Content Analytics: How to use Google Analytics for tracking Content Websites

- What should you be tracking as a news website,
a blog, or any other website
that is centered around content?
Well, in this video, I'm going to give you my take
on what you should be tracking for content websites
and Google Analytics.
All and more coming up right after this.
(upbeat electronic music)
Hi there, and welcome to another video
of measureschool.com, where we teach you
the data-driven way of digital marketing.
My name is Julian, and on this channel,
we do marketing tech reviews, tutorials,
and give you tips on better tracking, just like this one.
So if you haven't yet, consider subscribing.
Now, a while ago, we did a video
on what to track in general in Google Analytics.
And the conclusion of it all
was that you need to customize your tracking.
Only track the things that are important to your business.
Now, what are these important things?
Well, that depends on your business.
We already did a video on what to try for e-commerce stores,
but now I wanna go into what to track for content websites.
That could be a blog, a news website, or any other website
that is centered around content, really,
where the content is the main piece that you want
your users to consume when they come to your website.
Now, I'll break this all down into the basics,
then the advanced usage and the pro uses
of Google Analytics in context to content websites.
We've got lots to cover, so let's dive in.
(upbeat electronic music)
Now, let's start out at the basics,
and those are really the same for any website out there.
You get your source tracking in order
and you get your goals set up.
Now, source tracking is all about UTM parameters,
so if you don't know how to use them in Google Analytics,
check out our video that we did previously or down below,
and making a habit of tagging your URLs
of your landing pages so you can identify
where the traffic is coming from.
Very important for Google Analytics.
The second thing that you wanna set up are goals.
Now, goals are really something that you
should be connecting to your business objectives.
What makes the money and what is the action
or the behavior that you want your users to take
in order to define success on your website?
Now, there are different business models out there
that support content website; for example, advertising,
lead generation, or just purely branding
in a sense that they want you
to read the content on the website.
Now, for these business models,
the goals set up would be different.
Now, for an advertising website,
you probably want to track as much traffic as possible,
generate as many page views and also let the user
generate as much page views as possible.
That's something you can set up in Google Analytics.
The actual page view per visit is a goal
that you could define for an advertising-driven website.
You would also define many page views or a threshold
of page views in a certain given day as a goal
that might be something that you want to do
in order to define success for your website.
For a lead generation website where you have content
and you want to have their email address, and the signup
would be the most valuable thing on your website,
you obviously would track that interaction
with event tracking, possibly, or if the user sees
another website or a page after he signs up,
you might want to consider this as an input
for your goals in Google Analytics.
Last but not least, if you're purely content and you really
don't have any kind of call to action on your website
or sell any advertising then you might want to define,
as a goal when the user reads through your content.
That's a little bit more technical to set up.
There is an event tracking by Justin Cutroni
that I will link up in the description below
which talks you a little bit through this,
but it really clearly defines a reader
in your users that come to your website,
and that's a very good success metric for content,
if people actually read through it
and take the time to read through it.
And these, then, are a successful conversion
on your website, and I would put that in
as a goal conversion in Google Analytics.
Now, let's go over to the advanced stage.
This is where you would probably have
a little bit resources available.
You have more time to look at the data
and wanna get more insights out.
The first thing that I would recommend is to get
more context about the page views that are generated.
You have a lot of data now in your Google Analytics,
and there's something you can look into
for content groups, for example.
Content groups are basically
a classification of your page views,
so you can see if people visited the homepage,
the category pages, the post pages,
or the classified section on your website,
and this will help you to find out,
what are the most popular sections of a website
and maybe also how people are moving through
your website in the different sections.
The flow analysis is a very good report in Google Analytics
that let you sort by content groups.
Now, the second thing I would invest in the advanced stage
is event tracking.
So if you have any kind of interactions on your website,
you will be able to track them with, for example,
Google Tag Manager really easily.
So any kind of call to action, any kind of outbound link
click, but also interactions such as scrolling
might give you more insights
about how the users are using your website.
One method I mentioned before is
the scanner/reader tracking from Justin Cutroni,
and I'm gonna link that up in the description below,
so check that out if you wanna get a little bit more
sophisticated about your tracking in Google Analytics.
All right, which brings us now to the professional level,
and the professional level is really when you have
enough people to analyze the data, look at the data,
and run a very professional organization already
in terms of analytics and the team that is set up
and the resources that are allocated to analytics.
What I would recommend there is segmentation.
Now, segmentation can only happen if you have enough context
and enough custom data attributes in your system.
What comes to mind there is custom dimensions.
Now, what can you send into Google Analytics
that are custom dimensions for a content website?
Check out the post in the description below
by The Next Web guys.
The Next Web has 50 custom dimensions
in their Google Analytics premium account,
and it's quite astonishing what they came up with
to segment their users and give them more attributes
and give those page views more attributes
and all the actions that can be taken on the website.
At that stage, you wanna be able
to differentiate your users.
So are they returning users, are they subscribers?
Have they read one, two, or three blog posts
or clicked on any ads?
This is some custom information that you can send
into Google Analytics, but there needs to be somebody
who can also analyze it
and find the right insights out of it.
The second tracking, which is a little bit
more sophisticated, is about the content itself.
So if you have different authors, these authors
might be interested in how can they improve their content
in order to make it more sticky or more viral
and checking things like social shares
but also how many pictures were in that blog post,
what the author was, how long the content piece was,
can give you a lot of insights
on how is your actual content performing
and making it more accessible to different other groups,
measuring against the goals
that you have set up in Google Analytics anyways.
(upbeat electronic music)
So there you have it.
These are my tips on how you can be tracking
a content website with Google Analytics.
Now, did you find that useful?
Do you have any more concerns,
more tips, more questions?
Please leave them in the comments below.
Now, we have new videos coming out every Wednesday,
so hit that subscribe button so you'll stay up to date
with what we are doing here at Measure School.
My name is Julian.
'Til next time.

Content Analytics: How to use Google Analytics for tracking Content Websites

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