High Level Search Marketing Optimization in Google Analytics

Majority of us optimize search marketing campaigns for e-commerce websites. Therefore it is very important that whatever we do to optimize these campaigns must directly result in increase in sales of the products. In order to get optimum results from your analytics efforts you need a third eye, the eye which provides perception beyond ordinary sight.

You must know exactly what to look at and where to look at in any analytics report while at the same time not being distracted by extraneous metrics and data. So let us move into the space of higher consciousness : )

In my quest for higher perception, I have found following five data drill downs to be super useful in optimizing the performance of my products and eventually sales:

1, The geo locations which are generating maximum Product revenue. So that we can direct our marketing efforts towards them via SEO, PPC and other marketing campaigns.

2, All the products categories which are being bought in a particular geo location.

3. All the products which are being bought in a particular product category

4. All the keywords which are responsible for selling a particular product.

5. All the landing pages where a particular keyword is sending traffic

These valuable insights can help us in getting optimum results from our search marketing campaigns.  The traditional way of getting of all this insight is not easy. You need to create lot of advanced segments and combine data from several reports.  Today I will tell you how to get all of this insight in just one report.

But before we move forward, you need to understand how exactly I have chosen to drill down the data in order to analyze and optimize the performance of search marketing campaigns:

COUNTRY/TERRITORY » REGION » TOWN/CITY » PRODUCT CATEGORY » PRODUCT » KEYWORD» LANDING PAGE

I start my analysis by first looking at the ‘Map Overlay of selling locations’ report:

This report quickly highlights all the selling locations worldwide (where my products are being bought). From the report we can see that maximum numbers of products are being bought in US (dark green color). So I am curious to explore this country further. I clicked on the US map:

This report quickly highlights all the selling locations in US. From the report we can see that maximum numbers of products are being bought in California (dark green color). So I am curious to explore this region further. I clicked on the map of California:

This report quickly highlights all the selling locations in California. From the report we can see that maximum numbers of products are being bought in the cities of San Francisco and San Diego. Let us explore ‘San Francisco’ and see what product categories are being bought there. To find this I click on the ‘Product Analysis’ tab of my report:

We can now see all the product categories being bought in San Francisco. Now I want to know which products are being bought in a particular product category say 1st category. So we will just click on the 1st link in the ‘product category’ column.

Once we can see all the products being sold in a particular product category, we want to know all the keywords which are responsible for selling a particular product say 1st product. So we click on the 1st link in the ‘product’ column:

 Now we can see all the keywords (including the infamous ‘not provided’) which are responsible for selling our product. I want to drill down further and determine all the landing pages where a particular keyword (say second keyword in the ‘keyword’ column) is sending traffic:

Now I know which landing pages I need to focus on. This can be a life saver if you have say 500k pages on your website and you are struggling to figure out what to optimize and where to start. You won’t get such level of in depth insight in any regular report in Google Analytics. The report that you are seeing is a custom report built by me after a lot of thought and planning.

This report only shows product performance for search traffic (SEO and PPC). If you have different needs than you can edit the report and remove/edit filters.  You can install this report straight into your Google Analytics account from here. In return feel free to share this post and subscribe to my blog. Remember sharing is caring. Until next time, take care.

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Other Posts you may find useful: How to become Champion in Data Reporting