How do I use my Google Analytics Account? How do I track Organic Vs. PPC traffic? How do I track conversions & visitors who leave abruptly? This article will answer these questions and more.
If you would like a overview on using your Google Analytics account this article is a must read. I have tried to provide a brie analysis of each of the features of the Google Analytics account.
Don’t forget to post your questions about Google Analytics in a comment after this post. I will answer all questions and post a FAQ on Analytics in a few days.

Data Based on Date Range
Throughout your Google Analytics report life you are going to want to view data in a date range so heres how to do that.
If you want to see data for only a certain date range Google Analytics supports it for all reports. Just select the report you want to view and then on the left hand side where it says Date Range.
You can view the data by a number of different date ranges. You can click one of the days of the month to view that days data - but remember it can take up to 24 hours to update this data so select a dat that is over 24 hours ago for the most accurate data.
Here are the ways you can view your data:

• You may click a day of the month to view that dates traffic
• You may also click on one of the arrows on the side to select a 7-day period to view data for.
• You can click on of the months at the top of the Date Range box.
• You can view data by year.

Compare Date Ranges
Google Analytics also offers the ability to compare date ranges. To do this select a report and then go down to the Date Range box and click the (Compare Date Ranges) image. It will then drop a second date range box down below the first. Slect the first date range and then the second date range. For instance you could compare January sales to September sales. There are reports that are not compatible with the compare Date Range tool. Reports such as Visitor Tracking that are compatible will show two different colors in the graphs to represent each date range.
- The Executive Overview
The Executive overview shows you your ‘quick stats’ which include Visits and Pageviews, Visits by New and Returning(in the form of percentage), Geo Map Overlay(where your customers are viewing from), Visits by Source(your top referrers).

Exec. Overview Summary:

The four graphics in this report provide a quick snapshot of visits to your site. Shown are:

• the total number of visits and page views your site received, the average number of page views per visit (P/V), and the number of visits and page views over time. Averages are calculated over the entire selected date range including dates not yet elapsed when applicable.
• the number of first-time visits and returning visits
• the cities from which the most visitors come to your site
• your top referral sources.

- The Conversion Overview
The conversion overview gives us a idea how many and what percentage of our visitors are converting or coming close to a conversion. This is crucial to online success. If our visitors are converting we haven’t fulfilled our purpose. But before we can see our conversions we must setup our Goal Pages.
Lets go back to our Google Analytics home page. Make sure we are logged in and viewing our profiles.

Setting up Goal Conversion pages
Okay to setup our goal pages we start on our Google Analytics home page and select one of our site profiles. If you don’t have a profile yet go back to step one.
Click Settings
Click here for a image

On the settings page go down to the Conversion Goals and Funnel settings. Select the first goal which is G1 and click EDIT unless you have already setup a goal.

In the URL box enter the URL that the visitor must enter for the stats to consider the user completed that goal. In the Goal box put down a name that can be recognized to be affiliated with that page. This name is for your reference only and is not seen by your users or Google.
Click here for a image

Nest we must select the funnel path if needed. Or you can leave this blank. The funnel path can be useful so you can set 5 goal paths to one check out page but use different funnel paths on each to find out which funnel path(pages) sent the most conversions. If you select the ‘required step’ check box a visitor who goes to the goal page without following the funnel path pages you provided will not be considered a conversion.

Okay back to the Conversion overview.

Goal Conversion

Visits

%±

Conv. Rate

%±

Because this is a new Goal we haven’t got any conversions yet but we can still see how it works.
The first column which is called ‘visits’ shows the number of visits to the whole site for the dat period selected which is 49. The next one which is G1 is our first goal. When and if we get a conversion it will appear here as a visitor and then a percent. Google also tracks periods so will tell you if your conversions are down compared to last week/month. This is very very useful.

- Marketing Summary
The Marketing Summary shows you your Top 5 Sources, Top 5 Keywords & Top 5 Campaigns. This is a quick glance at your marketing activity. It will provide info on the conversion percentage of each of your sources, keywords and campaigns for each of your goals. It also shows how many visitors appeared from each of your sources.
The Marketing Optimization Reports are much more detailed. We will get to them soon.
- Content Summary
In this quick glance report you can view your Top 5 Entrances, Top 5 Exits & Top 5 Pages(content). This is very useful to quickly diagnose the pages where your visitors are disappearing from and which bring in the most. If page C seems to be dropping alot of visitors we can analyze page C and maybe find a solution to the problem that visitors seem to be having with the page. Maybe the link structure on the page is bad or the page lacks content. Although the report seems small it can be very helpful.
- Site Overlay
This feature is very interesting to use. It is like a in-browser browser which you can view your site with. You can view and browse your site with this tool. On each of your links is a small box which you can click to see how many visitors click that link and what percentage of the total amount of visitors to the page click the link.
The drop down menu you will see when clicking the small box next to a link shows you:

• Clicks: the number of clicks
• Clicks %: the percentage of all page clicks for the time range selected
• G/Clicks: the conversion rates for each goal you have defined
• Avg. Score: links with the highest average score are those links most commonly visited prior to high-value conversions during a visit.

The G/Clicks show you whether a visitor became a conversion after clicking that link. This is also very useful. you can use this data to change other links on other pages or content on those pages.

Google can’t track Flash or JavaScript clicks on your site unless you use a specific code. If you would like to track non-html links and events please see the Google Analytics help info on that here.

Google is aware the the Site Overlay is not compatible with all browsers. It appears to work good with IE and Firefox the current versions as of Sept 2006.
- Marketing Optimization
»Unique Visitor Tracking
»» - Daily Visitors
The Visitors Graph shows the number of visitors per day for the specified date range. The Percent New Visitors shows how many of these visitors are new to your site.
This report is compatible with Comparing Date Ranges.

»» - Visits & Page view Tracking
This report is similar to the daily visitors report except that it also shows pageviews and average page views per visit.
This report is also shown in daily format.
This report is compatible with Comparing Date ranges

»» - Goal Conversion Tracking
The Goal Tracking report provides a analysis of your goals visits in daily format. Each goal has its own box per day so you can compare your goals for the same day. This report is also compatible with comparing date ranges.

»» - Absolute Unique Visitors
This report shows how effectively your marketing drives new and returning visitors to your site. First Time Absolute Unique Visitors is the number of visitors (counting each visitor only once) who visited your site for the first time during the active date range. Prior Absolute Unique Visitors is the number of visitors (counting each visitor only once) who first visited your site prior to the active date range and who returned for one or more visits during the active date range.
This report is compatible with Comparing Date Ranges

»» - Visitor Loyalty
This report shows you how loyal your visitors are. On the left of the report is shown visitors who have returned only a few times. On the right are shown the visitors who have returned over 200 times.
This report is useful for content driven sites which visitors would come back to read new content every few days. Sites that sell a product are much less likely to have a high returning visitor count.
This report is compatible with Comparing Date Ranges

»» - Visitor Recency
Visitors that return to your site are shown in this report if they return between the date ranges selected. On the left the 0 represents no day passing which means the user returned at least 30 minutes after leaving the site. On the right the 365 represents a year. Visitors in this tower returned after a year. To view how many visits per day put your mouse over one of the blue towers. A number will appear - this number is the amount of visits that day.
This report is also useful for sites that contain daily updated content such as news sites, blogs etc.
This report is compatible with Comparing Date Ranges

- Marketing Optimization
»Visitor Segment Performance
»» - New vs Returning
This report is similar to the Absolute Unique Visitors report except that it gives a little bit more detail.
It also provides data on the percentage of returning visitors who turn into a conversion.

Visits is the number of visits by new visitors and returning visitors. P/Visit is pageviews divided by number of visits. G/Visit is number of goal conversions divided by number of visits. T/Visits is number of e-commerce transactions divided by number of visits. $/Visit is revenue (from e-commerce) or goal value divided by number of visits.

HINT: If you see this button: You know there is extra data you can see on the report you are viewing. In this case we can see the data on our New Visitors. Click the and then and then select Keyword. It will then take us to a page displaying info on any keywords that may have brought a user to our site that was new. Returning visitors won’t be shown. I used this report as an example but if you see the little round red button with two arrows pointing upward you know there is more data to see. Just play around with it and get the hand of what each does and what info you can find. It is much more informative with other reports than this one.
»» - Referring Source
This report will show you all your sources for traffic. If the source is a Search Engine you can select » and then select keyword to see what keywords that particular search engine sent traffic from. If near the top of the screen it says

Prev

1-10 | 3841

Next

If the 3841 placeholder is any number over ten the report will only show the first ten sources. However you can view all the sources by selecting Display ‘10′ checkbox and changing it to a higher number. Changing the ‘1′ to a higher number such as 5 removes the first 5 sources.
The meaning of the visitor tags:

• [organic] indicates visitors referred by an unpaid search engine listing.
• [referral] indicates visitors referred by links which were not tagged with any campaign variables.
• [(not set)]indicates visitors referred by links which were tagged with campaign variables but for which the medium variable was not set.
• (direct)[(none)] indicates visitors who visited the site by typing the URL directly into their browser.

»» - Geo Location
This report shows you the countries that send the most traffic and which turn the most visitors into conversions.

»» - User-defined
This report allows you to track visitor behavior based upon an arbitrary segment variable that you define. For example, the value selected in a pull-down menu of a registration form can be tagged to the visitor and used to determine conversion and behavior metrics. This report compares how visitors who identified with each of the different groups you defined compare with respect to number of visits, pageviews per visit, conversion rates, and average visit value.
»» - Domains
This report shows what Interent Service Providers are sending the most traffic. This is useful for figuring out what percentage of the traffic has higher speed connections. If your getting 50% dial up users you might want to consider dropping some of that flash.

- Marketing Optimization
»Marketing Campaign Results
»» - Campaign Conversion
This report shows you your referral, organic, direct and campaign traffic. Next to (Organic) click the Plus sign: to view traffic from each search engine. This will not show you the keywords only the search engines. However you can view the keywords for each search engine by clicking the » and then select Keyword.

What does each of these words in parentheses mean?

• (organic) indicates visitors referred by an unpaid search engine listing.
• (referral) indicates visitors referred by links which were not tagged with any campaign variables.
• (not set) indicates visitors referred by links which were tagged but for which the campaign variable was not set.
• (direct) indicates visitors who typed the URL directly into the browser.

»» - Source Conversion
This report is pretty much identical to the Referring Source Report.

»» - Referral Conversion
This reports shows traffic from non-campaign or search engine sites. Visitors who come from sites who link to you will be shown here.

»» - Campaign ROI
Which of my campaigns are performing the best? Are they costing more than I am making?
This report compares Cost, Revenue, CPA(cost per acquisition), RPA(revenue per visit), and ROI.
ROI is your return on investment and is Revenue Minus Costs Divided by Cost.
This report is very very useful for Adwords campaigns and is highly recommended do be used along side Adwords. You can quickly learn what methods are performing well and what ones you may want to drop.
»» - Source ROI
Which referral sources provide the greatest return for the least cost? This report compares sources with respect to number of visits, cost, revenue, cost per acquisition (cost/visits), revenue per acquisition (revenue/visits), and ROI ( [Revenue - Cost]/Cost).

- Marketing Optimization
»Search Engine Marketing
»» - All CPC Analysis
Which cost-per-click programs and keywords drive the highest quality traffic. Now you can know all this and for free.
Definitions:

• Impressions is the number of times an ad was shown
• Clicks is the number of times an ad was clicked
• Trans is the number of transactions that occurred after a referral from this Source[Medium] or keyword. Goals must be enabled to calculate this data
• Cost is the total amount paid for these clicks
• Revenue is the total revenue, as calculated by the number of transactions and the goal value for each

»» - AdWords Analysis
Track your AdWords performance from Campaign level down to individual keywords. Use the plus symbol to the right of any entry to drill down from Campaigns to Ad Groups, and from Ad Groups to keywords.
To use this report, you will need to ensure that:

• Your Analytics account is linked to an active AdWords account
• Auto-tagging is active in your AdWords account

»» - AdWords Keyword Positions
Where do your AdWords ads appear on Google search results pages? How does each position convert for your particular keywords? Drill down from any keyword to see its display position: T1 through T3 indicate that your ad was promoted to the top of the search results page. Positions 1 and higher indicate a position in the right-hand location.

Definitions:

• Visits: the number of visits
• P/Visit: the average number of pageviews per visit
• Gx/Visit: Goal x conversion rate
• T/Visits: the average number of e-commerce transactions per visit
• $/Visits: the revenue or goal value divided by the number of visits

»» - Overall Keyword Conversion
This report shows the keyword conversion. It shows the number of visits for each keyword and the percentage of those visitors who converted. Click the plus sign next to a keyword to see the engine it came from. Note this is organic search engine traffic only.

»» - CPC vs Organic Conversion
How does paid search compare with organic search in driving high quality traffic to my site? This report compares paid and organic referrals with respect to number of visits, pageviews per visit, conversion rates, and average visit value.

»» - Keyword Considerations
How well do other keywords perform? This report shows the top performing organic keywords. Each keyword’s performance is shown in terms of number of visits, pageviews per visit, conversion rates, transactions per visit, and average visit value.

- Content Optimization
»Content Performance
»» - Top Content
This report shows the top content pages, avg time spent on the page, percentage of visitors who exit on that page and the value of the page calculated by determining the conversions of the page.

»» - Depth of Visit
How many pages are viewed during a visit to my website? Visits of a single page appear on the left of the graph; visits of twenty pages or more appear on the right side of the graph.

»» - Length of Visit
How much time do visitors spend on my website? Visits of less than ten seconds appear to the left of the graph; visits of more than 1801 seconds appear on the right side of the graph.

- Content Optimization
»Navigational Analysis
»» - Entrance Bounce Rates
Do visitors continue their visit after viewing their first page or do they immediately leave my site? This report lists the top entrance pages on which visitors land and their respective number of Bounces and Bounce Rates.

»» - Top Exit Points
From which pages do visitors commonly exit my site? This report shows the number of exits and number of pageviews for the top exit pages on your site.
When you can identify where your visitors are leaking from you maybe able to patch the hole and keep them there longer. Of course if the page is the PayPal payment page it is all good but if they are leaving before converting we have a problem. Fortunately if you can narrow it down to the pages it is easier to fix the problems.

»» - Initial Navigation
Which navigation paths resulted in conversions during the visit? For each navigation path, this report shows conversion rates and per visit value.
Click the plus next to any directory to drill down into that directory.

»» - All Navigation
How did visitors get to each page on my site and where did they go afterwards? Select a page to analyze from the left hand side of the report. The number of clicks, the conversion rates, and the average score are displayed for each Click From and Click To page. Pages with the highest average score are those pages most commonly visited prior to high-value conversions.

Click the icon() at the center of the report to view a site overlay of the page you selected from the left.

- Content Optimization
»Goals & Funnel Process
»» - Goal Tracking
For each of my goals, how many goal conversions were there over time? This report shows a graph (one for each goal) indicating the number of goal conversions over time. To see the conversion rates over time for each goal, see the Goal Conversion report.

To compare two date ranges, click the icon on the Date Range title bar.
»» - Defined Funnel Navigation
At what point do visitors who begin a defined funnel process abandon it? The centermost column of boxes represent the steps in one of your defined goal funnels. Select a goal funnel from the drop down menu at upper left. Shown within each box is the percentage of visitors still in the defined funnel at each step. Shown at right, under Abandonment Points, are the visitors who abandoned the funnel and where they went. Shown at left are the Entrance Points, points from which visitors arrive to the funnel.

»» - Defined Funnel Abandonment
What percentage of visitors who begin a defined funnel process abandon it? This report graphs funnel abandonment rates over time for each goal for which you have defined a funnel.
The report data can be shown in daily, monthly or yearly format.

»» - Reverse Goal Path
How do visitors actually arrive at my goals? This report lists the navigation paths to the selected goal (Select your goal from the pull down menu at upper left) and shows the number of conversions that each path represents. This report is different from the defined funnel reports in that it shows the different navigation paths that were used to reach a goal, rather than tracking entrances to and exits from funnels you have defined. Useful for sites that are heavily cross linked, this report allows you to gain insight into “required” content that visitors need to see before they are comfortable with converting. This information can be used to improve the overall navigation of the site.

Definitions:

• G refers to the number of times a particular goal was reached.
• Percent refers to the percentage of times a goal was reached through a specific path.

Now you got that conversion but where did that visitor come from? I mean what path did he/she take before converting? The Reverse Goal Path tool figures it out for you.

QUESTIONS!
Now I am sure you have questions on Google Analytics. And I would love to answer these questions so please either send me a email at randy@NOSPAM1st-rankings.com or comment on this post with your question. I will answer all questions in a new Google Analytics FAQ & Myths post I will soon be writing so hurry and get your questions in.

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