Measure what kind of content is a hit or miss with the fans

With the summer kicking off, it’s a great time to freshen up your content and try new things to #drawthecrowds. Google Analytics can help you measure what kind of content is a hit or miss with the fans. Here are a few simple and effective places to get started.


1. Find out where to focus
Content Groups let you bundle your offerings to analyze them more clearly. Instead of analyzing all sneakers at once, for instance, a shoe company might divide content into soccer boots, golf shoes, tennis shoes and so on. You can view and compare aggregated metrics by group, or drill down to any individual URL or page title.

Know what topics have the best AdSense CTRs (Click-through-rate)

• Group content by topic (such as food, politics and sport). 
• Use the AdSense Pages report to view metrics.

Once you discover which topics have the best click-through rates, you could then focus on creating more content for those topics.

Know which content groups have slow-loading pages

• Use Site Speed reports to look at page load performance. 
• Group products by type (such as shirts and shoes).

Are some pages very slow to load? You might focus on fixing uncompressed images to improve the user experience (and potentially your AdSense revenue). Check out Google’s PageSpeed tool to test the speed of your mobile site.

Content Groups are easy to set up. Learn how to create them and then follow these best practices from Google Analytics evangelist, Justin Cutroni.



2. Understand where your users enter and leave on your site The Landing Pages report can show you how engaged visitors are with your content. You can analyze individual pages or Content Groups.

Know what pages cause visitors to leave

• Look for pages with high bounce rates. This usually surfaces content that isn't appealing to visitors or is irrelevant to their needs.
• Try changing the headline of your article or finding different images to see how that affect bounce rates.
• Look at Google Trends to see what the world is interested in, then think about how you can incorporate it into your content. Sport is sure to be high on the agenda this summer.
• You may also want to analyze the page speed for pages with high bounce rates; visitors may be giving up on a very slow-loading page. Studies have shown that 74% of mobile web users are only willing to wait 5 seconds or less for a single web page to load before leaving the site.

Both Content Groups and Landing Page reports can help you find underperforming pages on your site and take action to fix them.

3. Get to know your users 

Demographics and Interests data helps you understand the age and gender of your users, as well as their interests based on their online browsing and buying.

Know who your visitors are:

• Click on Demographics Report; Select a demographic category.  
• Check the bounce rate. If it’s high, consider changing the headline or the visuals to make your pages more relevant and engaging for your target audience.

Know what your users are interested in:

• Generate and analyze an Interests report.
• Then shape your content based on the user interests you see. If viewers of your bakery blog are interested in a big sports event, see how you can incorporate that theme into your baking content.

To get started with the Demographics and Interests reports, you will need to enable them in your Analytics account.

The key to making your site better this summer is to jump into the data, have fun, and experiment. If you can find out what works and do more of it, you’re sure to draw the crowds. Have any ideas to share about using these reports? Add them in the comments below!

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Posted by Jay Castro, from the AdSense team