What a Blogger Learned in Google Analytics Master Class

I did not discover the power of Google Analytics, until the Google Analytics Master Class.

Previously, I used Google Analytics to tell me how many visitors I have, where are visitors came from, what are the traffic sources, what search engine keywords lead to my site…

Google Analytics is much more powerful than that! From the Google Analytics Master Class, I learned some cool tips which would benefit me, as a blogger.

1. Set your GOAL

Do NOT check your site’s pageview or unique visitors! The 1st thing you wanna do is — “set a goal”!

Ask yourself about “what do you want to achieve with your site?” Is it more orders (e-commerce), more readers (blog), or anything else?

The site traffic data is meaningless if you don’t have a “GOAL”.

2. Track your visitors

Your every site visitor is unique. Use Google Analytics “segments” and “funnels” to track, compare and understand your visitors. Learn their behavior on your site against your GOAL.

3. Testing.. testing.. testing..

Use Google Optimizer to test your web designs to find out which design is the best for your GOAL. You can use a simple A/B test or the more complex Multivariate Experiment.

Here are example of Advanced Segments you can apply.

When picking a test page, pick the one has high traffic. Be bold to test different designs. Test big things that really make a different. Small changes are not worth to test at 1st stage.

4. The Google trend search tools

Find out what are the current hot topics related to your business using Google. All tools are free!

From the Google search, you can click “show options” to get the “Timeline” and “Wonder wheel” related to your searched keywords. Timeline, shows the “hotness” of the keyword. Wonder wheel, shows the related keywords.

For research, you can then use YouTube Insight (your own videos only) to find out the video statistics. (I never know that!)

Use Google Trends for Website to find out a website’s traffic and keywords. Google Insights, in the other hand, to dig further information about the keywords.

My two cents

After the Google Analytics Master Class, I learned that I could use GA and other Google tools to:

• monitor & improve ads clicks
• optimize blog design
• research for blog topicsx

Google Analytics Master Class is indeed the most meaningful event I have ever attended! :)

P.S. Google Analytics Master Class slides are available here or you can direct download the all the slides here (thanks, @icednyior!)