How to Quickly Analyze a Sites SEO Health Using Google Products

By Jason Hawkins on August 5, 2015

There are two great products available to analyze your websites SEO health. We are going to speak about both of them today. They are Google Webmaster tools and Google Analytics.

Using Webmaster Tools to Diagnose Your Website

The internet is packed with millions of websites, it’s not easy to get spotted by your target audience. This is where search engines come handy, and that is why more and more businesses and websites are focusing heavily on search engine optimization.

However, there is more to SEO than just keywords and plugins: you need to assess and analyze the health of your website: keywords that are driving good traffic, pages that are getting the most visits, the click-through rate of your website visitors, conversions and so on. You also need to keep track of errors that search engine bots might be facing while crawling your website, sitemaps that need to be submitted, incoming links, etc.

Obviously, this seems like a lot of work. Thankfully, Google provides an array of resources that we can use to make our lives easier. Grouped together under Google Webmasters tool, this solution provides you with complete insights about the health and performance of your website.

What Can Google Webmaster Tools Do?

So, what can Google Webmaster Tools do for us? A lot, but mainly:

  • Detailed information about search queries; which keywords are performing, and which ones aren’t.
  • Updates about crawl errors, just so you can fix them timely and avoid losing traffic.
  • Links that are generating the maximum traffic as well as website pages that are getting most visitors.
  • Upload and update sitemaps.

For all practical purposes, nearly everyone uses Google Webmaster Tools with the primary reason of Search Engine Optimization. As such, it
makes sense to discuss Google Webmaster Tools and its relevance to your SEO campaign.

In simple words, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to acquire one crucial piece of information about your websites: metrics. You get to learn about what is being indexed by Google, which sitemap works best for your site, where links are coming from or going to, and what is driving traffic to your websites.

Quite obviously, this data needs to be crunched and broken down, in order to formulate a proper SEO strategy for your websites. Let us discuss some specific actions and functions that you can and should perform when using Google Webmaster Tools, in order to get the most out of its features.

Google Analytics Audit

Visit http://www.google.com/analytics and login with your username and password. You’ll see a list of any Web site or blog you’re tracking as Google allows tracking of multiple sites within an account. Click on “View Reports” next to the site you wish to review and you’ll be taken to the Dashboard.

Exploring the Dashboard of Google Analytics

Once you log in you’ll see the dashboard, which contains snapshots of several reports generated by GA. (All images can be enlarged by clicking on them.)

Google Analytics Dashboard

These reports may include visitors, traffic sources, map overlay and content. You can move them around, add new reports to the dashboard, or remove ones you don’t like with drag and drop simplicity.

Near the top you’ll see a section called Site Usage. It includes the following metrics:

  • Visits: The number of visits to your site during a given time period.
  • Page views: The number of pages these visitors viewed.
  • Pages/Visit: The average visit in terms of page views.
  • Bounce Rate: The percentage of people who only visited one page on your site before they “bounced” somewhere else.
  • Avg. Time on Site: The average amount of time a visitor spends at your site.
  • % of New Visits: The percentage of new visitors to your site as compared to all visitors. Some businesses might want lots of new traffic, while others might want generate repeat visits, driving down this percentage.

There are dozens of reports and hundreds of ways to analyze them, but these are the five I recommend you review on a regular basis. They can be found by navigating the left hand menu. You can also use the date comparison on any of these reports as well.

Visitors Overview – This is an essential report that tells you straight up how much traffic you have, how many page views, the average length of visit and your bounce rate. You can delve deeper depending on your needs, finding out how much new traffic you’re getting, whether your visitors use broadband or dial-up and so much more.

sessions overview image

Traffic Sources Overview – It tells you where your visitors come from? Search engines, other Web sites or did they type your URL into their address bar? This report breaks it down and tells you your best traffic sources. It will also show you where you are not getting traffic from.

conversion report GA

Referring Sites (under Traffic Sources) – These are the sites visitors were at before they arrived at your site, not including search engines.

referrals

Keywords – What words did visitors use at Google and the other search engines to find your site? This report will tell you, and give you detailed info on how valuable each keyword is in terms of how long visitors spend at your site, how many pages they view, and even whether they “convert” by filling out a contact form, signing up for an email newsletter or buying something from your store.This is extremely important in the world of SEO.

keyword report

Top Content – What pages get the most traffic on your site? This report breaks it down for you so you can better see how people are using your site.

top content report

These five reports will give you a quick idea of what a website is doing well, and what it is missing out on. These reports are the tools you need to make a good SEO strategy, with an ability to track results. So a big Thank You to Google for providing these tools to us.



About The Author

Jason Hawkins
Jason Hawkins / http://www.themiamiseocompany.com

Jason Hawkins is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Miami SEO Company. He has over ten years of experience in search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization and lead generation. His core responsibilities include identifying ways to increase value of services rendered, training staff on advanced SEO topics, and A/B testing internal processes to consistently improve client return on investment.