In this article I take a look at Google Analytics and why it’s so important to use the keyword data within this great free tool to benefit your business online.

Finding the data

To access keyword data in Google Analytics, simply log in to your account, select ‘view profile’ for whichever site you want to look at and click on ‘traffic sources’.

On the bottom right you will be presented with the top keywords people use to find your site. Clicking ‘view full report’ will show you all the keywords people used on organic (non-paid) Google results, paid Google results and from other search engines.

From this report, you can narrow down to either paid or non-paid across all search engines. If you want to specifically look at Google, Bing or Yahoo!, click traffic sources > search engines > search engine name.

Reading the data

In its raw form, the keyword data in Google Analytics is simply a list of words people typed into a search engine before clicking on your link in the results.

The most immediate metric of use is the number of visits from each one. If you’re running an SEO campaign or have a recognisable brand, you probably won’t be surprised by your top performing keywords.

However, there might be some surprises further down. Or perhaps you find that although you get more visits from ‘dog chew toys’, people who type ‘cat litter trays’ spend more time on your site.

How to use it

Knowing how people get to your site is one thing. Acting on it is another. This data can be used to inform SEO campaigns, content strategies and marketing promotions.

If you find a surprising number of people coming to your site for ‘kitty litter’, despite only ranking 12^th on Google for it, that would be a good candidate for your next SEO target.

Similarly, you might make sure your next blog post is about kitty litter, offering further opportunity for potential customers to find your site (perhaps via blog search) and giving them more to read when they get there, making them more inclined to buy from you.

Or maybe it’s tipped you off that there’s a bigger market than you thought for kitty litter, so you run a special discount, promoted by a new AdWords campaign with its own landing page.

How you act on it is entirely up to you, but keyword data offers the kind of market research small businesses could only dream of in the pre-online era.

Don’t waste it.

Image Credit: brokenarts

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 8th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Analytics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.