Simple SEO Success. Google Analytics & Google Webmaster Tools

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1 Google Analytics & Google Webmaster Tools In this module we are going to be looking at 2 free tools and why they are essential when running any online business website. First of all you need to ensure that they are connected and verified to your website. You will need to log into each one individually and check this if you are unsure. The login details should be the same as any other Google Accounts that you have. If you haven't accessed Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools at all in the past you will need to just create your account. I have the links for each one at the end of this PDF for easy access. If you don t see your website details or you have a warning about either Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools not being verified than this is the very first thing you need to fix. To verify your website you will need to add some code to your website so that Google can verify that it is your website. If you are unsure on how to do this, you will need to get in touch with your web developer and ask them to insert the code for you. If you are really stuck, let me know and I may be able to help depending on your website platform. If you verify Google Analytics first you can then simply verify Webmaster Tools by connecting it to your Google Analytics account. You will find this on the verify screen when you login to your Webmaster Tools account.

2 Once you have both verified you also need to connect your Google Webmaster Tools account to your Google Analytics account. To do this login to your Analytics account and go to Acquisition, then click on Search Engine Optimisation and then click on Queries. If you see a screen like this you need to Set up Webmaster Tools data sharing and follow the steps. Google Analytics If you have only just set up your account, come back to it in a few days as it will take Google time to start showing results. So lets now look at what we need to look at in Google Analytics. There are 3 main reports that you should be monitoring. Queries, Landing Pages and Geographical Summary. 1. Queries This will show you all the keywords you currently rank for that people are using in Google search, the number of impressions you are receiving so how many times Google has showed your website as a result of someone using that keyword in search, the number of clicks you received through to your website for that keyword, your average ranking position in Google for that keyword and the click through rate as a percentage.

3 Just a note here that Google is approximately 2 days behind with their reporting so just keep that in mind when checking these results. So to put it in basic terms if you want to increase the traffic to your website you want to increase the click-through-rate which is the people clicking onto your website. To increase this click-through-rate we need to increase your ranking position and we need to make sure your meta title and meta description are enticing enough for people to click on it. If your ranking on the page is good and your descriptions are appealing than a good click-through-rate is at least 20% when you are getting thousands of monthly impressions. You can now use this data to improve your optimisation even more on the keywords that are highly relevant to the page you are targeting for that keyword. If the keyword is getting a lot of impressions (and by a lot I mean thousands in a month) but the click through rate is less than 7% go in and update your meta title and meta description and then monitor the results to see if that improves your CTR. Keep in mind though that you want to leave your targeted keyword in the appropriate area of the meta title and meta description as outlined in Module Landing Pages Next the landing page report shows you which pages on your website are ranking well, the number of impressions they are receiving, the number of clicks they are getting, their average ranking position and their average click-through-rate. This report is showing your most popular pages first. From this report you can examine what pages have the highest number of impressions but the lowest clickthrough rate. These are the pages you want to focus on and once again improve your meta title and meta description to increase that click through rate.

4 Your CTR will be lower on this report than the queries report as it isn t focusing on a single keyword. It shows results for the entire page and it is normal for one page to rank for more than one keyword, even though you have only optimised it for one main keyword. 3. Geographical Summary This report shows what countries your search engine results traffic is coming from. This will give you an indication that you are showing up in the countries you are wanting to target. Another couple of sections to look at within Google Analytics is real-time. This will tell you how many people are currently on your website in real-time. Handy if you are running a big campaign and want to get an idea of how it is working in real time. In acquisition, this will show you how people are finding your website whether it be by organic search, coming directly to your website, from social media or referrals (which is clicking on a link from other websites). This will give you a good indication of what areas of your marketing are working and where you need to do a bit more work. You can click on each link to go through and look at each one in more detail. Another important statistic that you need to be checking is your bounce rate. It is important to have this as low as possible. Google considers a bounce if someone clicks through to your website and they than either close it down or click on the back button fairly quickly to leave your website. This usually means that they consider the page unrelated to what they are looking for. This is why it is so important when you are optimising your pages for a certain keyword, that that keyword is highly relevant to the page you are sending people to as well as the meta title and meta description being relevant to the page. If they find what they are looking for than they will stick around on your site for a while and won't be classified as a bounce.

5 If you have a high bounce rate, Google will lower your rankings for that keyword. So if you are getting a high bounce rate for a particular page, edit the meta page title and meta page description and update the content on the actual page to make it more informative and/or relevant. The pages/session is also another good statistic to keep an eye on. This will tell you how many pages in total a visitor looked at before leaving your website. This is where your internal linking also comes in handy. Once visitors have read one page of your website you want to entice them to click through to other pages to keep them on your website for as long as possible. Google Webmaster Tools Once you have webmaster tools all set up, you will see your dashboard with your website listed. If you have more than one website connected to your account you will see the entire list but I will assume for the majority of businesses you will only have one. Click on the website name to go through to see all the information on your website. 1. Submit XML Sitemap The first most important thing to check is that your XML sitemap for your website has been submitted. This is very important to push along your SEO efforts as it helps Google index all the the pages of your website quicker and easier. If you see a message saying No sitemaps than get this submitted straight away. You will need to have a URL for an XML sitemap created for your website. For a lot of websites it is simply or something similar. So if you are unsure put this URL into a browser to see if it brings up something like the image below this is the sitemap for my website and is generally what a XML sitemap URL will look like.

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7 If you have a Wordpress website and you are using a SEO plugin (which you should be from our previous modules) then you should find that this sitemap has been created automatically for you. Once again I am happy to take a look for you and advise on your website or you can always ask your web developer as well if you can t find it. Don t let you web developer tell you that this isn t important you definitely need to submit a XML sitemap to Google it can make the world of difference to your rankings. If you are submitting your XML sitemap for the first time, normally it will take Google a few hours to check through it all and advise if there is any errors. 2. Robots.txt file The robots.txt file is a text file on your website that basically tells search engines how to crawl and index your pages. This file is normally created when you website is first developed. You just need to check that it does exist on your site and this box will tell you here on your Webmaster Tools dashboard:

8 Just make sure you have a green tick in this box under Robots.txt fetch. If you don t then you will need to ask your web developer to add this to your website. You can also go to Crawl > Robots.txt tester to determine if any and what errors or warnings Google has located on your robots.txt file. If you are using Wordpress as your website platform and you don t have a green tick here, before going to your web developer go into your Wordpress dashboard and go to Settings > Reading. Ensure the box that says Search Engine Visibility is NOT ticked. This is normally only ticked when a website is being designed initially but should be unticked once the website is live. 3. HTML Improvements Next you want to check if Google is reporting any errors on your website. So navigate to Search Appearance > HTML Improvements in Webmaster Tools. Just a note that if you are only just setting up Webmaster Tools this section will take a while to show up results.

9 You can see from this shot that there is a couple of errors for this website so you need to click on them to find out what they are and fix them up straight away. These errors would have also shown up in the Audit Report that I gave you at the beginning of the course. You need to fix any meta titles and meta descriptions that are duplicated on pages. Each page needs to have its own unique meta title and meta description. You also need to ensure that they aren t too long. Remember that meta titles need to be 60 characters or less and meta descriptions need to be 160 characters or less. This section will also tell you if any pages are missing meta titles or meta descriptions. It will also tell you if Google has had problems indexing any of your content. You need to be checking this on a regular basis, especially if you are adding new content all the time to ensure that your website is error free. 4. Site Messages Keep an eye on any messages that appear in Google Webmaster Tools. This is where Google will let you know of any major problems with your website. 5. Security Issues This is where Google will let you know if it has detected any security issues with your website. Make it a habit to quickly check this once a week to ensure the security of your website is OK. 6. Search Traffic In the search traffic section, this will give you further information to what you get in Google Analytics. It tells you what keywords you are showing up for in Google search results, how many impressions you have received, how many people have clicked through to your website, the click-through rate and your average position.

10 You can also click at the top to see your top pages with the same information as your top queries (keywords). Other Settings The links to your site section will show you what backlinks Google has picked up for your website. In other words what websites are linking back to your website. Backlinks is something we will cover in Module 6 but does form an important part of your SEO strategy. The more links you have pointing to your website the more authority Google gives your website. BUT not all links are equal and some can damage your website. More details to follow in the next module but this is a basic introduction and you can keep an eye on them here in your Webmaster Tools account. Internal links shows what links Google has picked up within your own website. As I mentioned in Module 3 it is important to link to other pages from within your own website and this will give you an idea which of those links Google has picked up. You want to aim to continually increase these links as you add content to your website and to also be linking to pages that are high on your list to rank for. Manual actions is any action Google has taken against your website for spamming. As long as you are doing SEO correctly, as I teach, and not using unethical strategies that are against Google policies then you shouldn t have any worries here. Having a mobile responsive website is becoming more and more important not only for usability for people visiting your website but also for your Google rankings. Google does take this into consideration now when ranking a website, especially when people using Google search from mobile devices. Make sure you have fixed up any errors that are showing up here. It is beyond the scope of this course to go into all of these errors in details and you would be best to ask your web developer to fix any issues found here.

11 You also have crawl errors which will show you any problems google has had crawling your website. The main thing that will show here is any broken links. So links on any of your website pages that are pointing to another page on your website or an external website where that web page no longer exists. You need to go in on a regular basis and remove any of these broken links from your website. The audit report I provided you with at the beginning of this course also gives you details of any broken links currently on your website. Don t forget that I will also provide you with another report at the end of this course so that you can double check that you have fixed up all errors. The crawl stats section will show you how many pages have been crawled by the Google bot and how often. It is good for Google to be crawling your entire website on a regular basis. If you find that this is low than to increase it you need to be updating the content on your website more regularly and also increasing links pointing to your website from other websites as well as social media sharing of your website (both of which we will cover more of in the next module). So that gives you a good overview of both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. Have a good look through all the reporting in Analytics to see what you come up with. Look out for keywords that you may be getting impressions for that you may not have thought of to target. These keywords may be a good opportunity to optimise a page for that specific keyword in order to capitalise on those results if, of course, that keyword is relevant to your website. Google Analytics: Google Webmaster Tools: