5 Ways to Skyrocket Your SEO Rankings with Google Analytics

Looking for ways to improve your SEO (search engine optimization) strategies and increase your organic traffic?

With Google Analytics, you can track and measure your site’s performance. Not only that, but you also get useful insights about your visitors.

So, how does Analytics help you boost your rankings?

In this article, we’ll show you 5 ways to skyrocket your SEO rankings with Google Analytics. Let’s dive right in…

1. Find Top Landing Pages and Cover Similar Topics

Now, did you just cover a blog post for a particular keyword and want to see if it got any traffic? Using Google Analytics, you can measure the performance of content, see how many people visited your post, and where they came from.

If the post got a lot of traffic, then it means it did well. To boost your SEO rankings, all you have to do is find similar topics to cover on your website.

And if you want to see these stats inside your WordPress dashboard, then the best way to view them is through ExactMetrics. It’s the best premium WordPress Analytics plugin because you get useful data that matters for your business and it makes using Analytics a breeze.

Once you’ve installed the plugin, simply go to ExactMetrics » Reports » Publisher. The first report you’ll see will be of Top Landing Pages.

In this report, you can see total visits, average duration, and bounce rate for the selected date range. For instance, if you look at the report, you’ll notice that one of the topics is a case study that got a lot of traffic.

From an SEO perspective, this is excellent since traffic improves your rankings. You can then cover more case studies on your website and try to attract more visitors.

And if you want to dive deeper into where your visitors came from on the post, then click on View Full Top Landing Pages Report at the bottom. This will lead you to Google Analytics, where you can add the Secondary Dimension and view the source of your blog posts.

2. View Organic Keywords with Google Search Console

The next way you can use Google Analytics to skyrocket your SEO rankings is by looking at your top organic keywords. Using the report, you can see which search terms are ranking in the top 10 Google search results and which aren’t.

The data from this report is extremely valuable, as you can optimize your website for different keywords and boost your organic traffic. For instance, you might find search terms that are on the 2^nd page and with a little optimization, you can easily bring them to the 1^st page.

But Google Analytics no longer shows your website’s keywords by default. For that, you’ll need to configure Google Search Console with Google Analytics.

And if you’re using ExactMetrics, then you can view your search console report in your WordPress dashboard. The plugin shows you the top 50 Google search terms along with their number of clicks, impressions, CTR (click-through-rate), and average position.

From the report, you can pick keywords that are close to the 1^st page and then tweak them to boost their rankings.

And, you can also look at the search terms that are already ranking in the top 5 and find more keywords like them. Then optimize these similar keywords on your pages or create new content around them to increase your organic traffic.

3. Track Web Traffic from Google AMP

Mobile is now an important part of your search engine rankings, especially with Google rolling out its mobile-first update soon. What this means is that Google will give preference to sites that are mobile optimized.

And if you have Google AMP (accelerated mobile page) set up on your WordPress site, then it’s important to know how many people visit your site from those pages. With Google Analytics, you can track your web traffic from AMP.

It will help you see which pages are generating traffic, so you can optimize them for more keywords or find new content ideas around the same topic.

But setting up AMP tracking isn’t that simple as it requires coding. And at times, Analytics might count the same user twice, giving you inaccurate reports.

A simple way to overcome this issue is to use ExactMetrics AMP addon. It adds AMP to your WordPress site without editing code and makes sure that users aren’t tracked twice.

Simply install and activate the addon and you’ll be tracking your visitors from AMP pages in no time. You can follow our guide on how to add Google Analytics to AMP pages in WordPress for all steps.

Once you’ve AMP tracking is set up, go to Google Analytics, and then navigate to Behavior » Site Content » All Pages.

Next, enter /amp in the search bar and Analytics will show you all your AMP pages. You can then use the secondary dimension to find more insights like source and medium.

4. Uncover Backlink Opportunities with Top Referrals

We’ve talked a lot about content so far but there’s another piece to the puzzle – backlinks. Content and backlinks are the two most important Google ranking factors.

And with your top referral sources, you can find different opportunities to get backlinks for your website. For those of you wondering what referral sources are, then these are websites that link to your site in their content and send traffic your way.

Now, the more backlinks you can get from high authority websites, the higher will be your rankings. To view your referral sources, you can use ExactMetrics. Just view its Overview report and you can see the Top 10 Referrals.

Now, using the report, you can find which website link back to you. After analyzing these sources, you can reach out to them and work out a partnership.

For instance, you can do cross-promotion campaigns or a content collaboration to get backlinks. Or you can find similar websites and reach out to them for backlinks.

5. Reduce Bounce Rate of Your Website

Another way you can use Google Analytics to boost your rankings is to keep an eye on your site bounce rate. A bounce rate is when a user leaves your website without performing any action (like clicking a link or viewing a video).

While the bounce rate won’t directly impact your rankings, but it’s an important metric to track for your site’s SEO. That’s because a high bounce rate might be due to poor user experience or perhaps your page isn’t matching the user’s search intent.

And since the person visiting your site couldn’t find what they’re looking for and hit the back button in their browser, Google might think your page isn’t helpful. This would indirectly lead to a drop in rankings.

To track your site’s bounce rate, you can view ExactMetrics Overview report. Then select the date range and see if the bounce rate is increasing or decreasing.

If you have a high bounce rate, then you can investigate and see what’s causing it. You can also view your top pages and posts to see where people are leaving. So, you can plug the gap and try to boost engagement.

You can also go through this guide on how to increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate.

And that’s it!

We hope you liked our post on 5 ways to skyrocket your SEO rankings with Google Analytics. If you want, you can also go through our post on how to track Google Analytics custom events.

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