Decoding Google Analytics – Traffic Sources

When you create your own website you typically have a specific audience in mind that you want to attract and you’ll go to great lengths to do what you have to do SEO wise to get them to visit. But how do you know for sure how effective your efforts are?

The answers can be found on Google Analytics, Google’s free web metrics tool. In the beginning, every webmaster is focused on driving traffic and keeping visitors on the site. A great deal of time and effort goes into keyword research, content building, on page and off page optimization and link building all designed to get potential customers to have a look at what’s being offered. GA’s Traffic Overview can tell you exactly where your traffic is coming from and give you a good idea of what they thought of your site once they arrived.

From the Dashboard, click on the Traffic Overview link located in the menu on the left. This will give you a recap of your traffic activity for the reporting period. You’ll notice that Google has classified visits into three categories: direct, referral and search engines.

Let’s start with some simple definitions.

Direct Traffic

This is a little deceiving. Direct traffic is defined as visits that result from a person typing in your URL and going directly to the site. However, Google counts visits that come from a link in an e-mail campaign as direct traffic so this becomes an important piece of data to track e-mail promotional efforts. Another somewhat misleading visit is generated from sites where you have typed your URL (say in a forum post) but not hyperlinked it. People who copy and paste the URL into their browser are considered direct and the site that was the source of the visit is not recorded.

Referral Traffic

This class of traffic will let you know just how well your backlinking efforts are working as traffic generators. Referrals come from sites that have a link to your site either as a hyperlink or anchor text.

Search Engines

This is pretty straight forward. These visits are the result of persons clicking on your link after conducting a search query. What you might find confusing when looking at all of the traffic sources is the listing of Google (organic) and Google.com (referral).

So what does it mean?

Using the menu on the left, you can drill down on each of these categories to find what sites originated the traffic. Of particular importance when evaluating traffic is the “bounce” rate. A bounce is defined as a one page visit. In other words the visitor lands on the page and then exits the site without exploring other pages. A high bounce rate basically suggests that the content didn’t have much value to the visitor.

You can rank the sites by highest to lowest or lowest to highest bounce rate by simply clicking on the column header.

If you have traffic from a source that has a really low bounce rate then you should consider trying to get a link on similar sites as those visitors apparently like what they find. You’ll also notice that low bounce rate traffic stays on the site longer which is an indicator that your content resonates with them.

Keyword Performance

Perhaps one of the most valuable bit of information in the traffic overview is the listing of search phrases that brought you search engine traffic.

The first thing to look for is the performance of keyword phrases that you have optimized for. If you’re getting decent traffic volume but that traffic has a high bounce rate or a low time on site, then you need to work on the content to make it more relevant to the query. There’s nothing more disheartening than a customer walking into a store and then walking out without buying anything.

Another great benefit of the keyword report is the list of phrases that are drawing good, low bounce traffic that you had not considered before. For example if you have optimized for “home remedies for dogs” and you discover that “dog dentistry” is bringing in a fair amount of traffic with a 20% bounce rate even though you don’t have a specific page on the subject, you may want to create content so that you can grab a bigger share of that phrase.

Patience is a Virtue

The Traffic Overview of Google Analytics can give you great info to better manage your website but understand it takes a while to develop meaningful data. Don’t expect to make decisions based on the first week’s traffic. Let the site mature a bit and then dive in.