benchmark averages for the most popular website types:

• Content Websites – between 40% and 60%;
• Lead Generation – between 30 – 50%;
• Blog posts – from 70% up to 98%;
• Landing pages – 70 – 90%;
• Retail & Shopping Websites – 20-40%;
• Service sites – 20 – 40%;

As you can see, a bounce rate of about 20% is completely normal for the majority of the websites.

Some types such as blogs and landing pages, however, can reach 70%!

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should resign with the average benchmark and leave it there. You should do your best to keep it as low as possible.

However, it also means that you should know the industry benchmarks to put your bounce rate into context. Sometimes, when we think that bounce rate is high, it is actually more normal than it seems at first.

How does Google Analytics calculate bounce rate?

Bounce rate is measured as the ratio of one-page sessions to all sessions.

It is calculated by dividing the total number of one-page sessions by the total number of website visits. The formula looks something like that:

Bounce rate = Number of One-page visits / Total number of visits to the website

21 tips to reduce your Bounce Rate

Now that we understand a little bit more about the algorithm behind a bounce rate, let´s see how you can reduce it. 

1. Content relevance

Probably the most important factor that affects bount rate is content relevance. This means that your content should be able to answer the query of your user.

The other day, I was looking for “best free plugins for google adsense“. So, I clicked on the first result that I saw, and I started reading.

Now, I am not interested in any paid plugin at the moment. Especially a plugin that costs 60 EUR to purchase – I am not even making that much money with my blog yet!

So, after clicking on the article, I quickly realized that the vast majority of the list was with paid and really expensive plugins. Needless to say, I was out just 5 seconds later.

And of course, without any interaction, which probably affected the bounce rate of the author´s article.

Because the content wasn´t true to my search query, I bounced. It not only didn´t answer my question, but it was the exact opposite of what I was looking for.

Of course, Google will always try to show you the results that have the highest probability of answering your query. However, as a company / advertiser, you need to help Google understand that your result is relevant for a certain search query.

How do you do this? With…

Keywords

Keywords are the language that you use to communicate your content relevance to Google. It helps the search engine understand what your website or blog post is about.

So, one of the most efficient ways to reduce bounce rate is to make sure that your content is fully optimized for search engines.

If you don´t know how to do that, I highly recommend you my article Introduction to SEO for beginners. 

Your goal should be to match the user´s search query to your content.

So, if a user searches for “cheap flights to Peru“, this is exactly what he is getting. Not the most expensive flights to Peru ever!

Here are some paid and organic examples:

2. Make your content easily readable

Now that you’ve made your content relevant, you also need to make sure that it is easily readable.

A landing page or a blog post that is difficult to read and understand won’t keep users for long.

A user wants to find the answer that he is looking for quickly. If you take too much time or the content is impossible to read, he will leave without interaction. Which, consequently, will increase your bounce rate – instead of reducing it.

The image above is from an article from Hubspot’s blog. It is called 30 Growth Hacking Tools Your Sales Team Will Love You For. 

As you can see, the tools are listed with clear headlines and bullet points to indicate important information such as prices and utility.

This way, the user can easily scan the content in search of the best growth hacking tool.

Another great way to improve your content formatting is to add visuals:

These are my top tips for making a page or a blog post easily readable:

• Divide your content into sections with headings and subheadings;
• Try to keep your paragraphs short – not more than 5 lines per paragraph;
• Use bullet points to enumerate products, benefits, etc;
• Add visuals such as images, videos, infographics, charts, or quotes (but don’t over do it);
• Mix short and long sentences to give a more natural flow to your paragraphs;
• Focus on using active voice rather than passive voice when writing;
• Use formatting tags such as bold, italics, and underlines (as you can see, I use a lot of bold!

The paragraph’s length is especially important to take care of.

Long paragraphs are not only usually skipped by users, but they are terrible to read in mobile. 

3. Take it easy with the Popups

As I was just browsing the web to take examples for this post, I just got reminded of why popups can be so annoying.

On the first page of Google, 9 out of 10 webs that I opened triggered a popup within my first one second on the page! Needless to say, I left the page directly without even closing the popup first.

I will probably never understand the point of launching a popup the first 5 seconds of a web visit. I fail to see any benefit to it for Marketing performance.

Popups might seriously disrupt the user’s reading. On top of that, how is he supposed to get excited about your popup if he hasn’t even had the chance to check out your content first? Which is probably a priority for the user who is just looking for an answer to his question.

The worst for bounce rate is when a popup takes the whole page and you can’t find the way out:

But seriously, if you really want to use a popup to market your product, you can. Just give the user more time! If he is still on the page after 30 or 45 seconds, he might actually become interested in your popup. Because he already found what he was looking for.

And if he left in the first seconds, your content didn’t match his search anyway. So a popup isn’t the one thing to worry about.

4. Improve your page load time

Another really important factor that impacts your bounce rate is page load time.

If a page takes too much time to load, the user might leave and try his luck with another search result.

This is especially true for mobile. According to Google, more than 53% of mobile users will leave a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Considering that mobile traffic accounts for more than 50% of global web traffic, page load time is definitely something to take into account!

Source: thinkwithgoogle.com

Google´s comprehensive study also concluded that most pages still take over 15 seconds to load!

So, optimizing your page load speed is a huge factor to consider if you want to reduce your bounce rate. As you can see in the statistics above, the slower your page is, the higher your bounce rate will be. Which might not only affect user experience but also your overall search engine positioning. 

Don´t know how to improve the loading speed of your website? You can visit Google´s developers page for their tips and recommendations.

You can also check your exact loading speed here.

5. Make your website responsive and mobile friendly

Smartphone devices are currently dominating Google´s search. According to Statista, more than 60% of Google searches are done via mobile.

Having said this, having a non-responsive website is a guarantee for high bounce rate.

Mobile-friendliness is not only a ranking factor but it is also key for retaining users on your website.

If you want to reduce bounce rate, you need to make sure that your website is optimized for mobile. 

Otherwise, users coming from mobile traffic will find your page hard to navigate (or read), and leave without any interaction. A non-responsive website, combined with slow loading speed, is almost a recipe for bounce rate disaster.

You can take this mobile-friendly test to find out if your web responds well to mobile devices.

If the results are negative, don´t worry! Here are some tips on how to make your website mobile friendly. 

6. Match your content to the right target audience

Bounce rate is directly associated with your target audience.

Let´s say that your website is all about cats and cat products. What will happen if you decide to target organically and with paid campaigns all people who has a pet?

Let me give you an example.

So, I have two guinea pigs and when I travel somewhere, I usually need to find someone to take care of them. Once, I got an ad for a web designed exclusively to connect pet owners with pet caretakers. I was just looking for someone to take care of my guinea pigs for two weeks, so I clicked.

When I got there, I realized that the web had three main sections:

• Cats
• Dogs
• Turtles

I quickly realized that there was no product nor pet caretakers for guinea pigs, so I left without any interaction. Which probably affected the bounce rate of the company.

It might seem obvious, but many companies are tempted to expand their audience in an attempt to generate more leads.

However, you need to do this gradually and carefully to avoid being counter-productive. In this case, the company convinced me to visit their website with a targeted campaign, but they didn´t have a product for me. So, despite their Marketing efforts, they didn´t manage to retain me on their page due to imprecise targeting.

Having said this, make sure that you have a product or a message to match with your ideal audience.

If the user lands on your page expecting to find a cheesake recipe, don´t talk about tiramisu. And vice versa. If your content is about a recipe book for desserts, don´t target people looking for soup recipes.

Your audience needs to be big enough to make sense for your company/product to exist in the first place. But not too big to disperse your purpose and message.

7. Improve your site navigation

Website navigation should be seamless and effortless for the users.

If they can´t find quickly what they are searching for, they will simply look for it in another place.

Try to think from your own perspective as a user. When you land on a page, even if you can’t find the answer to your query right away, you are subconsciously evaluating the utility of the page.

Within just a couple of seconds, you already know if you have interest in keep on browsing the website.

If your web navigation isn’t clear and easy to understand, users will probably not stay for long. It has to be as simple and intuitive as possible. After all, your audience isn’t here to complicate their lives trying to demystify the structure of your website.

8. Diversify your content

Let’s be honest: landing on a page just to see huge chunks of text without any visuals can be overwhelming.

Remember that your audience is different and people are stimulated by different types of content. Some people prefer to read without distractions, but others are more attracted by images or videos.

By diversifying your content, you give multiple options for a user to consume it. This way, he can choose the best format that answers his search query – and that he actually enjoys consuming.

Additionally, visuals such as videos, images, and charts, are also a great way to make your information more clear and well-structured. 

Image credit: backlinko.com

9. Optimize your ad placement

If you are running ads on your website, optimizing their placement will be essential if you want to reduce bounce rate.

Ads can be just as distracting as popup windows. In fact, they can actually be even more annoying.

With popups, users can at least click on the X button to close the popup. And they will most probably not see it anymore.

Ads, however, are not as easy to get rid of. Even if you close them, you will still see a distracting message by Google asking you why did you close the ad:

And sooner or later, a new ad will appear on its place.

The most optimum ad placement will depend on your website or landing page. But, as a general recommendation, try to reserve the placement of static ads to just the sides of your pages.

This way, the user’s attention is not divided between multiple elements at the same time.

Additionally, you should avoid stuffing your webpage with too many ads. 

Image credit: searchengineland.com 

A user who lands on your page and immediately gets bombarded by multiple ads will probably not stay for long. It is not only annoying but also causes the impression that the website doesn’t care about actually helping its audience.

10. Website credibility

The lack of transparency on the Internet, combined with the millions of deceptive pages out there, definitely makes users think twice before staying for long on a landing page.

Users evaluate a website’s credibility within the first couple of seconds after arriving on it. If they feel that they can trust you, they will stay and interact with your content. As a result, you will manage to reduce bounce rate effortlessly.

If they don’t trust you, they will probably leave immediately and without any interaction. Which, consequently, will have a negative impact on your bounce rate.

Peep Laja, founder and author at the CXL Institute, shares some of his key tips for achieving website credibility:

• Web design – people often say that you only have one chance to make a good first impression. According to Peep, the same can be said about web design. People tend to trust attractive websites much more because they are perceived as more professional.
• Company contacts – keep your address, phone number, and any other relevant contact data visible at all times. If possible, place them in the header and/or sidebar apart from the footer.

• Make it easy for users to contact you. Besides from your address, email, and phone number, enable a contact form if hey have additional questions.
• Keep your language simple, relevant, and with flawless spelling. Broken grammar, incorrect spelling and complex terms are confusing and might cause the user to bounce off.
• Prices, testimonials, and reviews are a great way to gain your audience’s trust. Especially for online retail and ecommerce businesses.

You can check the full 39-point website credibility checklist here.

11. Clear CTA

If you are looking to reduce bounce rate, you need to have a clear and visible Call to Action placed on your website.

You will be surprised by how many times users don’t know what action is expected from them on a landing page. Your CTA should give a clear indication for that.

Do you want them to download your whitepaper? Or get a quote? Maybe directly buy your product?

If they can’t locate a clear CTA within the first seconds after arriving on a landing page, there are high chances that they might just bounce off.

On top of that, your Call to Action should also be compelling and enticing enough for users to take action. Otherwise, they will just take a quick look at content and not stay for more.

Here is an example of two clear and beautifully made CTA buttons by Sprout Social:

12. Perform proper analysis with Analytics

Analytics is extremely important for measuring and understanding the performance of your Marketing actions.

Google Analytics registers the bounce rate of both your website and its specific pages.

You can use this data to find out which pages have the highest bounce rate and impact the overall percentage for your website. This way, you can actually understand which one perform well – and which ones need improvement.

One metric that you should be monitoring carefully is the Exit page.

If you look at your Analytics dashboard, you will probably notice that many people exit through your home page. This usually indicates that they are not landing on a page that gives them the information that they are looking for.

Source: neilpatel.com 

To solve this problem, it is recommended to create more landing pages optimized for high-value keywords that your audience is searching in your niche. This way, you can ensure that they are designed to answer the user’s search query.

13. Use a session recording tool

Session recording tools are a great way to reduce bounce rate by understanding user behaviour.

If you haven’t used a tool like this before, it might sound creepy at first. But don’t get alarmed; the recorded data is completely anonymous. 

Watching recorded sessions of user’s activity on your website can help you understand how they engaged with your content. You can see how far they scrolled down and at exactly what point they left. Did they read through your page? Or just scanned quickly and left?

Common patterns from multiple sessions can help you identify why a bounce rate is high for a specific page. If all users just scan the page rapidly and leave, it probably doesn’t answer their question.

Now, you should try to identify what search query makes them arrive to this page. And why it isn’t giving them the information that they are looking for.

There are multiple recording session tools out there. Some good paid ones are CrazyEgg, Hotjar and Inspectlet.

If you are looking for a more affordable option, a good and completely free session recording tool is Yandex Metrica.

It is an Analytics tool developed by the biggest Russian search engine: Yandex.

Its session recording feature gives you detailed information about user’s activity on your pages. Details such as the date and time of the visit, traffic source, and the time on page can be quite valuable. Especially when combined with the actual recorded session across different pages!

14. Use heatmaps

Another tool that often goes hand by hand with session recording are heatmaps.

A heatmap is a visual representation of data that shows you which were the most clicked elements of a specific page.

A heatmap will help you discover the areas of your page that don’t attract visitor’s attention. These are the ones that contribute to a higher bounce rate.

By identifying non-engaging elements, you will be able to improve your page navigation. This way, you will be able to remove or fix any links, images, and buttons that users don’t interact with.

Combine it with an analytics and a session recording tool, and you have enough data to help you reduce bounce rate significantly!

15. Open links in new tab

User experience should always be on your mind when designing your website.

Something as little as having your links open in the same tab can actually have a negative impact on your bounce rate. It can create user experience fatigue for your audience.

This also means that the risk for user distraction with the new site or page increases. On top of that, having to click back to return can be annoying. Especially if the user clicks on multiple links and repeatedly has to click back to continue reading.

As a result, your exit and bounce rate might increase. Thankfully, you can avoid that by setting all your links to open in a new tab. Even if they link to another page within your website!

If the new page provides better information, the user can simply close the tab that he isn’t using anymore.

16. Add other related content

The goal of each website is to keep its audience engaged for as long as possible.

Adding related posts or pages can be a great way to do that. Here is why:

• Even if users don’t find the answer to their query immediately, they might find it in the recommended content;
• The number of page views within a single session will increase, and this will reduce bounce rate as a consequence;
• The time spent on page will increase as well, improving your overall performance;

And, as we already know, an engaged audience means lower bounce rate.

When a user interacts with your content by clicking and moving through pages, he will stay longer on your website. For Google, it means that your content is highly relevant and responds well to his search query.

17. Use internal links

Internal links guide your audience through additional content on your website that might be helpful for them. Internal linking is not only a great SEO practice, but it also keeps your users entertained for longer.

This way, they might stay on your website even if they found what they were looking for. Just as recommended posts, internal links help you increase engagement, page views, and session length. Which, consequently, will help you reduce bounce rate.

Of course, don’t go overboard either! Internal links should be used in moderation. And of course, don’t forget to configure them to open in a new tab.

18. Optimize your meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are an HTML attribute that provides a summary of your page. To put it simply, they are the brief texts that appear below the headline of a search result:

Google uses meta descriptions to showcase a snippet of your web page. If you don’t provide such to the search engine, it will display it automatically by extracting text from the page itself.

Meta descriptions provide an additional information to the user to let him know what the page is about. They also help him decide which result to click on from the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

This means that your meta description needs to be clear, helpful, and exciting. It needs to convince the user that this is the best result to click on.

However, meta descriptions can also help you reduce bounce rate. How? 

You see, a meta description sets up certain expectations to your audience. When they read it, they will expect to find certain content – and probably the answer to their query.

However, if your meta description is poorly optimized, it can end up being misleading. It means that your users will expect to find something that isn’t actually on this page. And of course, they will bounce once finding out that your content isn’t what they were searching for.

For this reason, it is really important that you optimize your descriptions with the user in mind. What will he find upon landing on your page? Try to be as clear and transparent as possible, and always include your keyword for that page.

And of course, don’t let Google pull this information automatically! This doesn’t always end up well.

The Yoast plugin recommends an ideal meta description length between 121 and 156 characters.

19. A/B Test your landing pages

Another great way to observe user behaviour is by A/B testing different landing page designs. Sometimes, what we think will work does not coincide with what the user actually prefers. 

Even if you are implementing the best possible practices for a landing page, it is important to remember that every business and industry is unique. What experts recommend that worked for them doesn’t always mean that it will necessarily work for you as well.

For this reason, it is always the best idea to let the users decide. Try with multiple designs, observe their bounce rate and conversion rate, and see which version keeps your audience the most engaged.

20. Offer live chat support

The main reason why people go to Google is to look for answers.

In an ideal world, the results that show up on the first page are supposed to give the best answers for a specific search query. However, this is not always the case.

Implementing a live chat support is a great way to provide additional help and information for the user. This way, even if he doesn’t find the answer that he is looking for right away, he might go straight to the live chat to ask directly.

A well-prepared customer support professional might not only resolve the person’s query, but also speed up the conversion process. This way, a live chat support might significantly increase user engagement, and in turn reduce bounce rate.

If you are looking for a live chat widget, you can consult this page for more information.

21. Update outdated content

As blogs grow and time goes by, your content often gets outdated.

It happens to me all the time. As a Marketing professional working in a constantly-changing industry, I often find my articles outdated within the matter of months. It is hard to keep up! Especially when you write about a digital tool that completely changes from one day to another.

It is extremely important to keep your content fresh by updating it constantly. This is essential especially for blogs where new content is published weekly.

When I first started my blog, I wrote this detailed article about Moz’s domain authority tool. Just one or two months later, they completely changed the whole outlook and features of the tool! Suddenly, my article was no longer helpful to anyone.

Sometimes, it’s very easy to spot when content doesn’t correspond to its reality. This ends up in increased bounce rate as users move away to an article that answers their query with current information.

Conclusion

There are no shortcuts to having a consistently low bounce rate. No matter what Marketing gurus say, users are unpredictable and their behaviour can change over time. You just need to keep implementing the practices that we talked about in today’s article.

It is also important to avoid obsessing over bounce rate. As we already discussed, benchmarks show that a certain percentage of users leaving your page without interaction is completely normal. This means that you can lower this percentage, but you can’t eradicate it completely.

Your turn

Now it’s your turn! What are some of the practices that you are already implementing to reduce bounce rate? Was there something that surprised you?

And of course, if you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article! See you in the next one!