9 Key Steps When Auditing a Google Analytics Account
Reading Time: ~5 Mins | Written By: Stephen Klein
Update: With Universal Analytics no longer processing data starting July 1, 2023, all businesses will need to make the shift to Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that provides website owners with valuable insights about their users. However, auditing a Google Analytics account can be a daunting task, especially for those who are new to the platform.
Fortunately, there are a few key steps that can make the audit process much easier.
Step 1: Check to Make Sure Your Google Analytics Tracking Code is Working Properly
If you're not sure whether your Google Analytics code is set up properly, don't worry--you're not alone. Many people are confused about how to properly set up their code and ensure that their data is being tracked correctly.
Here are a few tips to help you make sure your Google Analytics code is set up correctly:
1. Make sure your tag is set up well. Your Google Analytics code should be placed in the <head> section of your website's HTML code. If it's not, then data may not be properly sent from your site. This can also be easily done using Google Tag Manager.
2. Be sure to check that the data is actually being sent from your site. You can do this by looking at the "Realtime" reports in Google Analytics. If there's no data being shown, then chances are something isn't set up correctly.
Step 2: Check to See What Your Audience Demographic is
This next step can be a powerful tool to help you assess your audience's demographics, including age, gender, and interests. You can use this data to check the performance of different audience groups and make sure you're reaching your target market. By understanding your audience better, you can create more effective marketing campaigns and improve your overall business performance.
In order to see some of this information, you need to ensure you’ve enabled Demographics and Interests Reports if you’re in Universal Analytics, or Google Audience Signals if you’re in GA4.
Step 3: Check to See Where Your Audience is Coming From
It is very important that you understand where your audience is coming from. Through Google Analytics, you can see what locations are performing the best and make adjustments accordingly.
For example, if you notice that most of your traffic is coming from the United States, you may want to focus more on creating content for that audience. Or, if you notice that a particular city or state/province is performing well, you could target your marketing efforts to that area.
By understanding where your traffic is coming from, you can better tailor your content and marketing strategies to meet the needs of your audience.
Step 4: Analyze What Sources of Acquisition Are Most Valuable
There are a variety of ways to acquire new users for your website or product. However, not all acquisition sources are created equal. It's important to analyze which sources are most valuable in terms of quality and quantity of users.
This is where Google Analytics comes in. By tracking acquisition channels, you can see where your users are coming from and what medium they used to find you (e.g., paid search, organic search, direct, referral etc.).
This information is invaluable in helping you determine where to focus your acquisition efforts. For example, if you're seeing a lot of high-quality users coming from organic search, then you know that SEO is a key driver of growth for your business.
Step 5: Check Your Top Pages For Creating Content
If you're looking to create content that will have the most engagement and conversions, you need to start by looking at your top pages. Google Analytics can help you see which pages are getting the most traffic and where people are bouncing off. By analyzing this data, you can start to see patterns and figure out what kind of content is most successful on your site. This is a crucial step in creating a more effective content strategy.
Step 6: Assess How Your Google Ads Campaigns are Performing
Are you curious about how your Digital Ads campaigns are performing? Google Analytics can provide valuable insights into how your ads campaigns are performing. By looking at the data, you can see which campaigns are driving the most traffic and conversions, and you can even see which keywords are performing well and which ones need improvement.
Most importantly, you can see which campaigns are driving the highest quality traffic and conversions. This is an essential step in doing an audit of your analytics. Make sure you’ve linked your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account in order for this information to be sent to your Google Analytics.
Step 7: Analyze How Your Users Are Behaving Once On Your Site
It is also very important to understand how your users are behaving once they land on your site. By looking at things like the engagement rate, average engagement time, exit page, and landing page percentages, you can get a clear picture of what users are doing on your site and where they are going.
It is important to understand whether your content is engaging or not as well as where consumers are entering and leaving your site.
Step 8: Analyze Your Conversions’ Key Trends
If you're not analyzing your conversion data, you're missing out on key insights that could help you improve your conversion rate.
By analyzing this data, you can identify trends and make changes to improve your conversion rate. For example, if you see that a particular keyword is driving a lot of conversions, you can focus on optimizing for that keyword. Or if you see that a particular source is driving lots of conversions, you can focus on getting more traffic from that source. Making even small improvements to your conversion rate can have a big impact on your business.
Step 9: Conversion Paths
Google Analytics can also help you understand what marketing tactics have contributed to conversions. This can be found in the Advertising section of GA4. By using conversion paths, you can see which campaigns and sources are bringing in the most conversions as well as which ones are bringing in the least.
The conversion paths tool is great because it allows you to determine which of your marketing efforts you should continue to scale. This tool is ideal to use when showing higher ups how your marketing efforts have contributed to growing the business.
While there is what appears to be an overwhelming amount of tools to use through Google Analytics, these are just a few of the best steps in auditing your account.
These steps will help you to gain the most value from your account and should help you boost your business efforts.
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