Knowledge Academy

Google Analytics (Google Analytics) is important in SEO because it provides comprehensive data and analytical tools that help you understand and evaluate website traffic, user behavior, and conversion effectiveness. Through this data, you can identify problems, optimize strategies, enhance user experience, and thus improve your website's search engine ranking and overall SEO performance.

The following are several key roles and importance of Google Analytics in SEO:

1. Monitor Traffic Sources

Traffic Source Analysis: Google Analytics can help you understand the traffic sources of your website, including organic search, direct visits, referral traffic, and social media, etc. By analyzing organic search traffic, you can evaluate the effectiveness of SEO.

Keyword Analysis: Although Google Analytics no longer provides detailed keyword data, you can combine Google Search Console to understand which keywords bring traffic.

2. User Behavior Analysis

Page Views: Understanding which pages are most popular can help you optimize content and improve user experience.

Average Session Duration and Bounce Rate: These metrics can help you evaluate the quality of page content and user experience. If the bounce rate is high or session duration is short, content or page layout may need improvement.

3. Conversion Rate Tracking

Goals and Events: You can set Goals to track specific user behaviors, such as filling out forms, completing purchases, etc. This helps evaluate the actual business value brought by SEO.

E-commerce Tracking: For e-commerce websites, product sales, transaction amounts, etc. can be tracked to evaluate the impact of SEO on sales.

4. Audience Analysis

Audience Characteristics: Understanding user geographic location, language, device type, browser, and other information can help you optimize your website to meet the needs of different audiences.

New vs Returning Users Ratio: Analyzing the ratio of new users to returning users evaluates whether SEO strategies are attracting new visitors and maintaining interest among existing users.

5. Behavior Flow Analysis

Behavior Flow Chart: The behavior flow chart provided by Google Analytics can help you understand the browsing path of users on your website, identify nodes where users drop off, optimize user paths, and improve user experience and conversion rates.

6. Landing Page Analysis

Landing Page Performance: Analyze which landing pages attract the most traffic and evaluate the effectiveness of these pages. If certain landing pages perform poorly, you can improve SEO effectiveness by optimizing these pages.

7. Geographic Analysis

Geographic Location: Understanding which regions bring the most traffic can help you perform SEO optimization for specific regions.

8. Content Analysis

Content Group Analysis: Similar content can be grouped to analyze the performance of each group, find the most popular content types, and optimize content strategy.

9. Traffic Time Analysis

Traffic Trends: Analyze traffic changes at different time periods to understand which time periods have the highest traffic, helping you optimize content release and SEO strategies.

Example Applications

Discover High Bounce Rate Pages: Through Google Analytics, you can discover which pages have high bounce rates, which may indicate that these pages need improved content or user experience.

Optimize Keyword Strategy: Combined with Google Search Console data, you can discover which keywords bring the most traffic and optimize content to improve rankings for these keywords.

Evaluate Content Effectiveness: By analyzing page views and user dwell time, you can evaluate which content is most popular and create more high-quality content based on this information.

Adding Google Analytics (Google Analytics) to your website is a relatively simple task. Below is a detailed step-by-step guide:

1. Create a Google Analytics Account

(1) Access Google Analytics: Open the Google Analytics website.

(2) Login or Create Account: Log in using your Google account. If you don't have a Google account, create one first.

(3) Set Up Account:

       Click the "Start for free" button.

       Enter account name, select data sharing settings, then click "Next".

2. Set Up Property

(1) Fill in Property Information:

       Enter website name.

       Enter website URL, ensuring you select the correct protocol (http:// or https://).

       Select industry category and reporting timezone.

       Click "Next".

(2) Select Measurement Options:

       Select the measurement options you want to track, such as web or app.

3. Obtain Tracking Code

(1) Click "Create": After completing property setup, click the "Create" button.

(2) Accept Terms: Read and accept Google Analytics service terms.

(3) Obtain Tracking ID:

       You will see a page containing the tracking ID and tracking code.

       The tracking code is a JavaScript snippet that looks like this:
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=YOUR_TRACKING_ID"></script>
<script>
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
  gtag('js', new Date());
  gtag('config', 'YOUR_TRACKING_ID');
</script>

4. Add Tracking Code to Your Website

(1) Find your website's head tag: Open your website files and find the <head> tag on each page.

(2) Add tracking code: Paste the tracking code above into the <head> tag, ensuring it comes before the </head> tag.

(3) Save changes and upload: Save the file and upload it to your server.

5. Verify Tracking Code

(1) Open website: Open your website in a browser to ensure the tracking code has loaded successfully.

(2) Check data: Return to Google Analytics, go to "Real-time" reports to see if data is being recorded. If you see active users, the tracking code is installed correctly.

6. Configure Google Analytics

(1) Set Goals: Set goals in Google Analytics to track important user actions such as purchases, form submissions, etc.

       Go to "Admin" -> "View" -> "Goals" -> "+ New Goal".

(2) Link Google Search Console: Link Google Analytics with Google Search Console to obtain more organic search data.

       Go to "Admin" -> "Property" -> "All Products" -> "Link Search Console".

7. Use Google Tag Manager (Optional)

If you want to more easily manage and deploy analytics and marketing tags, you can use Google Tag Manager.

(1) Create Google Tag Manager Account: Visit Google Tag Manager and create an account.

(2) Set Up Container: Create a container for your website.

(3) Obtain Container Code: Add the provided code snippet to the <head> and <body> tags of your website.

(4) Add Google Analytics Tag: Create a new tag in Google Tag Manager, select "Google Analytics: Universal Analytics" or "Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration" as the tag type, enter your tracking ID, and publish the container.

Through the above steps, you can successfully add Google Analytics to your website and start collecting and analyzing user data.

Example:

<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=AW-413143071"></script>
    <script>
      window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
      function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
      gtag('js', new Date());

      gtag('config', 'AW-413143071');
    </script>

Reference Website:

Official Google Explanation:

1. The Google Analytics measurement code collects data from your website property or app property and transmits this data back to Google Analytics for you to view in reports. When you add a new website property or app property to your Google Analytics account, Google Analytics generates measurement code snippets that you need to add to the webpages or pages from which you want to collect data.

2. Setting Up Google Analytics for Websites and/or Apps

(1) Create a Google Analytics Account
       First, you need to set up a Google Analytics account (unless you already have one). Skip to Create Property unless you want to create a separate account for this website and/or app. For example, if this website and/or app belongs to another business, you may need to create a separate account.

       ①Go to https://analytics.google.com.
       ②In the admin interface, click Create, then select Account.
       ③Provide an account name. Configure data sharing settings to control which data to share with Google.
       ④Click Next to add your first property to the account.

(2) Create a New Google Analytics 4 Property
       You need Editor role to add a property to Google Analytics. If you created this account, you automatically have Editor role.

       You can add up to 2,000 properties to a single Google Analytics account (any combination of Universal Analytics properties and Google Analytics 4 properties).

       To create a property, follow these steps:

       ①Are you continuing from the "Create Google Analytics Account" steps above? If so, skip to Step 2. Otherwise, in the admin interface, click Create, then select Property.
       ②Enter the property name (e.g., "My Business, Inc Website"), and select the reporting timezone and currency. If visitors access your website on Tuesday in their timezone but it's Monday in your timezone, the visit will be recorded as occurring on Monday.
       a. If you select a timezone that uses daylight saving time, Google Analytics will automatically adjust according to the changes. If you don't want adjustments based on daylight saving time, use Greenwich Mean Time.
       b. Changing timezones only affects future data. If you change the timezone of an existing property, you may notice flat spots or peaks in your data, which are caused by moving time forward or backward respectively. After you update your settings, report data may continue to use the original timezone for a short period until Google Analytics servers process the changes.
       c. We recommend changing the timezone of a property at most once per day to allow Google Analytics to process the changes.
       ③Click Next. Select industry category and business size.
       ④Click Next. Select how you plan to use Google Analytics.
               Google Analytics will customize a default set of reports based on the information you provide about how you plan to use Google Analytics. For example, if you select "Discover More Potential Customers," you'll see a series of reports that help you measure potential customer discovery. Learn more about business objective report collections.
       ⑤Click Create and accept Google Analytics Terms of Service and Data Processing Amendment (if you're setting up a new account).
       ⑥Continue adding data streams to start collecting data.

(3) Add Data Stream
       ①Are you continuing from the "Create Property" steps above? If so, skip to Step 2. Otherwise, follow these steps:
       a. In the admin interface, click Data Streams under "Data Collection and Modification".
       b. Click Add Data Stream.
       ②Click Website.

       a. Enter your primary website URL, for example "example.com"; then enter the data stream name, such as "Example, Inc (web stream)".
       b. You can choose to enable or disable Enhanced Measurement. Enhanced Measurement automatically collects page views and other events. After creating the data stream, you can return anytime to individually disable enhanced measurement events you don't want to collect. Therefore, we recommend enabling Enhanced Measurement now.
       c. Click Create Data Stream.

(4) Set Up Data Collection (for Websites)
       To start viewing data in your new Google Analytics 4 property, you need to do one of the following:

       ①Add code to website development tools or CMS-hosted websites (such as HubSpot, Shopify, etc.)
       ②Add Google code directly to your webpages
       ③Use Google Tag Manager to add code

(5) Next Steps
       After setting up data collection, complete other configurations to get more practical data from Google Analytics. Review the checklist to see which configurations help you collect more data, filter unwanted data, and support advertising features.