Google Analytics can seem daunting to those who are still learning it, including me for the first time.
If you log into the dashboard, there are a lot of things going on. There is so much data to see.
Here’s how to use Google Analytics as a first timer.
To make reading the data easier, focus on the number that matters the most to you and your site.
For me, it’s the life cycle > acquisition section. As my focus is to optimize on-page SEO and to learn whether my effort is working or not.
The acquisition section helps in understanding where a user lands for the first time on your site.
From this screenshot, I focus on the User Acquisition and Traffic Acquisition report under the Life Cycle tab. What are those?
User acquisition
User acquisition is a report that shows how a new user finds a new website or app. With this data, I can analyze the new users that coming to the site from different sources and identify which channels are most effective at bringing in fresh traffic
Traffic acquisition
On the other hand, traffic acquisition is a report to understand where a new and returning users come to my site. Usually, on Traffic Acquisition report, I create a second dimension with the “+” sign.
The second dimension that I added is the Page / screen > Landing page + query string
I also set a filter to just focus on the organic search traffic, this is because my focus in the organic search
By adding a second dimension from traffic acquisition report and setting the filters, I can analyze what specific pages that bringing organic search to the website. This data gives me more insight about pages that I need to focus on optimizing.
With these data, my next action will be looking at the engagement rate based on each pages and optimize the pages that has low engagement rate.