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10+ Essential Digital Marketing Tools for 2023 (& Beyond)

August 3, 2023 No Comments

By Sam Driver

Navigating the vast digital marketing world can be daunting, right? But, with the right digital marketing tools, it’s as breezy as a summer sail.

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting, these tools can sharpen your strategies, making your campaigns more effective and efficient.

From SEO to social media management, we’ve compiled a list of over 10 indispensable tools you need.

Excited?

Let’s jump in!

1. Harness the Power of Google Analytics for Market Insights

In the ever-evolving digital ecosystem, staying on top of market trends is vital.

Google Analytics is your window into this world, offering invaluable insights about your audience’s behaviours, preferences, and interactions.

It’s not just about gaining an understanding of what’s currently capturing attention, but also about leveraging this data to propel your marketing efforts.

For example, if you run an e-commerce store, Google Analytics can help you identify which products are most popular among your visitors, or which marketing channels are driving the most traffic to your site.

You can then tailor your promotional campaigns around these high-performing products or double down on the most effective channels.

You can even understand user behaviour on your site, such as the average time spent on a page or the bounce rate, helping you make informed decisions about improving your website’s user experience.

And the best part?

Google Analytics offers all these insights in real-time, for free!

2. Switch Up Your Content Creation with Lumen5

Creating engaging content is a marketer’s holy grail, and with a tool like Lumen5, it’s simpler than ever.

While blog posts, articles, and whitepapers are still essential, visual content is emerging as a more potent way to grab and hold audience attention.

Lumen5, an AI-powered video maker, is designed to transform your written content into appealing videos quickly and efficiently.

For instance, if you’ve just published an in-depth guide on ‘Home Gardening Tips,’ you can convert this blog post into a series of short, snappy, and shareable videos using Lumen5.

These videos can be shared across multiple platforms — your website, social media, email newsletters — to reach a wider audience.

Plus, the tool’s user-friendly interface and customizable templates mean you don’t need to be a professional video editor to create stunning visuals.

It’s an investment in creating content that not only stands out but also increases user engagement.

3. Boost SEO with Ahrefs

digital marketing tools, ahrefs homepage

While Google is often the focal point of SEO efforts, other resources can offer unique insights. Ahrefs is one such tool, providing in-depth analysis and data to optimize your SEO strategies.

For instance, if you’ve been concentrating your SEO efforts primarily on Google, integrating Ahrefs can open a treasure trove of insights. From backlink analysis to keyword research, Ahrefs provides a comprehensive view of your website’s SEO performance.

You might discover untapped keywords or learn about valuable backlinks from your competitors.

It’s relatively simple to set up, and once your site is verified, Ahrefs starts collecting and delivering insights that you can use to fine-tune your SEO strategies.

Remember, a multifaceted approach to SEO ensures you reach a wider audience and achieve better results.

4. Stay in the Know with Feedly

The importance of staying up-to-date with industry news and trends cannot be overstated for a digital marketer. Feedly, a premier RSS reader, is your one-stop solution to staying informed.

Imagine having a single platform that can keep you abreast with the latest articles, blogs, and news from all your favourite sites.

Sounds convenient, right? But that’s not all.

Feedly also allows you to categorize your feeds into different topics, making it easier to sort through the information.

Plus, the platform offers AI-driven insights to help you discover emerging trends before they become mainstream.

By investing a few minutes each day, you’ll keep your finger on the pulse of your industry, giving you an edge over competitors who are still sifting through dozens of websites for information.

5. Enhance Email Marketing with MailChimp’s A/B Testing

Even in the dynamic landscape of digital marketing, email campaigns retain their crucial role.

But are you getting the maximum return from your email marketing efforts?

If you’re not conducting A/B testing, also known as split testing, you could be missing out on significant improvements.

With a powerful tool like MailChimp, you can easily implement A/B testing for various elements of your emails.

For instance, you might experiment with different subject lines — one might be quirky and attention-grabbing, while another could be more direct and benefits-focused.

Each version is sent to a portion of your audience, and MailChimp tracks the performance of each, giving you valuable data on which one resonates more with your readers.

But why stop at subject lines?

You can also test different types of email content, from the length and tone of your message to the images and call to action (CTA).

You could also experiment with sending times, finding out whether your audience is more responsive first thing in the morning, later in the afternoon, or even on weekends.

Remember, the key to successful email marketing is continuous improvement, and with A/B testing through MailChimp, you’ll be well-equipped to make that a reality.

6. Dive into Inbound Marketing with HubSpot

digital marketing tools, hubspot homepage

While discussing digital marketing tools, one simply can’t overlook HubSpot, a leading platform in the realm of inbound marketing.

HubSpot combines a variety of marketing features in a single, integrated platform, including SEO, content creation, email marketing, social media management, and analytics.

But how does it add value to your digital marketing strategy?

Firstly, HubSpot is all about attracting, engaging, and delighting customers through relevant and helpful content.

Let’s say you’re managing a fitness blog.

With HubSpot’s SEO tools, you can ensure your blog posts are optimized to reach your target audience.

HubSpot’s Content Strategy tool can help you discover topics your audience cares about, and the Blog Ideas Generator can provide a year’s worth of blog post ideas in a matter of seconds.

Secondly, HubSpot’s email marketing tools can help you create professional emails without needing a designer, personalize your outreach, and track the success of your campaigns in real-time.

Their social media management tools can assist you in scheduling posts, monitoring social mentions, and analysing performance across all your social platforms in one place.

And if you’re into data, HubSpot’s robust analytics can give you detailed insights into your audience’s behaviour, helping you refine your marketing strategy.

7. Spruce Up Your Social Media Marketing with Sprout Social

Managing multiple social media platforms can indeed be daunting. The process involves more than just posting content — it’s about engaging with your audience, analysing performance, and refining your strategy.

Enter Sprout Social, a tool that transforms social media management from a headache into a breeze.

For example, if you’re managing a brand with presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, Sprout Social allows you to schedule posts across all these platforms from a single dashboard.

No more hopping between tabs and apps! But the benefits go far beyond just saving time.

With its powerful analytics, Sprout Social offers insights on key metrics like engagement, reach, and conversions. This data can guide you on what’s working, what isn’t, and where you need to focus your efforts for better results.

Additionally, Sprout Social’s listening features can help you understand the broader conversation about your brand and industry.

In short, Sprout Social is more than a tool — it’s an essential partner in your social media marketing strategy.

8. Elevate Your Visual Content with Canva

In the realm of digital marketing, visual content can be the differentiating factor that sets your brand apart from the competition.

The compelling power of well-designed graphics, compelling presentations, and eye-catching social media posts can’t be underestimated.

Canva, a versatile design tool, is here to empower you to create stunning visual content effortlessly.

Imagine you’ve just written a fantastic blog post, and now you need an equally fantastic graphic to promote it on your social channels. Canva has you covered.

With an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, you can quickly design graphics that align with your brand identity. It offers a vast library of templates, fonts, illustrations, and images that caters to all design needs, from social media posts to email headers and beyond.

Whether you’re an experienced designer or a beginner, Canva is designed to make the process as easy and creative as possible.

9. Empower Your Content Marketing with Yoast SEO

It’s no secret… even the best content can fall flat without proper optimization. That’s where Yoast SEO steps up to the plate.

This powerful WordPress plugin helps you optimize your blog posts for SEO within minutes.

For instance, if you’re writing about the latest trends in digital marketing, Yoast SEO will guide you to include relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and ensure that your text is easily readable.

The best part?

The plugin will also evaluate your content’s readability — from paragraph length to sentence structure and even passive voice usage.

If you’re not using Yoast SEO yet, you’re missing out on a straightforward way to attract more organic traffic to your website, subsequently improving your brand’s visibility and credibility.

10. Unlock User Behaviour Insights with Hotjar

digital marketing tools, hotjar homepage

Sometimes, the conventional numbers and graphs from analytics tools just aren’t enough to paint the full picture of your users’ journey on your website.

Enter Hotjar, a game-changing tool that provides a deeper understanding of user behaviour.

How does it work?

By generating heatmaps and session recordings, you gain a visual understanding of how users interact with your content.

For example, the heatmaps can show where users click the most, helping you identify high-engagement areas on your webpage.

Session recordings, on the other hand, can reveal any difficulties users face when navigating your site.

Using these insights, you can make data-driven changes to enhance your website’s usability and user experience, thereby improving conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

11. Revolutionize Your Outreach with Hunter.io

Networking and outreach remain key elements in digital marketing, and Hunter.io is the perfect tool to bolster these efforts.

This brilliant tool allows you to find and verify professional email addresses tied to a specific domain or company, ensuring that you’re reaching out to the right people.

Consider this scenario…

You’re planning an email marketing campaign targeted at the decision-makers of potential partner companies.

With Hunter.io, you can quickly compile a robust contact list, verifying the legitimacy of each email address to boost your email deliverability rate.

Moreover, this tool can also aid in competitor analysis, giving you insight into the professional networks of your competition.

In less than an hour, you can create a formidable contact list for your next outreach campaign, ensuring your message is delivered directly to the decision-makers’ inboxes.

This significantly boosts your chances of forming strategic partnerships, gaining insights, or even securing new customers.

Future-Proof Your Strategy with These Essential Digital Marketing Tools

We get it. The digital landscape is constantly changing, and keeping up can feel like a never-ending uphill climb.

Remember, with every challenge comes an opportunity.

These digital marketing tools are your secret weapon to navigate the future.

Every tool we’ve shared today will add a new layer of effectiveness to your strategy, empowering you to meet the challenges of the evolving digital world head-on.

So, gear up and conquer the digital marketing space.

The future is yours for the taking!

By Sam Driver

Sam is an Associate Editor for Smart Blogger and family man who loves to write. When he’s not goofing around with his kids, he’s honing his craft to provide lasting value to anyone who cares to listen.

Sourced from SmartBlogger

In News

Five Things To Do When Launching A Website

March 10, 2023 No Comments

By Adrien Levinger

Launching a website for your business can be a mountainous undertaking. There are so many factors to consider to build a website that will serve your business, from content to SEO and, of course, making sure it all works together.

After you’ve done all that work, the last thing you want is to have to go back and fix what didn’t get done right the first time. So I have compiled a list of things you should absolutely take care of before your website goes live to save yourself headaches in the future.

1. Choose the right content management system. Will your website be more content oriented or e-commerce oriented? Will you build it yourself or leverage an agency? What traffic and volume are you expecting in the first year? Your answers will determine which CMS is best suited for your website framework. Choosing the right CMS in the beginning will save you endless frustration and even a complete rebuild of your website later.

The difference between a content-oriented and an e-commerce-oriented CMS is as stark as buying a dump truck versus a race car: They’re just made to do different things. A content-oriented CMS makes it easy to add and manage content, while an e-commerce-oriented CMS makes it easy to add new products, make sales and track inventory. Decide the ultimate purpose of your website before you start building, and you’ll set yourself up for ease of use later.

2. Activate Google Analytics 4. Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google Analytics. It is taking the place of the current Universal Analytics, which will sunset in July 2023. Any data collected by Universal Analytics will not transfer into GA4, so if you’re launching a new website, go ahead and install GA4. This way, you start gathering user data as soon as your website goes live, and you won’t have to deal with making the switch later.

3. Optimize for search engines. SEO is what drives users to your website when they’re searching on the web. But that doesn’t happen by accident. Implementing a solid SEO strategy from the beginning will help Google understand what you offer and send users to your website when they search for a certain word or phrase.

If you’ve got the budget for it, hiring an SEO expert to optimize your website can save you an immense amount of time and deliver faster results. But if hiring an expert isn’t in your budget, you can learn to do SEO yourself with proper study. There are lots of online courses that can help.

4. Make sure everything is properly organized from the beginning. In the rush to get your website live, you may be tempted to get something up as fast as possible and tweak it later, but this is a strategy for future pain. So many things about websites are very difficult to fix later, and you’ll save time and stress by doing it right rather than doing it twice.

Some things you’ll want to pay special attention to because they are difficult to fix later include:

Naming your images correctly for SEO and ADA compliance. Correctly named images are key to both SEO and ADA compliance. It is a time-consuming headache to go back through your site and rename every image after your site has launched. Instead, name your image files correctly when you save them, and input the correct alt text as soon as you add them to your website.
Input meta descriptions and titles correctly the first time. These are not necessarily visible on the front end, so it’s easy to forget until you’re served with an ADA compliance lawsuit.
Create organized SKU numbers. Don’t wait until you have 1,000 products to realize you need SKUs that identify release date, colour, manufacturer and other identifying information you will need later for tracking, inventory and management. Create a naming convention that helps you identify and sort items from your very first product.

5. Make sure your website is ADA compliant. Did you know that your website is required to be ADA compliant just like a brick-and-mortar business? Making sure your website is ADA compliant from the start is a good way to avoid learning an expensive lesson when you’re served with an ADA compliance lawsuit.

The ADA’s web content accessibility guidelines require your website to contain features that allow people with visual, mobility and neurological impairments to use it at an optimal level. These features can include:

Keyboard navigation for those with mobility issues who may have trouble moving a mouse
Appropriate text contrast so visually impaired people can easily read your website content
Descriptive alt text on images so a screen reader can describe images to a visually impaired user

Many other features are required for your website to be considered ADA compliant. You can find out more on the Americans with Disabilities Act website.

A Little Extra Work Now Will Save You Stress Later

It’s easy to think that you’ll have more time or money to work on your website later. The problem is, “later” never seems to come. When you set your website up right the first time, you can avoid a future of frustration and set yourself up for website success right out of the gate.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Adrien Levinger

Founder and CEO of FAV Solution, Adrien Levinger is an eCommerce expert with more than a decade of experience scaling brands online. Read Adrien Levinger’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

5 Gamechanging Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Insights For Entrepreneurs

October 24, 2022 No Comments

By Jodie Cook

If you’re running a business that has a website, you need analytics. Knowing how people are finding and engaging with your website is golden information that you can build on. Understanding which pages resonate the most and the least with your target audience and finding new pockets of potential customers can scale a business far faster than anecdotal evidence and trial and error.

Julian Juenemann knows about Google Analytics, one of the most popular web analytics tools. He learned about digital marketing through various startups he cofounded, and quickly became fascinated by a data-driven world. Launching JJAnalytics in 2013 saw him helping other business adopt his methods, to grow their businesses to new heights. He has since launched the MeasureSchool YouTube channel to teach this way of marketing to others. With over 150,000 subscribers, it’s become the leading source for marketers to learn data-driven analysis.

The new update of Google Analytics, GA4, has created exiting potential for entrepreneurs to improve how well their website converts and, therefore, the profitability of their business. Juenemann shares how the data can be applied to grow your business.

1. Visualize your funnel with GA4

“A funnel is a series of pages or actions your user takes to reach your goal,” explained Juenemann. “Not everyone will enter or even complete all steps.” With GA4 it’s possible to visualize your funnel and gain insights to improve it. Having an understanding of how customers are progressing through your site and converting to sale is valuable information to see laid out.

“In the Exploration section of GA4, select to create a new funnel exploration report,” instructed Juenemann. He explained that a pre-configured report will show by default, but “the magic lies in customizing it.” Customize your report by changing the steps on the left-hand side. Select the pages you want users to go through, to reach the desired conversion. For example, downloading your ebook, visiting a series of checkout pages, or reading a product page before putting it in the cart.

Once you have selected the steps of your funnel, it’s time to study it.

2. Understand and reduce drop off to increase sales

Before figuring out how to improve your funnel, it’s important to understand drop off. No website in the world has a 100% conversion rate because, “not every user will end up buying your product or submitting your form.” With the funnel visualization you have just created, you can now see the percentage of your website users that are dropping off on each step and understand which steps need improving.

GA4 portrays your funnel as a series of blue bars, each of which represent people who have visited that page. “Underneath each blue bar, you can see the percentage of users that dropped off on that step.” From here you can understand your most significant drop-off pages. This should involve looking at the page yourself and perhaps getting a second opinion from someone in your target audience, then reworking the page or making small tweaks. Edit the copy, add an explainer video, refresh the colour palette or add some images or diagrams that better explain a concept.

Improving your funnel’s pages will help more users travel through to sale. A tiny percentage improvement at each stage will make a dramatic difference to your overall conversion rate.

3. Retarget abandoned users

By now, you have identified which group of users haven’t progressed through your funnel to the end, and figured out where they are dropping off. You have your plan to improve your conversions. Next, it’s time to retarget those users who did drop off to entice them back in.

“GA4 has a great way of bringing abandoned users back to your site, made possible by the connection to Google Ads.” Connect the dots as follows. “Right click on the abandonment number and you’ll see an option to create a segment from these users.” A segment is a portion of people you can group together. “In the menu that opens next, you can mark this segment of people who dropped off as an audience.” Next, connect your Google Ads account to GA4 (if it’s not already) and upload this audience to your advertising account.

You can now set up a remarketing campaign to show ads to these people, meaning you have another chance to get them back.

5 gamechanging Google Analytics 4 (GA4) insights for entrepreneurs

Julian Juenemann

4. Figure out where users come from

Getting in the heads of your website’s users means understanding where they have come from. GA4 tells you this information, so you can work out which traffic channels you should optimize or turn off. For example, if you’re spending to advertise on a certain website but not seeing the traffic, that budget might be spent elsewhere. Similarly, if you’re seeing a high proportion of traffic from Instagram or TikTok, you want to make sure your website matches the visual, short-form layout of those platforms.

“In the Breakdown section of your funnel exploration report created in the first step, add the user’s session medium.” Once you have done this, the table underneath will populate with the traffic sources by which your users entered your funnel. “This data is broken down by the different steps they took and gives you information about how different user groups find you.”

Knowing where users come from brings insight into what they expect to find when they arrive, so you can make sure they see what they want.

5. Improve your funnel

“Making any kind of changes to your funnel will impact the data,” said Juenemann. “An improved site layout might lead to more people entering step two of your funnel from step one.” Keeping a log of the changes you make will enable you to see which have likely been effective and which perhaps had the opposite effect.

“In order to see the effect of your changes in GA4, switch your funnel visualization to a ‘trended funnel’ to see the steps in a timeline chart.” GA4 presents the results of your tweaks and shows you the impact since the changes were made. You can then work out which to optimize further and which didn’t move the needle.

Keep making small edits until your drop-off rates decrease and you’re making more money or attracting more enquiries through your site.

Seeing and understanding data is a powerful tool, not to be dismissed by marketers and entrepreneurs. Knowing what is going on means making small, incremental changes that could vastly affect the popularity and success of a website. Understand these game changing features of GA4 to take control of your site and steer the ship accordingly.

Feature Image Credit: 5 gamechanging Google Analytics 4 (GA4) insights for entrepreneurs. Julian Juenemann

By Jodie Cook

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

Author of Ten Year Career: Reimagine business, design your life, fast track to freedom. I founded a digital agency in 2011 that was acquired in 2021 and write books and articles on entrepreneurship. Forbes’ 30 under 30 social entrepreneurs in Europe 2017.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

How to find blog topic ideas that improve SEO

July 27, 2022 No Comments

By Stas Pamintuan

Not enough companies dedicate time and effort to blogging, which is a great way of promoting services and connecting with users – new and old. Stas Pamintuan, junior SEO executive at Digital Ethos, shares some fool proof techniques for blogging in style to ensure that posts engage readers.

As Google becomes increasingly sophisticated at determining user search intent, it’s evident that content writing answering your customers’ questions is one of the key ways to develop a powerful SEO blog strategy. Creating topics that address the queries and concerns of your customers allows you to take advantage of Google’s algorithm and searchers’ trends toward longer search strings.

Here’s a little secret – the information you need is readily available for free. All it takes is a few searches, as well as knowing where to look. And if you can figure out what your target audience is searching for, the process of finding blog topic ideas comes quite easily. Not only that, but there are also various tools and resources to help you generate ideas and streamline this process.

Use medium- and long-tail keywords for SEO

When you focus on writing blogs that answer specific questions, you’ll attract buyers who are after what you offer. This is where medium- and long-tail keywords come in as they improve click-through rates and conversions because they answer questions from customers who are in specific stages of the buyer’s journey.

In essence, you’re pre-qualifying your audience. Even if you end up receiving fewer site visits, those that do click through to your site will be more likely to convert into buyers because of this. It’s better to target users who are searching for your products or services and convert, rather than getting more visitors who immediately bounce off of the site.

Check Google Analytics

Reviewing your analytics can help you discover what pain points customers are looking to solve. Are more people clicking on a specific product or service page? Is there a specific blog people are looking at on your site? How many times are they downloading your resources?

Understanding these behaviours can help you find what’s working. You can also find gaps in the content you release, so you can generate more copy to help you resolve your audience’s pain points.

Practice social listening

With so many conversations happening on social media, it can definitely be a challenging space to maneuver if you’re not sure what you’re after. But if you’re able to identify their presence on socials, social listening becomes a tool you can leverage to find interesting blog topics to write about.

Follow hashtags, like pages or join groups that are related to your products and services. This way, you’ll be able to find out about the conversations your audience is having and even their pain points; but regardless, there is an abundance of blog topic ideas as people will always be having conversations, old and new.

Rather than connecting with one person, when you optimize your content correctly you have the ability to connect with everyone in a group.

Keyword tools to help you generate blog topic ideas

To help you get started, here are some keyword research tools you can use to generate blog topic ideas that people are searching for online.

Ahrefs: Ahrefs is a free keyword generator tool that helps you to find relevant keywords from their database of over 8bn queries. You can enter up to 10 words or phrases and even choose from one of six keyword ideas reports. What’s even more useful is that search query relevance can be divided between Google, Bing and Amazon and queries from seven other search engines.

Semrush: Semrush is one more tool that helps you to find keywords based on search queries and questions.

AnswerThePublic: AnswerThePublic is a tool that generates a visualization of questions people are asking about a topic. The good thing here is that there are so many topic clusters you’re definitely bound to find popular blog topics to suit you.

Google Keyword Planner: If you have an existing AdWords account, Google Keyword Planner allows you to find keywords along with their stats and their popularity in your choice of region.

Quora: When you enter a word or phrase on Quora, it generates a list of questions that its users are asking about a particular subject. You can even dig deeper by filtering By Type and selecting Questions or Topics. When you filter by Topics, you’ll see how many times questions about that topic have been asked.

We’re always ahead of the game

As a specialist in content marketing, the team at Digital Ethos can make your business worth discovering. We can work with you to deliver truly consumable content that magnifies your brand and everything it’s about.

By Stas Pamintuan

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Critical Analytics That Will Improve Your SEO Results

September 22, 2021 No Comments

By Nick Chernets

Without a doubt, Google Analytics is the best gift that Google has given us — a free website analysis service that provides information on how users find and use company websites.

Web Analytics refers to the measurement and analysis of data meant to inform and provide a clear understanding of user behaviour on web pages.

It includes audience data; the number of visits, unique users, what type of device they use, etc., audience behaviour; the most visited pages, time spent on pages, bounce rate, etc., campaign data; campaigns that generate more traffic, keyword searches that resulted in a visit, etc. and SEO positioning which refers to the strategies and techniques that a website utilizes to place as high as possible in the search engines.

The vast majority of SEO actions can be measurable and quantifiable using Google Analytics, taking into account the three fundamental insights of web traffic: engagement, user behaviour and conversion.

Web, organic and referral traffic

Web traffic represents the users who visit a website. It’s measured in visits, also called sessions, and is a common way to analyse the ability and effectiveness of attracting an audience. There are different types of web traffic, but organic and referral traffic insights are truly significant for SEO.

Organic traffic refers to the number of visitors that come directly from the search results of a search engine. This is the most important traffic as it is directly linked to the website’s positioning in the SERPs.

Referral traffic provides you with the data about visits that arrived at the website via external sources other than a search engine, such as a link on another website.

Desktop, mobile and brand traffic

These days, more and more people opt to use their smartphones to access the web. Therefore, it’s essential to differentiate between and consider the percentage of incoming traffic from mobile phones and incoming traffic from desktops.

It’s exciting to analyse the type of searches users make that land them on your website. Users can reach your page from a third-party website, by generic keyword searches or by brand search. Brand traffic is the most important and occurs when a user accesses your website by typing the name of your brand or one of your specific products in the search engine.

Location tracking is key

Knowing where visitors come from will make it easier for you to improve your local SEO strategies and make them more specific and effective. For example, if part of your traffic comes from Eastern Europe, you can generate related content for that particular audience.

In addition, make sure to distinguish between different types of users when analyzing your web traffic. New users land on the website for the first time and are registered by Google Analytics through an ID. Recurring users are those already assigned an ID by Google Analytics and are recognized as already “known” users.

Keep in mind, though, that sometimes these particular analytics Insights can be misleading. For example, if a recurring user accesses the website from another browser, they are counted as a new user. The same happens when cookies get deleted.

Engagement behaviours and bounce rate

One of the most potent qualities of Google Analytics is that we get to learn about the behavior of users while they’re on our website. It’s important to pay attention to several insights regarding the way these users interact with the site. This concept is vital as it quantifies the percentage of users who leave the website without interaction.

A high bounce rate means that we fail to offer interesting content to the audience or possibly miss the opportunity to respond to the user’s search intention appropriately. The bounce rate is a variable that can differ depending on the type of website and content. Therefore, it is possible to configure the average time to consider for the bounce rate analysis.

Pageviews and average time on page

A session represents the set of actions that a user performs in a given time. For instance, a user who visits several pages per session indicates that the content is attractive and optimized.

This particular insight defines the average duration of the session for each user. Obviously, the longer the average duration, the better the content that’s offered to the audience. Google Analytics allows studying user behaviour by grouping similar content. This makes it a lot easier to understand the user’s journey and interaction as well.

Conversion rate and ROI

Conversion is the ultimate goal of every business website: a subscription, a download, a purchase, etc. Conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors (out of the total number of visitors) who have completed the desired goal. A high conversion rate is indicative of successful web design and marketing efforts. It means that people search for what is being offered and find it without issues. This is, essentially, an indicator that shows the performance obtained from SEO (or any other) investment. The formula to calculate ROI is as follows: ROI = (Profit – Investment) / Investment.

Keep in mind that there are other calculation options where it’s possible to use other indicators, such as the number of visits without final conversion and others.

Improving SEO using Analytics Insights

Google Analytics can help develop considerably more effective SEO optimization by analyzing all the information that it provides. As mentioned, looking into the web traffic insight is a valuable piece of data that will show the actual reality of your website’s functionality and usefulness. And it’s with Audience Reports that you can establish different criteria to determine the quantity and quality of traffic on your website.

Therefore, you can temporarily adjust metrics such as the number of sessions, number of users, page views, average duration or bounce rate.

Acquisition reports deal with the insights regarding visits, the originating channels, and the number of conversions. In these reports, the type of traffic is crucial to conclude the audience, i.e., whether it’s organic, direct, referred or social traffic. The secondary dimension function allows you to expand the information within a primary dimension. For example, in the Audience by Device report, the default dimension is “Source” However, if you select a secondary dimension, for example, “City,” you will see where the traffic originated from.

Another way to perform in-depth analysis in Google Analytics is by using segments. A segment is a subset of data that shares common characteristics. For example, a segment could be users from a specific geo-location out of a complete set of users. Another segment could be users visiting a particular page on your website.

Google Search Console reports and queries

The integration of Google Analytics and Search Console will allow you to analyse and improve the presence of your websites in Google search results from the same platform. With Google Search Console, you can analyse web traffic, learn about the positioning of your pages, analyse performance, measure the conversion rate, detect errors, and delete URLs that you don’t want to appear in searches.

Improving SEO positioning depends on how much valuable information you can collect and how you decide to use it. Google Analytics is a great resource that every business should implement as the main tool to help them achieve their goals.

By Nick Chernets

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

Why You Should Become An Expert in Google Analytics

March 24, 2021 No Comments

By The Cheddar Shop

Google Analytics has become a powerhouse in recent years. The ultimate web tracking tool, it’s utilized by everyone from entrepreneurs to big businesses, providing users with the data they need to measure the effects of their web and marketing efforts. In fact, this report shows that Google Analytics is used by 84.2% of all the websites whose traffic was analysed (representing 54.9% of all websites).

Being skilled in Google Analytics can be a major draw to employers and can also help individuals build their businesses and determine just how well their marketing efforts are doing. But while the tools might be very powerful, the more the user understands the platform, the meaningful the data and the deeper the insights. As such, right now is a great time to learn the ins and outs, with the Google Analytics Master Class Bundle available for just $35.

With over 3,891 enrolled students, this bundle is highly-rated for a reason. Through five expert-led courses, you’ll learn everything from the fundamentals to advanced techniques. A good place to start is the hands-on training course on Google Analytics for beginners. The 4.4-star-rated course covers the basics, such as how to load demo data from an online store as well as analyse audience, acquisition, and behaviour reports.

Once you start tinkering in Google Analytics, you’ll notice there’s quite a lot of data to comb through. Through this course pack, you’ll learn how to navigate through all this information and how to make smart business decisions using that data. Get a deep understanding of all the methods and techniques necessary to measure, monitor, and analyse your web traffic. Take your expertise a step further when you learn how to set up an Analytics Dashboard in Google Data Studio, unveiling key insights that can directly affect marketing and sales decisions.

The bundle includes a 4.5-star-rated Google Analytics exam prep course. The course features practice questions and feedback on your wrong answers, so you’ll be ready to ace the exam and get this industry-recognized certification, not to mention grow your business or career.

More than half of the world’s websites are running Google Analytics. Don’t get left behind. Get the Google Analytics Master Class Bundle for $34.99 (Reg. $995).

Prices subject to change.

By The Cheddar Shop

Cheddar is partnering with StackCommerce to bring you the Cheddar Shop. This article doesn’t constitute editorial endorsement, and we earn a portion of all sales.

Sourced from Cheddar

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11 Valuable Data Points To Be Gleaned From Clients’ Google Analytics

February 3, 2021 No Comments

Sourced from Forbes

Some agency clients aren’t able to address important questions their marketing partners need answered in order to devise the best strategy to meet their needs. Luckily, analytics tools can help agencies uncover illuminating data points that clients can’t provide up front.

The key to informing a strategy that will achieve a client’s marketing goals is to identify which specific types of data you’re looking for before diving into the analysis. Below, experts from Forbes Agency Council share 11 of the most valuable pieces of information you can glean by analysing your clients’ Google Analytics.

1. What Attracts Versus Repels

As communications experts, we love reviewing Google Analytics to better understand how customers are engaging with a brand and what’s attracting them versus repelling them. This establishes information that allows us to develop more compelling content strategies. You’re able to see the level of leads coming from media relations and placed articles, which is a strong indicator of campaign success. – Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications

2. The Client’s Audience

At the end of the day, the most valuable element of successful marketing is understanding the consumer. Google Analytics can provide some insight into a client’s audience. Combining this with other data sets and marrying the research with strategic analysis can inform an insight-driven marketing strategy. This can inspire consumer targeting, creative, media and more. – Marc Becker, The Tangent Agency

3. ROI On Marketing Investments

No matter what, you want to make sure that you are getting ROI on any marketing investment. Even if your Google Analytics are telling a positive story, if you aren’t getting actual ROI, there is data that either is not accurate or needs to be looked at holistically. There should always be a system of checks and balances, and all touch points should be telling the same story. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne LLC

4. Return On Ad Spend Performance

The most important piece of data you can glean from Google Analytics is the ROAS performance of your clients’ media buying across the various websites they are advertising on. By tracking where the users are coming from and tracking their activity on your clients’ sites, you can determine their ROAS. You can then shift media investment to the top-performing websites. – Dennis Cook, Gamut. Smart Media from Cox.

5. The Source Of Relevant Traffic

Analysing their clients’ Google Analytics allows agencies to see where relevant traffic is coming from, identify trends and target opportunities. Additionally, optimizing your campaigns based on the data feedback will lead to higher conversion rates. – Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC

6. Time On Page

Time on page is the most important Google Analytics statistic. Once you get traffic to your site, do they stay? What content do they consume? How much mindshare do they give you? What pages are sticky and not transactional? Time on page tells you what prospects value and where they give your ideas credence. Know this, and you’ll know your audience. – Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group

7. Where Viewers Leave The Website

The pages where viewers are leaving the client’s website at abnormally high rates is where to focus. By finding out what pages are causing website viewers to drop off the most, clients can analyze these pages and make necessary adjustments to better grab the attention of future visitors. – Stefan Pollack, The Pollack Group

8. Behaviour Flow

Behaviour Flow is still my favourite feature offered by Google Analytics. Studying the flow of the visitors and the path they take while interacting with a website helps business owners understand what a page means to the customer. This information helps business owners understand how to prioritize and optimize pages to offer visitors a better user experience. – Ahmad Kareh, Twistlab Marketing

9. Goal Conversion Data

Google Analytics can be overwhelming, so a great place to start is by looking at a client’s goal conversions (the number of visitors that took the action your client intended for them to take). This one area can give quick insight into how and why a website was built, as well as whether or not the site is performing the way it’s meant to. If goals have not yet been set up, this is a great opportunity to start a conversation with your client about short- and long-term objectives. – Carey Kirkpatrick, CKP

10. The Most Popular Content

Simply looking at your website’s most popular content can tell you if that website really serves your target customer. All too often, content serves another purpose or user. My agency’s example is that the bio I wrote for our vice president was the most popular piece of content, which proved that web visitors came to copy that bio rather than to hire our agency. – Jim Caruso, M1PR, Inc. d/b/a MediaFirst PR – Atlanta

11. Device Usage

One often overlooked piece of data in Google Analytics is device usage. All clients basically have two websites: a desktop site and a mobile site. Understanding what visitors are doing on both sites is critical, especially when it comes to advertising and landing pages. – T. Maxwell, eMaximize

Sourced from Forbes

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A Complete Guide to Understanding Bounce Rate

December 22, 2020 No Comments

By Sean Si

Bounce rate is a scary thing for people that don’t know the ins and outs of this particular vanity metric. I consider it as a vanity metric since there are a variety of reasons, both good and bad, that can skew the numbers. However, bounce rate is still a metric that can help diagnose what’s wrong with your pages and even your site. How do visitors interact with your pages? Do they find what you’re looking for? Are they not satisfied with what you’re displaying? All of these can be answered by diving deeper into your bounce rate metrics. So, here’s what you need to know about bounce rate and how do you use it to deepen your understanding of your site.

What is Bounce Rate?

A website’s bounce rate is the percentage of users that left the page/site that did not take any further action after entering such as opening a link, clicking a CTA button, filling out a form, etc.

Users that exit immediately without taking further actions are aptly called “bounces”. Since they only opened your page/site then bounced immediately away.

Where Can I Find My Website’s Bounce Rate?

Your website’s bounce rate is easily viewable in your Google Analytics account. You have to own or at least be able to view our website’s Google Analytics Property.

Once you’ve opened your site’s GA property, easily maneuver to the Audience dropdown and click on Overview. You’ll immediately see your site’s bounce rate.

You can further refine it by checking a specific page’s bounce rate. You can even check the specific bounce rate of the devices used by your site’s visitors.

What is a Good Bounce Rate?

A good bounce rate differs based on the industry your site is in. That’s why a single study about bounce rate won’t always apply to your website. So, here’s a helpful resource made by Custom Media Labs on benchmark bounce rate averages for different industries:

20% – 45% for e-commerce and retail websites
25% – 55% for B2B websites
30% – 55% for lead generation websites
35% – 60% for non-eCommerce content websites
60% – 90% for landing pages
65% – 90% for dictionaries, portals, blogs, and generally websites that revolve around news and events

You need to remember that these are the industry standards, so if your site’s bounce rate is either higher or lower than the average then there might be something to improve or fix on your site and/or page. So, what are some of the common causes for having too low or too high of a bounce rate?

Why Your Bounce Rate is too High or Low

There are a variety of factors that affect your bounce rate – most of them include on-page factors that you can easily fix, improve, or change. They include:

Site Speed

A slow-loading page or site can be a definite reason for visitors to bounce. Aside from negatively affecting your bounce rate, a slow loading speed will also affect your site’s rankings. Why? Because Google has stated the importance of better page loading speed since it will be a part of the Page Experience Update that will be rolled out in 2021.

So, not only will you improve your bounce rate by speeding up your site, but it will also help you adjust to the upcoming algorithm update. To help you start, here’s a complete guide on optimizing for the core web vitals – an integral part of the page experience update. Additionally, there is a multitude of resources that you can use to check your site’s current loading speed.

Title Tag and Meta Description

Maybe the problem isn’t what’s on your page, but what the users see before they enter your page. Your page’s title tag and meta description is the introduction to your page – it sets the expectations of the user, and it’s their first impression of your page. This means that what is contained in the title tag and meta description will be the one dictating what they expect to see inside your page. So, if your page does not align with what your title tag and meta description says, that’s an automatic bounce.

Misleading title tag and meta description is a simple problem to fix since you have direct control over these factors and you can search for a keyword that the page ranks for to check how it looks in the SERPs. Either align what is contained in the content with your title tag and meta description or adjust the meta tags to better fit the content of the page.

Low-Quality Content

Aside from having misleading meta tags, another possibility is that your page’s content is not up to par with what the user wants to see or it simply does not contain the answer they were looking for.

This is where search intent and proper content optimization comes into play. Why? Because when you have a proper understanding of these two facets, it will help you create specialized content that users would want to see.

Mobile Optimization

On a more technical aspect, it is possible that your website is not properly optimized for mobile. This is especially alarming in this day and age where most of the searches are made through mobile devices.

So, if your site is not mobile-optimized, this means that the design is low-quality, text may be hard to read, and gives an overall bad experience to the visitor.

Work with your developers to avoid this particular instance since this is much like the slow loading speed wherein it does not only lead to a negative bounce rate, but it also affects your site’s rankings.

UI/UX

Another technical aspect of your site is its UI and UX. Is the site’s design pleasing to the user’s eyes? Is navigation to specific pages easily achievable? Do the design elements not interfere with your visitor’s experience in your site?

Those are just some of the things that you have to take note of when it comes to understanding bounce rate since there will always be times where you won’t be able to determine which factor negatively affects your bounce rate until you think about the page or site’s design at the end.

Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager

Lastly, bounce rate is calculated by Google Analytics. This means that proper implementation of the GA or GTM tag is essential to having an accurate bounce rate. There are multiple instances where the improper implementation of your GA or GTM code can lead to skewed analytics data, such as:

The tag was installed multiple times in the site’s source code which leads to multiple hits being fired when only a single user entered your site. This significantly lowers your bounce rate which is, simply, skewed data.
Not all pages have the tag installed in their source code. This means that the data you’re seeing in your Google Analytics account is skewed as well.

Key Takeaway

Bounce rate is not the metric you want to be using to measure the success of your website and even your SEO. But that does not mean that it has no potential uses. A bounce rate is a metric that will help you gain deeper insights into how users interact with your site. How your content fares, your new design or pop-up, etc. All of these can be measured using bounce rate, among other data.

It’s up to the SEO and webmaster how they gain those important insights and how they use bounce rate as a stepping stone to improve their site’s performance and search success. What’s your experience with bounce rate? Let us know in the comments below!

By Sean Si

Sean Si is a Filipino motivational speaker and a Leadership Speaker in the Philippines. He is the head honcho and editor-in-chief of SEO Hacker. He does SEO Services for companies in the Philippines and Abroad. Connect with him at Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. Check out his new project, Aquascape Philippines

Sourced from SEO HACKER

In News

Nine Things To Know About Google Analytics

January 13, 2020 No Comments

By Peter Boyd

Of all the business analytics tools used today, the most popular one is Google Analytics, which is a data-tracking tool offered by Google. If you’re a business owner looking to optimize and better understand how visitors use your website, here are some things you should know about Google Analytics and how to make it work for your business.

1. Google Analytics is free.

There are no subscription or monthly fees for the standard version. More features are included with the paid version, but they really aren’t necessary for running a small business. When your business has grown, you can simply upgrade when you have more resources available.

2. It’s easy to set up.

There’s minimal technical know-how involved to get started. You just sign in with an existing Google account and follow the instructions. You will be asked to provide basic information, such as your website and domain name. Lastly, you will need to add a tracking code to your website’s code for Google Analytics to start capturing data.

3. There are five reporting options.

The ABCs of Google Analytics include Audience, Behavior and Conversions. These reports provide an overview of who your visitors are, what they do on your site, and what activities they complete. The other two reports are Real-Time and Acquisition, which show real-time activity on the website, as well as how traffic reaches it.

The Audience report allows you to confirm and/or discover how well your marketing is working from different standpoints. The report can confirm if visitors are coming to your website from a specific location you are marketing to, or help you make further discoveries about new locations to put forth efforts toward. Also, if the goal of your website is to have repeat visitors, data within these reports can confirm the percentage of returning visitors to your website as a key performance indicator (KPI).

4. Google Analytics helps improve website usability.

With data on user behavior, you can better understand how visitors use your website. For example, you can identify the types of content potential customers look for, as well as gain insight into how they navigate your site and the pages from which visitors exit. All of this information can help you modify website navigation and improve overall site performance.

A hypothetical data point that can be used to make a website usability decision would be the bounce rate of entrance pages into the website for core content (not blogs). If the bounce rate for these entrance pages is above 70%, has a low average session duration and results in no conversions for the session, that can be an indication the page is not properly engaging a visitor to explore the website further and ultimately result in an outreach conversion.

5. It identifies devices used to access websites.

GA also gathers data regarding the types of devices used to access your website. If the data shows that many of your visitors use mobile devices to reach your site, take steps to ensure that it is mobile-responsive and user-friendly.

6. Google Analytics can help to optimize online campaigns.

GA tracks information about the location, profile and behavior of your visitors. Such data can help identify your user segment, which enables you to modify your content marketing, promotions and offers to match your target market.

Segments can be used to home in on specific traffic sessions that resulted in a conversion or other KPI metrics. As a result, you can reverse-engineer this data to see what traffic mediums or locations most commonly occur for conversions and leverage those data points. For example, you may want to initially cast a wide net with different types of paid advertisements, but you can later determine which mediums perform best. Then you can cut ties or reduce spending with the channels that are unsuccessful and put more spending toward the paid channels that work.

7. Google Analytics has a campaign tracking feature.

Google Analytics shows how your marketing efforts are working. You can identify how your emails, social media messages or paid ad placements are performing. It enables you to measure campaigns and identify those that actually convert to customer engagement.

8. It can help you understand your target audience.

The tool provides user-specific information including their age, gender, location and even interests. By understanding who your target audience is, you can determine what type of content or product lists should be featured on your site.

This user-specific information in GA can help you create personas for your website and marketing. For example, if the majority of visitors coming to your website are females between the ages of 55-64, a designer could optimize the site experience in the future to have a softer touch, use certain graphics that appeal more to women and make sure usability is at the forefront for an older population. The same could be said from a content generation perspective and what topics might resonate with certain audiences and ages.

9. Other Google products can be integrated with Google Analytics.

Google Analytics has an easily usable interface where you can integrate other tools and platforms, such as Google Adwords and the Google Search Console.

The integration of Google Adwords and Search Console simply allows you to have all your marketing data in one central location within GA. For example, GA by default doesn’t include much information regarding the queries that send traffic to your site. But when integrating Google Search Console, that supporting information can be readily available, which includes clicks, impressions, CTR and average position. Overall, this helps you streamline account reviews and be more efficient with your time.

A Great Tool For Business Growth

Google Analytics offers plenty of benefits to businesses. We hope this information helps you gain further insight into its additional features — it can help take your analysis and usage to the next level to make more actionable decisions to help with your website and marketing.

By Peter Boyd

Peter Boyd is a Florida attorney who founded PaperStreet. He has helped over 1,000 law firms with their websites, content, and marketing.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Four Of The Most Common Attribution Mistakes When Using Google Analytics

October 29, 2019 No Comments

By Janet Driscoll Miller

Correctly implemented, attribution provides us with a window into how our marketing efforts have succeeded or failed. There are various tools to measure attribution along the customer journey, but the most common attribution tool may be the first line of attribution — Google Analytics.

While the promise of Google Analytics’ insights is great, attribution is only as accurate as your Google Analytics tagging. For Google properties, such as Google Ads, it’s not necessary to manually tag destination URLs because Google automatically tags them. For other platforms, however, tagging is necessary to pass important campaign information from the marketing platform into Google Analytics.

But if the data sent to Google Analytics isn’t accurate, then marketers run the risk of making flawed assumptions based on this data. My team relies on the data we glean from Google Analytics to demonstrate the value of various channels and initiatives. However, we’ve found that nearly every client, from startups to global enterprise companies, has errors with Google Analytics data input, thereby affecting their attribution. These are the four most common errors I encounter that can skew your Google Analytics attribution data.

1. Tag Capitalization Mistakes

Google Analytics tags are case sensitive, meaning that a UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) source of “Forbes” is different than “forbes.” While initially, this may not seem like a major issue, it can cause data segmentation and lead to incorrect assumptions about site traffic.

The fix? First, adopt a tagging nomenclature throughout your organization. Ensuring that everyone is using the same tags will reduce errors in reporting.

If you do find errors in your tagging, you can fix them going forward with search and replace filters. However, filters only work for data collected after they’re set.

2. Improper Tagging Within Your Website

Companies often inadvertently overwrite their valuable source and medium data by resetting the UTM source and medium tags when a visitor interacts with various elements on the website. For example, if a marketing team is measuring clicks on a banner graphic, they might reassign the UTM source and medium tags when a visitor clicks on the banner.

However, UTM source and medium tags weren’t designed for this use. A website is essentially a piece of content — it has no source or medium. The source and medium are the marketing channels that brought the visitor there. By reassigning source and medium tags once a visitor arrives at your website, you lose all the valuable information about how a visitor from a particular channel interacted with your website and possibly completed goals after that reassignment. Generally, I advise avoiding UTM tagging of URLs within the same domain.

3. Self-Referrals

Have you ever looked at your Google Analytics reports and seen your own domain as a referral to your site? In actuality, your domain really can’t be a referral source to itself, so how does this happen?

Google Analytics ends a session automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity. In the age of prolific browser tabs, this can be problematic because a user may leave a tab open to continue using the site later. For example, if I find an article via an organic Google search, the initial source/medium may be listed as “google/organic.” However, if I leave my browser tab open, stop interacting with the page for 30 minutes and then return later and continue to interact with the site, a new session begins, and my new source/medium might be assigned as a referral from the site itself. However, changing my source/medium isn’t an accurate representation of what occurred. An organic Google search is still the channel I used to find and interact with the site. Just because I took a break from browsing doesn’t change the fact that the organic Google search was the main contributor to my actions.

To fix this issue, add your domain to the referral exclusion list, found in the “Admin” area. Look for “Tracking Info” and then “Referral Exclusion List,” and then add your site’s domain as a referral exclusion. This will begin to attribute your traffic to the original source/medium instead of using your website as a referral source. Note that excluding your domain doesn’t reassign attribution for historical data.

4. Incorrect Channel Groupings

Channel groupings provide a quick way to aggregate all traffic with a certain source or medium together to see how visitors from that channel interacted with the website. For example, “Organic Search” is a default channel grouping. By selecting this channel grouping in a report, we can see how all organic search traffic interacted with the site, regardless of whether the traffic originated from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo or other search engines.

However, default channel groupings have problems. In addition to typical channels you might expect, such as “Organic Search” or “Referral,” you may see a channel grouping named “(other).” While Google recognizes many sources and mediums and categorizes them appropriately under a channel grouping, it may not recognize all of your sources and mediums.

For example, Google understands that traffic from an organic Bing search is a source and medium of “bing\organic” and places that traffic data under the “Organic Search” channel grouping. But what about sources and mediums your organization uses that don’t fit these standards? Check the sources and mediums listed under the “(other)” channel grouping to determine which of these may need to be recategorized.

Google Analytics allows website owners to create new channel groupings, edit the existing channel groupings and add additional sources and mediums to a channel grouping. By editing the default channel groupings via the “Admin” page in Google Analytics, you can clean up your channel groupings and ensure that your data is correctly reported under its corresponding channel. However, like most settings in Google Analytics, changes to the default channel groupings are not retroactive.

Correct attribution is key to our marketing decision making, and Google Analytics is often the first attribution tool most marketers rely on. Ensure that your Google Analytics is reporting accurately so that you can have confidence in your data and decisions.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Janet Driscoll Miller

Janet is President and CEO of data-first digital marketing agency Marketing Mojo and focuses on measuring marketing success. Read Janet Driscoll Miller’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes