Maximizing Google Analytics Insight for SEO with Custom Reports

Google Analytics - one of the most powerful tools for any SEO, assuming you know how to get the data you need from it. One of my favorite things about Google Analytics is how many tools that put at your disposal for quickly analyzing the data you care most about. But again, that all assumes you know how to get it.

A custom report in Google Analytics is similar to their custom dashboard features in a lot of ways. Remember, the dashboards are meant as snapshots of what's going on with your campaign, these custom reports are what you should be using to fully analyze the results.

To start, you should consider setting up Custom Report categories to organize your reports by subject. You will find this to be the most aggravating/irritating/infuriating part of the process as you attempt to drag your first custom report into your new category folder. The secret is to drag your report slightly to the right while hovering over the category you want to place it in. Then let go and hope for the best. Once you have one report in there it gets much easier.

There are two key components to a custom report:

Metric: a numeric measurement (like number of visits).Dimension: a description of visits, visitors, pages, products and events.

There are also two types of Custom Reports you can create:

Explorer: Allows you to drill down into sub-dimensions and includes a timeline where you can compare metrics in the same graph.Table: Allows you to compare dimensions side by side, with metrics also populated within the table. There is no timeline in this report.

Creating the custom report is easy. You choose from a drop-down menu of metrics and dimensions that you're interested in segmenting your report by.

You can also create tabs in your report to keep it organized. Any filters you setup on one tab will automatically apply to any other tab that you setup (there isn't a way to turn them off for the other tabs).

Another great feature of custom reports is your ability to use them cross-profile and to share them. To share a report, all you need to do is click the Actions drop-down menu from the Custom Reports overview page, and click share. You will then be able to share the configuration (not the data) of the custom report you just created.

If you'd like to save time in your SEO analysis, consider creating custom reports similar to the ones outlined below. I've included the share link for each custom report so you don't have to rebuild it yourself. I tried to mix up when I'd tailor the report to look at e-commerce data, and when it would only look at goal data. You'll need to customize those aspects of the report to best meet your needs.

Also, don't forget to modify the keyword filters I've added. You want to make sure to replace our branded keyword (book) with your own.

Understanding your audience's demographics is an often overlooked SEO practice, but it can go a long way in making certain aspects of SEO (like link building) that much easier.

There are two components to this custom report:

City and Language Overview - this part of the report looks at what cities and languages you receive the most visits from and make the most money off of. You may be surprised to see languages your site isn't even translated in yet that are very profitable.Keyword Targeting - this part of the report lets you drill down all the way to the keywords that are used by each country and language visitor demographic, and calls out how profitable they are for you. This is a great way to refine your keyword targeting.

How this can help you from a link building front is seeing what foreign languages your blog/linkbait content is most popular in, and then translating it. You could then distribute the translated content for links to popular industry blogs in that language.

Add the Audience Custom Report to Google Analytics

The purpose of the Content Custom Report is to identify which content is performing the best with organic traffic. I've set this report up as a Explorer Custom Report so you can drill down and see which keywords are sending traffic to a specific Landing Page. This is a great way to make sure you're targeting the right keywords on the right pages in your SEO campaign.

There are a number of engagement metrics I have this report looking at. One in particular I think is important to have with this report is the Social Actions metric. This is a great way to see if the number of social actions correlates with increases in traffic and conversions.

You might consider adding an additional filter (or creating a new custom report) that only looks at your blog content. I'd keep similar metrics in the report so you can quickly identify which blog posts perform the best so you can try and duplicate the results in future content. You may also want to add any event goals you've created to the report, especially if you've set up a event to track comments on your posts.

Add the Content Custom Report to Google Analytics

I think this is one of the most valuable custom reports you can run, and it's one of the bigger custom reports that I like to create in my accounts. There are three components to the report: targeting, engagement and revenue.

Targeting
This part of the report is pretty straight forward. It's a Flat Table report that places the Page Title and the Keyword that is sending it traffic side-by-side. From there I've added a handful of metrics to determine if I am targeting the right keyword on the right page. Perhaps I'm getting a lot of traffic for this particular keyword, but the majority of people are going elsewhere and/or not converting. This may lead me to do some testing around changing which page I'm optimizing for this particular keyword.

Engagement
Similar to the Content Custom Report, this component focuses on how engaging visitors are when they visit the site via a specific keyword. I love traffic just as much as the next guy, but if that traffic isn't doing anything on my site - what good is it? This report will help you identify problems and opportunities for keywords that have low/high engagement rates.

Revenue
Just how much money is a keyword making you? This component of the report looks at the number of transactions, the revenue generated and the per visit value of organic traffic for each keyword.

Add the Keyword Analysis Custom Report to Google Analytics

Which of the inbound links that you've built are sending you the most quality traffic? Don't forget, there's much more to links than rankings, they are also opportunities for sending high quality traffic to your site that may even convert.

This custom report looks at which of your referrals are sending you the most engaging traffic. Knowing which links are sending you the most quality traffic will help you determine if you should be going back for more or if you can find other sites just like it to get links set up on.

If you're investing a lot of time in getting specific links built, you may even consider tagging them with Google's URL builder tool. This will allow you to track the effectiveness of your link building campaign.

Add the Link Analysis Custom Report to Google Analytics

I'm a big fan of using paid search as a way to test which landing pages you want to target your keywords on for relevance. The goal of the test is to determine if you were to target a specific keyword on that page, would the visitor find what they are looking for and convert? This is a great way to minimize the risk of focusing on the wrong keyword on the wrong page and investing months of SEO work to get it traffic.

You can use this custom report to look at just that: which keyword/landing page combinations are the most effective from a revenue perspective. Even if you don't run a test like the one I just described, you can still get a pretty good grasp on this just by pulling the report and looking for these opportunities.

Add the PPC Content Custom Report to Google Analytics

Continuing with our holistic custom reports, the goal of the PPC keywords custom report is simple: identify high performing keywords from your paid search campaigns that you could consider targeting in your SEO campaign.

The report calls out a couple qualifier metrics, including how much money bidding on the keyword is costing you, and what your cost per conversion is. This is a great way to decide if you can't afford to target the keyword via PPC, can you make up the loss of traffic via SEO?

Add the PPC Keywords Custom Report to Google Analytics

We've seen the influence social media has on SEO, and now it's time to make sure we're well-informed of any social media data that can be leveraged to improve our campaigns.

This report uses a filter created by Site Visibility to look at all referring traffic from a variety of top social sources. With this filter applied you can look at which social traffic is most engaged with your content.

If you're tracking social actions you can quickly see which content you've created is being shared the most, so you can figure out what they like about the content and duplicate the results.

I also like to see which social media is converting the best so I can determine if we should be increasing our participation efforts on that social network, or even start experimenting with advertising on that social network.

Add the Social Media Custom Report to Google Analytics

So there you have it, seven custom reports to help you analyze your analytics data faster and easier. What other SEO-focused custom reports have you found valuable?

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Setting Up Actionable SEO Dashboards in the New Google Analytics

There have been many mixed reviews about the latest Google Analytics UI. Putting the frustration of having to learn a new UI aside (here's a great guide to navigating the new Google Analytics interface), the new Google Analytics actually brings to the table great customization options. One of my favorites being custom dashboards.

Both the old and new interfaces offer a standard dashboard that acts as an overview of your analytics profile. But where the new UI has its advantage is with your ability to create your own dashboard - in fact, you can create up to 20 of them for each profile.

The first thing we'll want to do is click the "+ New Dashboard" link on the left navigation of your profile's Home tab. Google will then ask you to name the dashboard and to choose either a "Blank Canvas" or a "Starter Dashboard." The Starter Dashboard is just like the default dashboard you already have in Google Analytics, so let's choose "Blank Canvas." Now it's time to populate your dashboard with widgets.

There are two ways you can customize your new dashboard:

Use the "Add Widget" feature on your dashboardNavigate to the view you want in Google Analytics and click the "Add to Dashboard" link.

When you use the "Add Widget" feature, there are four types of widgets you can choose from:

Metric - This will show you a single metric as well as a "sparkline" for that metric (which is basically a tiny line graph)Pie - Displays a breakdown of various metrics in pie chart formTimeline - A graph (only) of any metric (or compare two metrics) over any period of timeTable - Your traditional Google Analytics table, but it can be customized to only display what you've setup (including filters)

You build each widget the same way you would segment/filter data in Google Analytics normally. The key here is saving the view to your dashboard so you can quickly login and review performance without having to set everything up again.

As you add more widgets to your custom dashboard, you can easily drag, drop and rearrange your widgets into one of the three dashboard columns.

Now that we know how to setup dashboards, let's take a look at some useful SEO dashboards you should consider creating.

The purpose of this dashboard is simple: a quick look into the health of your SEO campaign.

With this metric/timeline widget, we're simply wanting to look at our total number of organic, non-branded search traffic. Remember, with the metric widget, you can only look at a single metric. If you only want to see the total number of visits, add a metric widget. However, if you'd like to see the total visit count broken out over the selected date range, you'll want to add it as a timeline widget.

For this widget, we'll add a Metric/Timeline with the following dimensions:

In this widget we're looking to get a snapshot of just how many total conversions (or transactions) that have been generated by our non-branded organic keyword referrals.

For this widget, we'll add a Metric/Timeline with the following dimensions:

Just like before, if you'd prefer to see this over time you can change this widget to be a timeline instead of a metric widget.

This widget filters out your branded search keyword referrals so you can get right to the keywords you're most interested in. You may also consider adding an additional filter to remove (not provided) if it takes up a significant number of the results.

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

You'll notice that I didn't choose any goals for the secondary metric. We'll cover that in the next widget. For now, we want to get a good understanding of what keywords are driving

In this widget we're looking to get a quick look at our top converting/transaction keywords. Once again, I recommend filtering out your branded search terms. Depending on how many important conversion points you want to keep track of, you may need to add more than one widget of this type because you can only view two metrics in each Table widget.

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

You'll find it easier to navigate to this report in the Standard Reporting section of Google Analytics (Audience > Social > Pages) and adding the widget using the top navigation bar in Google Analytics. The goal of this particular widget is to quickly see which content on your site is getting shared the most in social media. That way you'll know what content topics have the best chance of going viral.

By default Google will show you information for only Google+, in a future post I'll walk you through how to get other sites like Twitter and Facebook setup on here, too.

If your blog content lives under a /blog/ subfolder, you may want to consider filtering the report to only look at that content.

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

After I added the widget to our SEO Monitoring dashboard, I went back and edited it to also include total visits as well.

In addition to knowing what content is getting shared the most, I like to keep an eye on what blog content is getting the most traffic and conversions.

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

Don't forget to filter in just your blog content if that is the area you want to focus on.

I like to keep an eye on which search engines are sending me traffic and how it changes over time. The best way to get a snapshot of this is to add a pie chart widget.

For this widget, we'll add a Pie with the following dimensions:

I chose to only look at the top three organic search engine referrals, but you can select up to six for your pie chart.

We also need to keep an eye on any pages that are loading slow. We can actually setup the widget to only look at organic traffic page load speeds, although it would be in your best interest to look at all your content, not just that just with organic visits.

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

The above table shows you your top ten slowest loading landing pages, and also includes how many visits that pages receives. You can sort by either, but it's probably best to tackle the pages with the slowest load time first.

The final piece to our monitoring puzzle: a list of keywords being searched for the most on our internal site search. This is a great way to generate new keyword ideas and to find new usability ideas (more on that later).

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

I also like to add conversions as a dimension to this widget so I can not only keep an eye on which terms are getting searched for the most, but also which lead to the most conversions.

So it's time for the dreaded redesign process. You have a pretty good idea of what's ahead: long nights, lots of frustration and hopefully, a great looking website not too far down the line. With this dashboard you can quickly gain insight into what changes you should be making in the upcoming redesign to help out your SEO campaign.

You might also consider renaming this dashboard to be a Usability dashboard so you can frequently check-in on how well your site is performing for your visitors.

We'll be borrowing a few of the widgets in our SEO Monitoring dashboard, but also adding a few. Let's first look at which widgets we should be re-adding to this new dashboard:

A website redesign offers a great opportunity for keyword inclusion throughout our site's architecture (navigation, URLs, etc.) With this widget we can keep an eye on which keywords we should be focusing these optimization efforts on.

Which social networks are engaging the most with your content? What pages are getting the most engagements? Answering these questions will help you create a user experience that is not only tailored to your top social network traffic drivers, but that also encourages social sharing.

You'll also want to look closely at what makes the content in this report so shareable. Is it because of the way they are laid out? The images they use? These insights can really help you carry that experience throughout your new site.

Just like with the top social action content, you want to keep an eye on the content that is working best (and worst). This will allow you to duplicate your successes and (hopefully) eliminate your failures.

The redesign is the perfect time to address page load speed problems. Take a look at the slowest rendering pages in this table and determine what the common problems are that are slowing the load speed down.

Site search is great for finding new keywords, it's also a great way to figure out what problems people are having navigating your site. With this widget you can quickly see the types of content people are expecting to find on your site - but aren't able to.

On to our new widgets!

Is it time to consider translating your site for a new geographic audience? This type of change will definitely need your attention as an SEO. It's also an opportunity for you to branch out your link building into new languages.

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

The organic traffic filter I have in place is definitely optional. I think it helps keep the data set you're looking at more consistent by restricting it to organic visits only like the other widgets are set to.

For the Language widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

You'll note that I also filtered out all non-organic traffic here, too.

For this particular widget, we're once again trying to identify problem pages. Any pages that have a high exit/bounce rate should get a close review to see if the cause for people leaving can easily be identified.

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

It's important that we filter out any blog content that naturally creates high bounce rates. If you also have an event like a Account Login on your site, you may wish to use Google's Event Tracking to filter out those visits as well.

Which mobile devices are your visitors using to access your site? Are you getting a substantial number of visits? Do you anticipate it growing during the life of the next site design? More than likely this will be an area of focus for your redesign. It's important that you know exactly which devices your consumers are using to view your site so you can ensure compatibility.

For this widget, we'll add a Pie with the following dimensions:

Finally, I like to take a look into what browser our visitors are using most, and what their conversion rate currently is. We all say we test all browsers for compatibility, but there are always pages that were rushed or that just fell through the cracks that might not be presenting themselves the way you had hoped.

For this widget, we'll add a Pie with the following dimensions:

It's no secret that to succeed in today's online marketing world you need to be doing more than just SEO. Not just from the sense that other marketing efforts can help drive in new leads, but because it helps your SEO campaign succeed.

This dashboard highlights how your PPC and social media efforts are performing, so you can take that information and apply it to your SEO campaigns.

This widget will allow us to keep track of what types of content are performing best from a social perspective.

Within this report we'll be able to quickly see which social networks are the most profitable in terms of conversions and/or actual transactions. This is a great way to see which social networks respond well to your offering, and that you should be investing more time in.

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

Ideally you'll want to setup a filter to only look at social networks. If you're good about tagging your URLs with custom variables, then you can change the filter to look at the medium and enter the medium value you use for social URLs (example: social).

Ever since the (not provided) update, we've all lost out on valuable keyword data. But just as Google hoped we would, we can get this information from our PPC spend. With this widget we'll look at the keywords that are driving the most conversions/transactions for our PPC marketing, so we can look into targeting them in our SEO marketing, too.

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

Just like with our previous keyword widget, I also like to look at the top performing ad groups. This is a good way to know what top level topics are performing the best for your paid search campaigns, so you can prioritize them in your SEO campaigns.

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

If you're not using custom landing pages for your paid search campaigns, this is a great way to see which keywords are working best for the various pages on your site. I like to run these types of tests before I commit to any keywords for SEO.

For this widget, we'll add a Table with the following dimensions:

That's just three of the 20 dashboards you could setup in Google Analytics. What are you adding to your dashboards to make them more actionable?

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