Google Analytics - For Social Media Traffic

Google Analytics allows you to see where your visitors come from and if they engage with your content or leave immediately. Additionally, you can set up goals that match your business goals and measure if visitors are meeting those goals.

With Google Analytics, you can get valuable insights about your visitors and in this article I am going to show you how to track social media traffic.

This will help you identify the social media sites that send the most visitors back to your website to see which one needs more attention.

You will also discover how you can learn more about the visitors who come to your site from Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or other social media sites.
Additionally, you will learn how to use a feature called Advanced Segments to segment your social media traffic and see how those visitors behave on your site.

Identify Your Main Traffic Sources

First you will need to discover what social media sites send the most traffic to your website.

To do that, go to the Traffic Sources section, select Sources and All Traffic.

Here you will be able to see a list with all of the websites that send traffic back to your site. Right now, you will need to identify which are social media websites and keep the first three in mind.

Google Analytics Standard Reporting Views

Each subsection of the main sidebar options offers a standard report. When you’re viewing a standard report, you will likely see the following: the report name (e.g., Language), the date selector and a standard toolbar with options that allow you to customize the view, email the report, export the report data to various spreadsheet formats or PDF, add the report to your dashboard or create a shortcut to the report.

When you see the graduate hat beneath the date selector in the toolbar, you canclick on it to learn more about the data within that specific report (as shown below).

Under the toolbar menu, there are two options. All Sessions shows you your data throughout Google Analytics as a whole, and +Add Segment allows you to see your data based on certain criteria, such as direct traffic, search traffic, mobile traffic and so forth.

On the +Add Segment page, you can use the +Create New Segment option to create your own criteria, such as traffic from the US or traffic that entered your website on a specific landing page.

Google Analytics set up alerts for events

Intelligence Events

Intelligence Events are alerts you can set up within Google Analytics that email you when a specific event occurs.

You can set up alerts for events like a dramatic change in number of sessions, goal conversions or other metrics within a daily, weekly or monthly timeframe.

Real-Time

Want to know who’s on your website right now? Real-Time data gives you access to that data instantly.

Google Analtics DashBoard

Dashboards allow you to create customized views of your Google Analytics data using widgets. It’s a great way to see specific subsets of data without having to navigate through your standard reports.

You can add widgets to your dashboards using the +Add Widget button or by adding widgets as you browse your standard reports using the Add to Dashboard link. 

 

 

Google Analytics Reporting

The Google Analytics Reporting page shows your Audience Overview data.

At the top of the screen, you’ll see the basic Google Analytics menu bar that allows you to go back and forth between the Home page, Reporting, Customization (reports) and Admin section. Further to the right, you can switch to another website within your Google Analytics account.

On the left sidebar, there is a search box to help you find specific reports and a list of links to important areas of your Google Analytics.

Google Analytics Quick Glossary

Dimensions—A dimension is a descriptive attribute or characteristic of an object that can be given different values. Browser, Exit Page, Screens and Session Duration are all examples of dimensions that appear by default in Google Analytics.

Metrics—Metrics are individual elements of a dimension that can be measured as a sum or a ratio. Screenviews, Pages/Session and Average Session Duration are examples of metrics in Google Analytics.

Sessions—A session is the period of time a user is actively engaged with your website, app, etc., within a date range. All usage data (Screenviews, Events, Ecommerce, etc.) is associated with a session.

Users—Users who have had at least one session within the selected date range. Includes both new and returning users.

Pageviews—Pageviews means the total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

Pages/Session—Pages/session (Average Page Depth) is the average number of pages viewed during a session. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

Avg. Session Duration—The average length of a session.

Bounce Rate—Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e., visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).

New Sessions—An estimate of the percentage of first-time visits.

Goals—Goals let you measure how often users take or complete specific actions on your website.

Conversions—Conversions are the number of times goals have been completed on your website.

Campaigns—Campaigns (also known as custom campaigns) allow you to add parameters to any URL from your website to collect more information about your referral traffic.

Acquisition—Acquisition is how you acquire users.

Behavior—Behavior data helps you improve your content.

Google Analytics Behavior Reports

Pageviews—The total number of pages viewed. This number includes repeated views of a single page. In other words, a single person may view the same page several times and each view is counted as a pageview.

Unique Pageviews—The number of individual people who have viewed a specific page at least once during a visit. For example, if a single user views a page more than once during the same visit, only the original view is counted (whereas general Pageviews count each visit). The Unique Pageviews metric counts each page URL + Page Title combination.

Avg. Time on Page—The average amount of time users spend viewing a specific page or screen, or set of pages or screens.

Bounce Rate—The percentage of single-page visits or the number of visits in which people left your website from the same page they entered on. For example, if you visit a single article or page on a website and then leave, that’s counted as a bounce and is factored into the Bounce Rate.

% Exit—The percentage of users who exit from a page or set of pages.