As an online marketer, it is important that you understand how to use the data resting at your fingertips courtesy of the most powerful search engine in the world; Google. Love or hate Google, the company’s breadth and depth of information, knowledge, and data allows you to do your job with greater ease, and improves your efficiency by providing insight that would require countless hours of work to do yourself. Here are some helpful tips to harness the power of Google Search using analytic reports.
Parse Out Your Data
Mounds of data are useless without context. If you can better understand and segment the data you are looking at, you’ll be able to use it more effectively to enhance the accuracy and effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns. For example, you can differentiate your information based upon the following criteria:
- Search type: How are consumers finding and interacting with your brand? Did they conduct desktop searches for websites or mobile searches for images? Did they jump from one of your social channels?
- Location: This factor speaks for itself in a way, but with that said, there are important caveats location can highlight. For example, although most Americans speak English as their first language, their keyword searches and key phrases can differ. Knowing those differences can be extremely helpful.
- Device: You can save a lot of your marketing dollars if you breakdown your analytics reports by device. If most of your leads come from mobile, while desktop lags, it’s time to divert your marketing spend away from underperforming desktop platforms.
Improve Your Mobile Presence
Mobile is no longer the wave of the future, but rather, the tide every marketer is riding on a daily basis. Without a mobile presence, your brand loses out on consumers and revenue. Simply creating a mobile website isn’t enough to garner the attention of mobile searchers and shoppers though. Google Analytics Reports help you determine which mobile devices generate the most traffic for your site, and allow you to adjust your mobile presence to fit those platforms.
For example, if most consumers interact with your brand on smartphones, you’ll want a streamlined mobile site that loads quickly, uses minimal (or low quality) images, and doesn’t ask consumers to do a lot of pinch-and-zoom navigating. It’s annoying, and people won’t do it for long before they simply give up and check out the competition.
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Determine What Your Brand is Worth
Last but not least, it never hurts to have some insight into the value of your brand. Do consumers and online searches view your brand highly? Are they even aware of your brand? Analytics Reports allow you to look at search queries involving your full or partial brand name, which helps you determine the visibility (and value) of your brand. If consumers are searching for your brand specifically in conjunction with products/services in your industry, you’re in good shape. If not, you have some work to do!