Google Analytics 'Acquisition Overview' – A Closer Look Could Increase Marketing Productivity

We all know that Google Analytics is a great place to find incredible information and data about how well your website is performing. There is no doubt that we also all have certain sections that we pay more attention to when reviewing Analytics data. Whether this be 'Bounce Rate', 'Mobile' or even 'Behaviour' they can all play a big part in helping decide what the next website strategy could be. In this article I will be discussing how 'Acquisition Overview' could lead to an increase in your marketing productivity and could potentially help open new doors for your business's marketing strategy.

Acquisition Overview is broken down into 4 sectors: Organic Search, Direct, Referral and Social. They all bring different statistics to the table and every one can be incredibly powerful when used in the right way. I will now discuss in detail how you can review each one to help come up with a bulletproof online marketing strategy for your business.

Let’s get started…

Organic Search

Firstly, let’s discuss ‘Organic Search’. This is exactly what it sounds like, this section is all about how your website gets found organically within the different Search Engines. It would normally be the case that a user has performed a search within, let’s say Google, and you come up within the search results and they then click on your website. You can learn a great deal of information from looking deeper within this section. One of the biggest points that can come out of this section is you’re able to see how well your website is performing organically. SEO is normally what can cause an increase in organic traffic and this is what this section is great for, reviewing whether your current SEO is performing and whether or not you need to start SEO. Once you click into this you will see a list of phrases that your website has been found for. The more phrases you see in the list would mean that your site is doing well organically and this is an indication of to good SEO being done on your website. If there are very few phrases then you may want to look at improving the SEO that has been done on your website. If you currently have an SEO campaign running for your website here is a great article that can help - How To Get The Most Out Of Your SEO Campaign.

Direct

This section looks at how many people have gone directly to your website, when they type your exact website address in the URL bar. This is a great indication of how well known your business and website is becoming. You will find that the more direct visits you get to your website will indicate how well your brand is performing. This is because if people already know your website address they already know your business, which is a massive bonus for your brand. If you click on this section and see that you have not had many direct visits at all, then you many want to do some looking into your brand. If you’re wondering what is so important about brand, here is a great read - Learn The Importance of Creating a Strong Online Brand And How To Implement it.

Referral

Within this section it will tell you how many sites people have been referred to your website from, normally it is the case that they clicked a link onto your website. Again this section is linked very closely to SEO. This is because in SEO, link building can play a very big part in driving traffic to your site. If your website is being mentioned elsewhere on the internet you have more chance of users clicking onto your website link from multiple places. If you look and see that you’re getting a large amount of referrals from one particular site then look further into that site and see if you’re able to optimise that page more, to get even more traffic from it! Wondering where SEO will go in the future? This may just help - 7 Future Trends For SEO.

Social

This is exactly what it says on the tin, how many people have come to your website from a Social account. This could be from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Linkedin and YouTube just to name a few. This is a great indication into how well you’re doing in Social Media, and if the results aren’t great then don’t worry, help is here. You may see in this section that you get a large amount of traffic from Facebook but from Twitter you don’t get as much. This would show that you need to focus your attention on Twitter for a while to help increase the traffic from this platform. If you see that you’re barely getting any traffic from Social Media platforms don’t worry, there are steps you can take to improve this. The first would be to make sure you’re focusing your efforts on a strategy that has been specifically planned out to help you reach your goals. The key is to do more of what works for you and less wasting time on the things that aren’t. If you’re struggling to decide which Social Media platform to use, read this article we posted last month - Which Social Media Platform Should I Use?

Conclusion

IIt’s becoming more and more important that you regularly check your Google Analytics for your website and make relevant changes when needed. If you see some information which doesn’t look the best then act on it straight away! The sooner you can take action and make improvements, the sooner you will see the benefits. Always be on your toes when it comes to your website. Knowledge is power and if you are monitoring your statistics closely you have the power to improve your results.  If you need any help analysing your Google Analytics, contact us today…