Google Analytics: how to use this tool

[rabiakhatun785]

In this content, we will teach you everything you need to know about the Google Analytics tool, including detailed explanations of each of its features.

This will be the knowledge you need to use GA in the best possible way, in order to directly help your blog grow, just like what we have achieved with the Rock Blog.

And we can already say that this is an explanatory guide on the main concepts and metrics that are used in the tool.

What is Google Analytics?


Google Analytics is Google's czech republic phone number list official and free Digital Marketing monitoring service. Its main function is to collect access, behavior and navigation data on websites and applications through tracking codes and organize this information into diverse reports.

In addition to providing rich traffic analysis, the tool helps webmasters optimize pages, conduct tests and make decisions in business and marketing strategies. Since its acquisition in 2005, the platform has continued to evolve and is now in its fourth generation, called GA4.

In the menu on the left, you have access to:

Customization: to create and access custom reports or alerts;
Real time: data collected in real time, including location, source of access, conversions and other metrics;
Target audience: traffic and navigation information, such as number of sessions, views, bounce rate, among other information;
Acquisition: data related to user acquisition through campaigns (Google Ads), organic traffic, social networks and others;
Behavior: behavior reports, such as number of sessions, dwell time, as well as content performance and page speed;
Conversions: Reporting on user-defined goals, e-commerce conversions, and multi-channel funnels.


How important is Google Analytics?


Google Analytics is considered an essential part of websites because without it, we are literally in the dark. As the famous quote from statistician William Edwards Deming says, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

The market today offers a wide range of website monitoring and analysis solutions such as Adobe Analytics and Mixpanel, free applications for generating heat maps such as Hotjar and Crazyegg, and even open source software that can be installed on the server itself, such as Matomo (formerly PWIKI) and Open Web Analytics, among others.

GA does not dispense with these tools, but it deserves special attention, starting with its owner: who better than Google to provide us with information to optimize the performance of our content on the internet?

Furthermore, it is a free service — and it leaves nothing to be desired compared to paid platforms. Its interface is user-friendly, it is easily integrated with other products, it boasts a huge data processing capacity and offers a generous set of functions, from the most basic to the most complex.

Do you know what all this means for you? Many, many benefits! And the main ones are described below.

Know the origin of visits


Knowing the origin of your website visitors is essential to optimize your campaigns or direct your Content Marketing strategy. After all, there are several acquisition sources, such as URLs, ads, banners, backlinks, organic searches or social networks.

And it doesn’t stop there. GA also tells us the type of device users are using, often even the model, which contributes to improvements in navigation and design.

Know the profile of visitors


In Digital Marketing, there is a lot of talk about personas, semi-fictional representations of an ideal customer. These characters, which are the main parameter for your content production, are usually built through data and internal research, but they must be constantly improved.

Google Analytics provides us with information that allows us to better understand the profile of the people who visit our website — demographic data is a great example of this.

It is also possible to segment users according to language, age, gender and even their interests. This information allows us to find out if our content is attracting the right people and, if so, to get to know them better.

Discover the channels that convert the most


Initially, it is important for companies to explore as many channels as possible to discover opportunities and better understand their audience. Gradually, however, those that yield the best results should be prioritized in order to optimize investment.

All of this can be worked on in Google Analytics in a very intuitive way, as in addition to providing very rich data about the audience, the tool provides mechanisms for A/B testing.

Identify top performing content


GA reports also list the best-performing pages. This allows us to find out which content performs best according to your preferred parameter (traffic, retention, conversion, etc.).

Find out how fast your pages load


Google provides a tool dedicated to this type of optimization, PageSpeed ​​Insights, but it is possible to access much of this data in Google Analytics itself and even calculate the average for a period.

These are the main features of this service and, as you can see, they are valuable, as they allow us to literally orchestrate our Digital Marketing strategy. But enough theory, it's time to get down to business!