A lot of people don't understand the benefits of having Google Analytics and Search Console, (Used to be Webmaster Tools), connected to their sites. But if you think about it, who is the best person to get data from about how your site is doing in the search engines? Simple answer Google. When you are connected to both Google Analytics and Search Console, Google will tell you what search phrases your site is showing up for, a lot of them you probably hadn't even thought of. But it can give you ideas on what topics to cover in your blog posts.
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Why do we need Google Analytics and Search Console
The first thing I ask for, even before I take on a client, is access to their Google Analytics. A lot of companies will set me up no problem, but when I get the “errrm whats Google Analytics”, thats when I start banging my head on the desk. Because if I haven’t got the data, then I have to work to try and find it. And obviously if I connected Google Analytics to their site at the time I’m not going to get that much data out of it, not like if they had been connected for a year or 5. even just a couple of months worth of data would be better than nothing.
Google knows everything about your site, that is their business. By submitting your site to both Google Analytics and Google Search Console, and then joining these two together you can really dig into what is happening with your website. Google will give you all, well most, of the data they have about your website. This is data that you could not get anywhere else. This is data about who is searching for the products or services you sell, how many times a month are they searching, roughly, and the biggest one of all “What Keywords They Are Using”. This is where you find out that the Google keyword tool, does not provide the data you think it does. By looking at your analytics you will probably find keywords that you are showing up for that you didn’t even know existed, which should give you ideas for new content for your site.
Apart from all of the good data it also shows Google that you are legitimate and care about your business, so they will look on you more favourably.
When you have had your site in Analytics for a couple of months or more you will get where Google is giving you data on 100's if not 1000's of keywords. Now if you didn't use Google you would have to pay a monthly fee for some rank tracker software, that could cost you from £20 to over £120 per month and then you would have to know what your potential customers are searching for.
The video is probably not the best video I have ever made. First time I have created on on a iMac and it seemed like everything that could go wrong did. But hopefully it gets the main message across of how to connect your website to Google Analytics and Google Search Console. .
The site I am using in this demo is not alive site it is just one of my sites I use for testing and playing, which is why it wasn’t connected to Google Analytics and Search Console.
So now grab a brew and watch the video, even better watch it and work along with it and get your site connected to Google Analytics and Google Search Console Today.