What's "App"-ening in Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a “free product that tracks your Web site and gives detailed statistics about visitors to your Website” (“Week 4 Lesson”, n.d.). Google Analytics allows companies to track important data such as how people discovered your website, how long they browsed your site, the demographic and location of your site’s visitors, and so much more. When used correctly, the Google Analytics tool can help companies see powerful results such as an increase in conversions and an improvement on their return on investment (“Week 4 Lesson”, n.d.). Even with all of the amazing features that Google Analytics offers, there is still a way to enhance and extend the capabilities of the tool.
One of the methods that marketers use to gain more from the tool is through “apps”, formerly known as “Solutions” (“Week 4 Lesson”, n.d.). The apps contain “in-product solutions that deepen your use of Google Analytics and accelerate your learning curve” (“Crowd Source”, n.d.).

There are a multitude of apps to choose from and should be selected based on a company’s needs. The apps cover a wide variety of categories such as phone call tracking, business intelligence, tag management, and email marketing (“Apps Google Marketing”, n.d.). It is important to note that while some of the apps are completely free some must be paid for, and others are free but have features that will requirement payment. Now, let us dive deeper into one of the apps that can be used to enhance the Google Analytics experience: Keyword Hero.



Figure 1: (Google Analytics, n.d.)

When it comes to search marketing and search engine optimization, keywords matter. Keywords are “the key words and phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site via search engines” (“SEO Keywords”, n.d.). They help marketers determine the ways that people go about searching for a company’s products and/or services (“SEO Keywords”, n.d.). Tracking organic keywords, “keywords that attract free traffic through search engine optimization”, is one way that marketers are able to optimize web content (“Organic Keyword”, n.d.). It is important to perform organic keyword research to ensure that the keywords that people are using to find products and services like yours are included in your website’s copy (“Organic Keyword, n.d.). This is where using the Keyword Hero app proves to be very resourceful and beneficial.
Figure 2: (“Keyword Hero”, n.d.)

The Keyword Hero is an app that is “completely integrated into Google Analytics [and that] computes the keywords for [a company’s] organic sessions (“Keyword Hero”, n.d.). Using a probabilistic method, the Keyword Hero is able to provide the keywords that a website’s visitors used to land on the page (“Keyword Hero”, n.d.). However, the app provides more than just organic keywords; it also provides information such as “brand detection, a state of the art keyword clustering, the CTR of your link in the SERPs, the position in the SERPs, and so on” (“Keyword Hero”, n.d.).  For Google Analytics users, being able to gain access to this information is valuable for content optimization purposes.
Although Keyword Hero offers more than just organic keywords, the organic keywords feature can be considered the most widely used and coveted feature of the app. The reason that this feature is so highly esteemed is simply because it offers something that Google Analytics no longer provides. When Google Analytics initially launched, users had access to the keywords that attracted visitors to their website and the differences in user behavior based on these keywords (“How to Unlock”, 2018). In 2011, Google Analytics stopped providing access to these organic keywords in an attempt to make both its searches and its users more secure (“How to Unlock”, 2018). As a result of this change, the keyword report began to produce the “not provided” result as shown in Figure 3. As shown in the example, the keywords used for over 1,000 visits were unable to be properly identified by marketers (“How to Unlock”, 2018). Imagine how many opportunities to optimize a website’s content were possibly missed simply because of the gap in the information provided.



Figure 3: (“How to Unlock”, 2018).

From a marketing perspective, the Keyword Hero can be used to help tremendously reduce the number of “not provided” results. Reducing this number is helpful in accurately defining exactly what keywords visitors to the site are using. This accurate description of the kind of searches that are being made to locate your website “enables you to adjust your content with unprecedented precision and sophistication (“Keyword Hero”, n.d.). Consider the examples illustrated in Figure 4 and Figure 5. Figure 4 provides an illustration of a company’s Google Analytics keyword results prior to using the Keyword Hero app. As shown in the results, about 97% of the keywords are listed as “not provided” leaving the company with less than 5% of usable keyword data (“How to Build”, 2018). Figure 5 provides an illustration of the company’s Google Analytics keyword results after using the Keyword Hero a couple weeks later. As you can see, this time around the “not provided” results account for less than 5% of the keyword results (“How to Build”, 2018). Keeping in mind that the app does not take historical keyword data into account, this is a drastic difference in results (“How to Build”, 2018).




Figure 4: (“How to Build”, 2018)



Figure 5: (“How to Build”, 2018)
Google Analytics is an important tool for any company that desires to track its website and wants to have detailed statistics about its visitors (“Week 4 Lesson”, n.d.). Google Analytics provides reports with very valuable insights such as the Audience Report, Acquisition Report, Behavior Report, and so much more. While this free tool provides all of these insightful reports and measurements, the Google Analytics experience is able to be enhanced through “apps”. The Keyword Hero app, which “puts the organic keywords back in Google Analytics”, is only one of the many apps that can be used to add more depth to Google Analytics (“Keyword Hero”, n.d.). Whether your company needs a tool for email marketing, social analytics, campaign management, and much more, there is an app that can be used to enhance your Google Analytics.

Hopefully this blog post has gotten you interested and excited about the enhancements that are available for your Google Analytics account. Using the link below, explore some of the other amazing opportunities for enhancements and the tools that are “app”-ening in Google Analytics.


 References

Apps Google Marketing Platform Partners. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/partners/search/apps

Crowd Source Google Analytics Insights. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://analytics.google.com/analytics/gallery/

Google Analytics. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.comlinq.nl/nieuws/page/2/

How to Build a Complete SEO Dashboard - Keywords Included. (2018, April 10). Retrieved from https://www.jeffalytics.com/google-analytics-seo-dashboard/

How to Unlock and See Not Provided Keywords in Google Analytics. (2018, July 12). Retrieved from https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/unlock-not-provided-keywords/

Keyword Hero. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/partners/company/5107647938297856/gadp/5629499534213120/app/5707702298738688/listing/5634387206995968

KEYWORD HERO. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://keyword-hero.com/?utm_source=ga_partner_gallery&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=app_listing

Organic Keyword: What Is an Organic Keyword? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.wordstream.com/organic-keyword

SEO Keywords: How Better Keyword Research Gets You Better Results. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.wordstream.com/seo-keyword

Week 4 Lesson. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_108046_1&content_id=_5188136_1&framesetWrapped=true


Comments

  1. Caitlin NicholsonNovember 9, 2018 at 8:38 AM

    Hi Amber! We all want Google Analytics to give us richer reporting. The organic search terms report can be frustrating when you see "no provided" pop up in your report - not really helpful from an organic search perspective. One thing when reading more about Keyword Hero was whether or not it is GDPR compliant... and low and behold... they answer that question in their FAQ: https://keyword-hero.com/docs/faq/ (Yes - they are!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michelle ForshnerNovember 9, 2018 at 4:43 PM

    I have never heard of this product and now I am intrigued! Do I pay a SEO specialist a few hundred dollars an hour to consult on my website? Or consider this tool and embed with Google Analytics? I appreciate the deep-dive into this product. A drawback certainly is that it does not take historical keyword data into account, so integration is likely recommended prior to site launch, or perhaps in conjunction with a major site update or web redesign to get a full picture of the data.

    ReplyDelete

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