Google Analytics is an extremely important free tool that all financial advisors should be utilising. It works by tracking tags on your website, delivering key data that will enable you to better understand your website’s SEO performance. This, in turn, helps you be more effective in your online marketing.
Goggle Analytics can actually give you over 10,000 metrics to analyse your website. You can use it to discover anything, from how much traffic is going to your site and which blogs are your most popular, to how long visitors spend on each page and where they are located in the world.
We’ve detailed the most important Google Analytics data for financial advisors, that you should pay attention to when it comes to SEO.
1 – New and Returning Users
In an ideal world, you want to be able to see a mixture of new and returning users landing on your site. New visitors should be hitting landing pages and blogs, the higher these numbers the more effective you know your SEO optimisation has been. Returning clients should be coming to your home and services pages, this is how you know that your website content is effective and high converting.
2 – Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that come to your site, but then leave rather than continue onto another page. An ideal bounce rate should be around 40%. A common cause of a high bounce rate can be a popular blog, where the post doesn’t entice the reader to look at the rest of your site. Make sure you always include backend SEO such as backlinks and CTA’s on all blog posts.
3 – Organic Search Traffic
Organic search traffic gives you an insight into how many of your visitors are coming to you from search engines. The higher this percentage is, the better you are likely doing in the search engine results. To keep this high, make sure you optimise your content for key SEO words and phrases that potential customers will be searching for. The most common is a combination of your services and your location.
4 – Average Session / Average Page Time
The average time spent on a website is 1.5 minutes, that is an extremely short window of time to make a good impression. A low figure for this is usually down to two things; either your site is confusing, or it doesn’t match what the titles and meta descriptions are showing in the search engine. Make sure your backend SEO is accurate to your services, and that the copy on your website is clear.
5 – Mobile Traffic
There is no excuse in 2020 to have a website that doesn’t work on mobile. After all, that is where the majority of Google searches take place. If a high percentage of your traffic is from mobile, and yet your conversion rates are low, you likely need to take a look at how your site displays on mobile and update it if necessary.
