Google Analytics KPIs - Track If Your Website Is Doing Well

An objectively measurable performance indication known as key performance indicators in Google Analytics KPIs is utilized to monitor, analyze, and optimize the activities of website users.

Metrics from Google Analytics, among other things, enable website managers to operationalize their marketing goals.

Numerous key performance indicators (KPIs) for websites include the following: number of visits (within a specified time period), bounce rate, dwell time, conversion activities, and many others.

There are in fact so substantially more of them that it can be challenging to sort through all of the noise and locate the ones that are significant.

What Are Google Analytics KPIs?

COPYRIGHT_MARX: Published on https://marxcommunications.com/google-analytics-kpis/ by Keith Peterson on 2022-08-17T13:42:55.188Z

The key performance indicators (KPIs) that Google Analytics provides provide invaluable insights into the performance of your website.

These essential indicators serve as a compass for your digital marketing strategy, indicating how close or far off you are from accomplishing your business objectives.

They inform you how successful your plan has been.

Take note of this Google Analytics report that provides a traffic summary for the website in the form of aesthetically pleasing graphs and charts.

Consider the difference between New Users and Returning Users, for example.

This key performance indicator for digital marketing reveals the percentage of website users who come back to the same site multiple times.

To put it another way, the Google Analytics KPI dashboard that you can see up top is quite important to an SEO strategy.

It enables you to determine whether or not the stuff you are providing to your readers is enjoyable.

What Are KPIs And How Are They Different From Metrics?

Metrics are just pieces of data that describe what something is.

They don't do anything good or bad.

All they do is tell you what's going on.

On the other hand, "key performance indicators," or "KPIs," are metrics that are used to track progress toward a specific goal.

Either they got it right or they didn't.

In other words, KPIs always show, based on a set goal, whether a marketing strategy was "good" or "bad."

Here's what it means:

Your bounce rate, which is how many people visit your site and then leave right away, could be 80%.

Some of you might be "high" because of that.

But 80% is just a number by itself.

It doesn't tell you very much at all.

And it's only "high" if you want your bounce rate to be less than 80%.

Some big businesses are fine with their posts having an 80% bounce rate.

Bounce rate is not even a KPI for them.

Their key performance indicators (KPIs) are sales, and as long as sales keep going up, they're happy.

Other companies want their bounce rates to be between 40–50% and 20–30%.

They have a clear goal that would be missed by an 80% bounce rate.

This turns a metric into a key performance indicator and tells them that they need to change some part of their content strategy.

But you should keep in mind that these are KPIs that most companies use.

What Are The Most Important Google Analytics KPIs?

The answer here is: "it depends".

It depends on the type of website you run and the goals you have for your business.

There is no one answer that works for everyone.

It's important to know that Google Analytics has more than 100 metrics, and you don't want to track all of them!

So, first, you need to be clear about your goals: what do you want your website to do?

It's important to remember that your website has both main goals (called "macro goals") and smaller goals (called "micro goals").

Most of the time, the micro-goals will help you reach a bigger macro-goal.

It's up to you to find the right ones to get you there.

If you run an online store, it's clear that online sales are the most important long-term goal.

And getting more people to watch your product videos could be a small goal that helps you reach your big goal.

Or, if you run a news site, the main goal will be pageviews (and, by extension, ad space).

And increasing the number of pages per session could be a small goal that helps you reach your big goal.

And if your big goal is to get people to know your brand, your small goal could be to show up in search results.

This means you should work to move up in the search results!

How To Track These Google Analytics KPIs?

Do you often have trouble making sense of Google Analytics (GA) messy data?

You're not alone.

A survey by Demand Gen Report found that 51% of B2B marketers find it hard to connect and analyze data from different platforms.

Since Google Analytics is an important part of every marketer's job, we wouldn't be surprised if it's one of the above platforms.

Google Analytics dashboards are a better way to deal with these messy data than trying to sort them out by hand.

How does it work?

• Click Preset Widgets 
• Select your KPIs (all widgets are set up based on the most commonly used KPIs)
• Drag and drop the KPIs as you desire

In seconds, everything happens.

There is no need to know how to code or design.

Also, you don't have to take screenshots or copy and paste the information into different tabs.

Top 7 Google Analytics KPIs To Track

Number Of Visitors

Find out how many people visited your website in a certain amount of time, like 30 days, and how that number compares to another amount of time (for example, the same period a year ago).

This will give you an idea of how popular your site is overall and whether it's getting more or less popular.

Tip: Pages that are easy to use get more page views and visitors who come back. If you make your site easier to use, people, are much more likely to come back.

Under "Audience" > "Overview" in Google Analytics, you can see how many people came to your site.

Ratio Of New/returning Visitors

You should also keep track of how many people came to your site for the first time and how many came back again.

If you get a lot of new visitors all of a sudden, it could mean that your branding campaigns are working.

But if new visitors always outnumber return visitors, you might need to work on ways to get them to come back again.

The "New vs. returning" report in the "Audience" section of Google Analytics shows this information:

Good to know: Google Analytics can tell if a user has been to your site before in a certain amount of time by looking at cookies.

These numbers may not be 100% accurate because the user may have deleted their cookie, the cookie may have expired, or the user may have looked at pages on a different device or browser.

Not the exact numbers, but any trends and how they relate to other marketing efforts are what matter here.

If a lot of people keep coming back to your website, that means it has interesting content and is easy to use.

Session Source/Medium

It's great when people visit your site.

But you'll also want to know where they came from, especially if you're using a variety of marketing channels and campaigns.

Google Analytics lets you see where your website visitors are coming from (source) and if they found your site on their own or through paid ads (medium).

This lets you track the return on investment (ROI) of your different marketing channels and see how well your SEO and content strategy is working.

You can also dig deeper by setting up campaigns and using UTMs to find out which marketing campaigns bring the most people to your site.

Most Popular Search Queries

You will need to link your Google Analytics account with Google Ads and Google Search Console in order to complete this step.

After you have done so, you will be able to track the most successful terms from both your pay-per-click (PPC) ads and your organic searches.

This assists you in determining which of the keywords that you are targeting are bringing in the most traffic to your website.

You may also check to determine if a significant number of your visitors are arriving at your website using search phrases that are not pertinent to your business.

Such visitors will have a negative impact on your conversion and bounce rates.

Average Engagement Time

When people come to your website, you want them to stay long enough to learn about your brand and what you have to offer.

The longer they stay on your site, the more interested they become, and the more likely they are to buy something from you.

This is why it's helpful to know how long your average engagement lasts.

It tells you if people are staying on your site to check out what you have to offer or if they are just looking at a few pages and leaving.

You can also use it with another metric, the conversion rate, to figure out how good your site's user experience (UX) is.

If people stay on your site for a long time but don't buy much, it could be because they can't find what they're looking for easily.

Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate shows how many people only look at one page of your website before leaving without looking at it anymore.

This is important because it can help you figure out why your site isn't working right.

If your bounce rate is high, it could mean that your site takes a long time to load or isn't set up well for the type of device people are using to visit it.

Or it could just mean that your content isn't interesting enough for the keywords for which it ranks.

A high bounce rate could also mean that you're trying to reach the wrong people.

They are quickly leaving because your site isn't what they were looking for.

You can also see the bounce rate for each page, which lets you figure out which pages have the highest bounce rates and make the necessary changes.

User Demographics

Until they become customers, you may not know much about the people who visit your website.

But you can get help from Google Analytics.

It tells you about your audience's country, location, language, age, gender, and even what they like in general.

This is a good KPI because you want most of the people who visit your site to be your target audience.

If they don't, they are less likely to be interested in what you have to offer.

So, you need to change your marketing to reach the right people.

Or, if your conversion rate is still high, it could mean you need to rethink who your target audience is.

People Also Ask

Does Google Analytics Track KPIs?

Key performance indicators (KPIs) in Google Analytics tell you a lot about how well your website is doing.

These key metrics guide your digital marketing strategy by telling you how close or far you are from meeting your business goals.

Is Bounce Rate A Good KPI?

When you're looking at how well a page works on your website, bounce rate is a very important metric to look at.

In fact, it's one of the things that people often think is a standard KPI measurement.

But even though bounce rates are important, they can't be looked at in a simple "high is bad, low is good" way.

What Is Meant By KPI In Analytics?

KPI stands for "key performance indicator."

This is a way to measure how well a goal is being met over time.

KPIs give teams goals to work toward, checkpoints to see how far they've come, and insights that help everyone in the organization make better decisions.

Conclusion

Implementing Google Analytics KPIs or goals for the Google Analytics team, analyst, and manager drives the commitment to ensure consistency over time.

High-performing metrics are valued, which means that the Google Analytics team, manager, and analyst can come up with and use effective digital marketing and Google Analytics strategy.

On the other hand, metrics that show poor performance and take away from operational and organizational success metrics need to be looked at again.

About The Authors

Keith Peterson - I'm an expert IT marketing professional with over 10 years of experience in various Digital Marketing channels such as SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing), SMO (social media optimization), ORM (online reputation management), PPC (Google Adwords, Bing Adwords), Lead Generation, Adwords campaign management, Blogging (Corporate and Personal), and so on. Web development and design are unquestionably another of my passions. In fast-paced, high-pressure environments, I excel as an SEO Executive, SEO Analyst, SR SEO Analyst, team leader, and digital marketing strategist, efficiently managing multiple projects, prioritizing and meeting tight deadlines, analyzing and solving problems.