Analyzing Your Website Traffic Geographically
Where are my customers? How to find out where your web traffic is coming from using Google Anlaytics.
Google Analytics is a fantastic tool to track and monitor your website traffic. You can learn a lot about your consumers if you know where to look. Having information on user location is important. It allows you to see where you consumers are currently and help you determine whether your marketing is successful in the areas you’re trying to target. Understanding the data will help you take action to increase traffic in your service areas to make your online marketing strategy more informed and more effective.
To view your website data, you must have Google Analytics installed on your website. When you install Google Analytics you should allow it to collect data for at least a month to see an accurate representation of your web traffic.
Step one: Log into your Google Analytics account.
Step two: On the left hand side there is a menu, click ‘Audience’. This will open up a sub-menu – click on ‘Geo’ which will open an additional drop down menu. Select ‘Location’
Step three: On this page you will see a map of the world. The dark areas you see are areas you’re getting traffic. Click on the US for data on the United States, and then select the state your business is located in. The default for Analytics is to display one month of the most recent data.
You will see bubbles show up on the map of varying sizes and shades. The darker the color, the more dense your traffic is in that area. Hovering over the dots on the map will show you the name of the town and the amount of people who visited your site from that town.
In the chart below you will see the top 10 towns and cities your viewers are located. You can see it broken down into the number of sessions, which means individual visits to your website, how many times people are on your website. You can also look the percentage of new users and new visitors as opposed to people who have already been on your website. There is other data as well available such as bounce rate and how many pages users are viewing per visit.
If you see that the map doesn’t reflect the area you want to target, there are many ways to geo-target your online audience. Proper website optimization will correct how your traffic looks on the map and will bring more relevant traffic to your site. Not all traffic is good traffic. If you’re getting traffic in an area where you don’t offer your services, websites won’t turn into conversions. For more information about geo-targeting and search engine optimization, contact us at Boston Web Marketing.