The Weekly Google Analytics SEO Dashboard
Here are some things you should check within a Google Analytics SEO dashboard every week.
Why is it important to check Google Analytics weekly?
Sometimes things go wrong with a website. Errors can result from user error, technical problems with your CMS or your server, or even thanks to hackers. If you can identify these problems quickly, you can get ahead of them before hurting your SEO campaign.
For example, a CEO got into Google Analytics and accidentally broke the goal one time. He was trying to help, but we lost a month’s worth of conversion data because of his tweak. Had I been checking this weekly, I might have caught this earlier and not lost as much data.
Sometimes things go right- even when you don’t expect it. If you catch these opportunities early, you might be able to get even more out of them.
For example, I noticed a spike in Direct Traffic on a client’s site one time. They received a 100-fold growth in direct traffic in 24 hours! It was huge! It turns out a weekly TV news show talked about them the day before, and many people started typing their domain into their browsers (hence Direct Traffic). Once we saw the interest, we could turn this into a link from a highly-credible website. Good thing I was watching the site!
I will suggest some important things you should check weekly in a Google Analytics SEO dashboard to ensure your SEO campaign is on the right path.
What should you expect from this Google Analytics SEO dashboard?
A week is too short of a time to identify success or failures in an SEO campaign. That’s not the purpose here. I’m recommending a weekly check of your Google Analytics account to catch:
- New SEO opportunities such as new links.
- Did something break on your site? On your server?
- Did someone on your team change something without telling you that could hurt your SEO efforts? Sometimes the SEO team is last to hear about these things.
Most of the time, this will only take you 5 minutes to look and see that everything is okay. However, the point is to catch things early- so this might uncover something that could take a lot of effort. However, it’s better to see it before that later.
The Weekly SEO Checkup
