Find New Keywords With Google Analytics

You can perform search engine optimization using Google Analytics to find keywords and track external links. This means, if you use the Traffic Sources report, you can select a given traffic source (Google or Yahoo!, etc) and Google Analytics will present you with a list of keywords – words that your page visitors searched for when they ended up checking out your web page. In addition to keywords, you can get an insight into the number of hits (page views) or visits, goal conversions, even the e-commerce value of each keyword.

The keywords that you have already been targeting in your SEO marketing strategies will appear among the top searched keywords in your report, but don't underestimate the power of keywords contained in the middle or at the bottom of your report. If you take the time to closely examine all of the keywords in your report, it is very likely that you find keywords which may significantly improve your overall traffic and therefore, goal conversions. If certain keywords sent you only 35 visitors during one month of time, but those visits ended up with three conversions, you can take that keyword as valuable for your future SEO efforts.

Also, you may find a keyword that you haven't actually been targeting, but it drove traffic to your site in terms of hundreds of visitors – so, you must do a Google search for that word and may find out that you are listed in the first 10 to 50 results in the SERPs based on that keyword. Imagine your potential traffic and conversion rates if you tweak your articles or write new content using that keywords, and ending up among the top three results in the SERPs. Keywords for which your web site is already ranking in the top results will be easier to govern than keywords for which your site is not ranked at all.

Thanks to Google Analytics, you can find high search volume keywords that you may have overlooked or underestimated while creating your initial keyword list for a certain topic.

In order to optimize your SEO keywords, you must identify common keywords or key phrases that your visitors are using when searching the web. Once you have identified these keywords and phrases, try to target low search volume keywords with high-conversions. To gain historical data for a large time range, analyze the keywords at least 30 days as this will help you to estimate the potential of your referring keywords.

Why this time frame? A given keyword may drive significant traffic one day, but very low traffic the next day, therefore, looking at historical data based on searches and visitors through a longer time period will provide you with a more accurate estimate of actual traffic.

Ø Log in to your Google Analytics account and click VIEW REPORTS for a given web site or profile. (The Google Analytics Dashboard for the given page will appear).

Ø Click Traffic Sources in the left side of the menu and then click on the search engine that you want to use to find keywords. On the right side of the menu there is the keywords section that is also helpful in finding keywords for a better keyword optimization.

Ø Once the keywords from the search engine have appeared, you can view 100-500 keywords (adjust the Show Rows option in the lower right corner) and scan the list.

Clicking on the entrance keywords link in your Google Analytics is another possible keyword research procedure: look for it on the right side of the report for each page.

Using Google Analytics for a better search engine optimization is easy, useful and free of charge.

You probably have both internal and external links on your web site or page: internal links are the links sending your visitors to other pages within your site (these links are helpful in reducing your bounce rate) and external links are the links sending your visitors to web sites other than your own. Google Analytics is able to show you how users navigate your internal links, but also how many users or visitors you are sending out (when they click on external links) despite the fact that your tracking code is not present on those outside or external pages.

Also, you probably have a plan to monetize your pages with offers from affiliates, therefore, you should keep your own record on how much traffic you drive to these external sites and compare your own figures with those provided by an affiliate or ad network program.

You should track your external or outbound links by designing and using a structure that is relevant and easy to remember.

Choose a folder name that is not used in your web site ("outgoing", "external" links, or "click", etc) to organize the pages for external clicks. You can separate different sites that you are linking to by using their URLs.

Ø  Open  the source file for the page with external links

Ø  Locate the external links in the file

Ø  Insert   onClick="javascript:urchinTracker'/outgoing/example_com';"   at the end of the link (for each link you want to track)

Ø  Wait 24-48 hours before you view your statistics (this is done by entering the Content Drilldown page in Google Analytics).

Ø  Note that the clicks on the tracked external links are logged as page views for the name you used in each of the individual links in the source file.

The clicks logged on the tracked external links can also give you further information about your bounce rate. A bounce rate is calculated based on your visitors leaving your site or page without visiting your internal links. If you have a lot of external links and a high bounce rate, you can find out how many bounces came from visitors clicking on external links.

To conclude, you are not forced into using Google Analytics or using all the features it offers, but creating a Google Analytics account and using it is very important for a successful search engine optimization.This tool should not be underestimated becase it is free and there are many fee-based analytic softwares for sale. Some of the most popular web sites such as Twitter or MySpace are using it, too.

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