Google Analytics User Explorer: What It Is and When to Use It

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The numbers vary by source, but something like 90% of websites use Google Analytics in one form or another. Wow. I’m having a hard time thinking of any other service or product that has achieved that level of market penetration. Despite the fact that tens of millions of website are using Analytics, I bet there are sections within the Analytics interface that 90% of business owners have never used, seen, or even heard of. One of these sections is User Explorer.

Unveiled in the spring of 2016, this report does something that was previously next to impossible to do – track an individual’s journey on your website. User Explorer is found in the Audience section of Analytics. It lets you view data for individuals such as how they ended up on your site (referral, organic, social, etc.), what pages they visited, what events they triggered, and more. Of course, this is completely anonymized and no personal data is recorded *cough GDPR compliant cough*.

That’s all fine and dandy, but how would a marketer benefit from this information? In general, you should view aggregate data so you can make informed decisions (see my previous blog for an explanation of why sample size matters), so at first glance viewing individual data may seem ineffective. However, here are three examples of when it may be valuable to view the data for individual users.

Example One – One Audience Segment Outperforms Another

How people interact with your website will be affected by their age, gender, device, and a host of other factors. By segmenting your Analytics data, you can dive deeper into these user categories. Do a lot of mobile users drop off when they visit a certain page? Do 18-34 year old males make it past your product page? These are things that are definitely worth looking into and you might not know about without User Explorer.

Example Two – Understand Your Customer Profiles

You may have some idea how different audience segments engage with your site, but let’s take that a step further. Every business should create customer profiles to get inside the head of their target market. User Explorer can help with that. By incorporating User Explorer with the more commonly used sections of the Audience tab in Analytics you can further develop, expand, and learn about your customer personas.

Example Three – Upsell Higher Priced Products or Services

Why do some people buy your $1,000 product while others only opt for the $150 product? Through User Explorer you could learn that people who buy your higher-end product all visited a few key pages on your site that other people missed. If this is the case you can adjust your marketing strategy accordingly. Not all of the lower tier purchasers will buy the more expensive product, but some undoubtedly will.

Should I Use User Explorer?

Not all businesses will benefit from User Explorer. If your business is in a very particular niche and all of your website visitors are similar, you won’t get much value from it. If you only get a few conversions a month and don’t have a lot of people visiting your site you likely won’t benefit from User Explorer. If you have a product or service that appeals to all ages, genders, etc. then looking at the individual level may not add give you any insight.

User Explorer can be very valuable but like many advanced Google Analytics functions it’s not necessary for every business. If you want help understanding how people interact with your website or want to take your marketing to the next level contact us today!

3 Fundamental Pillars of SEO Techniques

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Moz recently stated that Google changes their algorithm 500-600 times a year. If their algorithm changes this frequently, shouldn’t your SEO strategy be changing too?

SEO is fundamental to boosting your organic search rankings and building your presence online. When done right, SEO can improve your company’s bottom line (leads, sales, etc.).

So what is SEO and what makes up a good SEO strategy? These are the three fundamental pillars of SEO and our techniques for building on them:
Structure
Content
Authority

SEO Pillar #1: Structure

There’s a technical side of SEO that people don’t really talk about, but it’s crucial for your long-term SEO efforts. Whenever we approach a new website or client we do a website audit to find the technical issues that either prevent Google from indexing it or that go against Google’s best practices. Here, we look at things like:

• Broken links
• Broken images
• Site speed
• HTML tags
• Internal linking
• External linking
• Sitemap errors
• Robot.txt errors
• Schema implementation

Fixing these errors make it easier for Google to crawl your site, rank you in the correct location and industry niche, and increase your visibility online.

SEO Pillar #2: Content

Google likes to know that your business is an active, relevant member of the web. To be seen as active, you should be releasing new content regularly and that content should be up to date. Google favors new content over old content and they want to know that you’re relevant to the industry you’re trying to rank in. Your content needs to be informative and focused on concepts that relate to the users intent.

If you want to do this effectively, you need to start by doing keyword research. There are a lot of resources to use for keyword research, but a few that Epic’s digital team uses are Google’s AdWords Planner, Answer the Public, and Ahrefs’ keyword explorer tool. Focus your time on keywords and create content that will benefit your users. There are 5 main types of searches that businesses should be aware of as they try to target content toward specific customers:

search engine optimization utah

Search intent is a big part of content creation and through trial and error, you’ll find your sweet spot.

Content is also where you have the chance to really localize your business. Localizing your content and site (technical SEO techniques), helps Google know where you’re located, what services you offer in that location, and ultimately decides your place in the local pack for certain keywords.

digital marketing utah

Through unique, quality content, keyword research, and listening to customer demand, you can own your industry online.

We’re hoping your question “What is SEO?” is getting answered slowly..

SEO Pillar #3: Authority

The higher you rank for relevant keywords, the more potential clients and current customers will see you as an authority. Google ranked you well because of the authority they think you have and the industry knowledge portrayed on your website (along with all of the technical factors we talked about). To gain higher authority, you can do things like gain backlinks from high authority sites, social references from respected accounts, have a content marketing strategy, make sure your NAP (name, address, phone number) listings are consistent through quality citations, and last but not least, do competitor analysis.

Doing a deep dive of your competitors’ site and rankings can help you find content gaps on your own site. We use a program called Screaming Frog to analyze their content. Pair that with Ahrefs’ content gap analysis and site explorer tool. This allows you to view your overlap areas with competitors, where you rank and they don’t, and what they rank for that you don’t. This is a great tool to help you create content that you know that your potential customers are interested in. The site explorer tool allows you to see their organic search, backlinks, referring domains, and paid search. Finding the gaps in their online marketing strategy can play to your benefit.

After you’ve put a strategy into place using the SEO techniques we’ve talked about above, measure your success. Did it work? Here are some KPI’s to look at on a monthly basis (if not more often):

• Traffic by channel
• Top entry pages
• Rankings
• Conversions from organic traffic
• Time on site
• Average page views
• Bounce rate

No one expects you to change your SEO techniques 500-600 per year, but adapting to the changes in search engine algorithms is essential to boosting your organic rankings, increasing your reputation online and to understand what is SEO. If you have any more questions, reach out to our SEO experts here at Epic Marketing.

Content Marketing Strategy Must-Haves for Your Website

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Content marketing is its own kind of marketing beast. If it’s fed properly, it can be as majestic as a lion, king of the jungle and ready to engage. If it’s not given the proper digital diet and care, the content on your site lags like a sloth, unuseful and unseen at the bottom of Google’s SERPs (search engine result pages).

The good news is there are simple techniques that content marketers can use to help your website gain traction with search engines. These techniques provide the nutrition your site needs to continue to grow and thrive in the online jungle.

Here are five common components that you may want to incorporate into your content marketing strategy in order to help your site dominate search in your niche.

Too busy/lazy to read the whole thing? Here’s an infographic.

1. Call to Action

According to Optimizely.com, a call to action (or CTA) is a prompt of sorts that ask the viewer to act on a specific request. Some typical examples of CTAs include:

• Sign up now
• Buy now
• Learn more by clicking here
• Contact us today

The CTA is a common feature of the sales funnel and is one of the most important features. It increases sales and newsletter memberships. A simple call to action also allows you to extend the reach of your marketing efforts without having to do much.

The best CTAs are easy to read and stand out on the page according to HubSpot. Take, for example, DropBox’s bright blue sign-up button that stands out against its all-white background.

dropbox logo

Other effective calls to action include Panthera’s “Join the pride today,” which appeals to cat lovers; Quick Sprout’s “Are you doing your SEO wrong?”; and OkayCupid’s bright green “continue” button on the dark blue background.

2. Local Relevancy

When it comes to digital marketing, few techniques can help a local business owner out as much as having local SEO content on their website. As Yoast points out, most people who use local search terms aren’t looking to buy online. Instead, they need information that will direct them to a local brick-and-mortar store, where they can take the next step.

To attract these customers, you’re going to need to do a couple of things. First, you need to make sure that you’re using unique localized content for each page. Basically, this means that even if you have an office in two different cities for the same business, the content for each page won’t be carbon copies of each other.

You’ll also want to add your business’s contact information (name, address, phone number, email, etc.). Moz additionally recommends that you put a Google map on your site. All of this type of information helps search engines categorize your site correctly.

Additionally, you should be using keywords/ keyword phrases with a local flair. For example, if you’re a dentist in Fort Worth, Texas, make sure that your business’s website uses words like “Fort Worth dentists” or “dentists in Fort Worth” throughout.

3. Internal Links

The internal linking strategy that you use on your site is important. It shows search engines like Google the relevance of pages, the relationship between pages and the value of the pages.

There should be a lot of links to the most important topic-related pages, the ones that pass the most link value. From there, link to subpages about similar content. You want Google to see what pages have similar topics and information.

The anchor text used in linking is also important. Anchor text is the clickable text that your reader sees. It should contain keywords or relevant content to what it’s linked to. The content around your anchor text says more about relevancy to Google than the anchor itself, so be sure that you aren’t over-optimizing.

4. SEO Components

SEO elements like metadata, subheadings, alt text, and other components also help your website rank better by making it easier for search engines to categorize your content.

Metadata includes title tags and meta descriptions. Title tags indicate to search engines what your page is about. It’s currently recommended that title tags stay below 70 characters and include localization. Meta descriptions are written so the reader can understand what information your content is going to give them. These typically include a CTA and it’s recommended they stay below 140 characters.

Another important thing to have are headings. An H1 is the title of your page. It’s an HTML code that search engines crawl to understand what your page is about. It’s similar to a title tag, and oftentimes are the same. You should only have one H1 on each page so search engines don’t get confused about the topic of your page. Subheadings should be labeled as h2, h3 and so on.

For example, let’s say you’ve written a blog post about Alice in Wonderland. In this example, this is the H1 for your page. Some of the subheadings that might appear on your blog post would be “Alice Meets Hatter,” “Alice Cries a Pool of Tears,” “Alice Meets the Red Queen.” These subheadings give the reader a preview of what they’re going to read next. In this case, the content will be about the Mad Hatter, the pool of tears, and the Red Queen.

Finally, visual elements like photos and illustrations should have alt text that tells search engines what the photo is about. Going back to the Alice example, if you have a photo of Alice in her pool of tears, the alt text and file name should include that.

alice in her pool of tears

content marketing utah

5. Up-to-Date Content

Keeping the content on your website up-to-date is important because it signals to search engines that your website is current and you’re actively contributing to the web. Along with helping you build your reputation with search engines as an expert in your niche, it also helps keep your site at the top of the SERPs as long as the content is relevant and useful.

Typically, search engines favor new and relevant content over old and outdated content. And given the fact that millions of new pages of content are created daily, content updates are one of the simplest things you can do in your content marketing efforts to keep your site on top.

By incorporating calls to action, local relevancy, internal links, SEO components and up-to-date content you can make sure you have a majestic lion. It’s good to be king.

Content Marketing Strategy Infographic

 

When Should You Change an Ad?

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“How long should I leave my ads running?”

“How often should you change your ad copy or image?”

“Has my ad been running long enough to know if it’s a good ad?”

These are questions I get asked frequently and, perhaps surprisingly, they all have the same answer.

Are you ready for it?

Answer: It depends.

I know, I know, that’s the kind of answer you’d expect from a marketer, but hear me out.

An ad should only be changed when you’ve reached statistical significance. Said another way, when you’ve reached a P-Value of .05 you should change your ads. Said again, when you’re 95% confident that one ad will outperform another ad you should pause the underperforming ad. Final time without any statistical jargon, when an ad will outperform another ad 19 out of 20 times you should pause the other ad. Only then can you pause the ineffective ad, duplicate the winner, and create a new variation to start the A/B test all over again.

Statistical significance, confidence levels, P-values … You may be wondering when this became a lesson on statistics. You can’t know when to change an ad without understanding some basic statistic concepts. Changing an ad for the sake of change is inefficient and ultimately won’t lead to better results. Hopefully these examples will help you understand the importance of statistical significance.

Example One

You have two ads running. Ad One has had 5 impressions and 1 click. Ad Two has had 5 impressions and 2 clicks.

Impressions Clicks Clickthrough Rate
Ad One 5 1 20%
Ad Two 5 2 40%

40% compared to 20% may seem significant, but is that enough data to determine which ad is more effective? At first glance you may think so, but let’s take a deeper look.

What happens if in the next 5 impressions Ad One gets 5 more clicks while Ad Two doesn’t get any more clicks?

Impressions Clicks Clickthrough Rate
Ad One 10 6 60%
Ad Two 10 2 20%

Now Ad One seems to be outperforming Ad Two. 5 more impressions could swing the balance again though, your sample size isn’t large enough and you need to let your ads run longer.

Example Two

Let’s try that again using similar, but larger, starting numbers.

Impressions Clicks Clickthrough Rate
Ad One 500 100 20%
Ad Two 500 200 40%

Ad Two is winning, but what happens when both ads get 5 more impressions and Ad One gets 5 more clicks while Ad Two doesn’t get any?

Impressions Clicks Clickthrough Rate
Ad One 505 105 20.8%
Ad Two 505 200 39.6%

The clickthrough rates barely change and Ad Two remains the top-performer.

Because the sample size (impressions in this case) in Example One was so small, you couldn’t with any confidence say which ad will outperform the other. Even 5 more impressions drastically changed the success rates (i.e. clickthrough rates). In Example Two though, 5 more impressions barely changed the success rate and Ad Two was still the winner.

General Rules of Thumb

Optimize based off of conversion rate when possible, otherwise use clickthrough rate.

When your success rates are similar you’ll need a much larger sample size.

When your success rates differ by a large margin you can get away with a smaller sample size.

The more traffic your ads get, the sooner you can reach statistical significance.

The less traffic you get, the longer your ads have to run before you can make a change.

Statistical Significance Calculators

Say you have a large sample size and the success rates seem to differ enough… Is it statistically significant? Unless the difference is drastic enough, there’s no way to look at a set of numbers and know if you’ve reached the 95% confidence level. Even then you shouldn’t trust your “gut”. This is where technology comes to the rescue. There are a number of statistical significance calculators out there, but I prefer House of Kaizen’s A/B/n split test significance calculator.

I like this calculator because it makes things simple. Going back to the first example, I’ll put the impressions under #Visitors and the clicks under Conversions. When I hit the calculate button the calculator tells me what confidence level I’ve reached. It even reminds me to wait for a 95% confidence level.

Statistical Significance Calculator

How Will This Affect My Campaign?

I don’t change ads for the sake of change. I only make changes when I’m 95% confident that one ad will outperform the other. By waiting to reach statistical significance I ensure I don’t pause an ad that will end up leading to more conversions or clicks. I duplicate the winner, make additional changes, and then start the process all over again. What this does is lead to an increase month over month in conversion rates or clickthrough rates. The increases aren’t always monumental (especially when I’ve been making these incremental improvements for a while), but they prove the system works. This is a screenshot from our AdWords manager account that shows the increase in clickthrough rate (in blue) and conversion rate (in red) since Epic Marketing implemented this optimization strategy.

AdWords Performance

As you can see, waiting for statistical significance before changing an ad has led to massive increases in both clickthrough rates and conversions rates in the last two years. This is a trend we expect to continue.

Final Thoughts

All things being equal, the longer your ads have been running or the larger your sample size the more likely you can determine a winner. You should wait until you reach statistical significance before changing an ad and there are many calculators that can help you know if you’ve reached it. By only changing an ad when you’re certain it’s the winner, you can achieve consistent month-over-month increases in conversion rates and clickthrough rates.

So back to our original questions:

“How long should I leave my ads running?”

“How often should you change up your ad copy or image?”

“Has my ad been running long enough to know if it’s working?”

Answer: It depends.

And now you know why.