Episode 19: Get More Leads from Your Existing Traffic

podcast

Traffic is an important metric for your website. It shows how well a website is doing in terms of attracting visitors and converting them into customers. Finding out where traffic is coming from or what kind of content attracts the most visitors is the key to increasing your leads.

Google Analytics is a free tool that provides insights about your website's traffic and content. It helps you to understand how your visitors interact with your site.

Listen to Episode 19

In this episode, we’re looking at google analytics in-depth to help you integrate it on your site, attract more visitors, increase conversion and get more leads.

Listen to Episode 19

In this episode, we’re looking at google analytics in-depth to help you integrate it on your site, attract more visitors, increase conversion and get more leads.

IN THIS EPISODE...
[00:56] Today topic: SEO, specifically google analytics
[01:51] Installing Google Analytics
[03:50] How to check for organic traffic on your site
[05:09] How to know what pages people are coming to from google
[10:45] Improve your site by answering 3 questions
[15:45] Call to action button and how to make it better
topics discussed: google analytics, website leads, conversions

MEREDITH'S HUSBAND SAYS...
"If a user doesn’t know immediately what they’re looking at, they get frustrated."
"You need to treat your visitors like dummies; people don’t like to think."
"You need to make your call to action as specific as possible."

LINKS MENTIONED...
Google Analytics
A web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.

Adding Analytics to Squarespace
To add Google Analytics to a Squarespace site: click SETTINGS in the home menu, click ADVANCED...

Adding Analytics to WordPress
To add Google Analytics to a WordPress site, try the simple plugin: Site Kit by Google.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.--

Episode Transcript

Meredith: [00:48]
Hello, friend. Welcome back to the podcast. I am Meredith

Meredith's husband: [00:53]
And I'm Meredith's husband, and we're going to talk today about SEO specifically about Google Analytics and how you can take something from Google Analytics. Just one little piece of information. Take it over to your site and improve your website's conversion and hopefully get some more leads. Clients, customers, whatever you whatever you get from your website, hopefully you're going to get a little bit more.

Meredith: [01:15]
Sounds great. I thought so.

Meredith's husband: [01:18]
I can really only go by judging, like, how popular the different topics are by, you know, looking at the number of downloads. And my guess is people will appreciate knowing what to do with analytics because number one, it's kind of confusing. Yeah, it's a big, yeah, big, huge ocean of information. But if there is, if you are listening to this and there's something that you want to hear more about, you, let me know. Go. Yeah. Let us know on on Instagram at this husband.

Meredith: [01:47]
Yeah, please.

Meredith's husband: [01:48]
Ok, so to do this, you're obviously going to need Google Analytics installed. So if you don't have Google Analytics, I'll put a link in the in the show notes below of how you can do that, both on WordPress and if you're running a Squarespace

Meredith: [02:02]
Site, is that also work for Wix?

Meredith's husband: [02:04]
And yeah, I mean, there are I mean, there are tons of potential website hosting platforms out there,

Meredith: [02:11]
And it works for all

Meredith's husband: [02:12]
Of them. Well, analytics. Yes, there is going to be some way to integrate analytics with any legitimate hosting. Wordpress is by far the most popular hosting for photographers and small business owners. I think Squarespace is probably the second most popular Wix, and the other is our are different. If if you're running a site on Wix or Weebly or one of these others, you can just go to Google and do a search for Google Analytics. Wix. Ok. Hopefully, there should be an article, right in their blog, a resource on their blog. Yes, that tells exactly how to do that. And hopefully it's very easy. It usually is very easy. It's usually easier on Squarespace than Wix and those things than it is on WordPress. But even on WordPress, it's not. It's not difficult. Yes. So I'm going to share my screen with you so that you can kind of see, Oh boy, what I'm

Meredith: [03:01]
Talking about, I need to put on my glasses back

Meredith's husband: [03:03]
Then. Ok, so once you log in to Google Analytics, whatever screen you're looking at, there should be some navigation along the left hand side of the page in that navigation. There should be a link acquisition, I mean, to click on acquisition and then that'll open up a dropdown, then click on all traffic and then click on channels. And this is going to be the screen that you'll want to start with. By the way, this is the page where I always start. When I look at analytics on any, this is my starting page. I go straight here all the time. Hmm. But once you are here, you will see a couple of things and the main portion of the page you'll see your traffic chart. It'll probably be the last seven days or 30 days or whatever dates you're looking at. And then you will see at the bottom, a table, a table of data. And that will be if you're looking at. All traffic, there's going to be a few different options here. One of them is going to be organic traffic, so we all we want to look at here is organic traffic because we want to know how people are getting to our site from Google. So click on organic search, then you will see it'll say keywords, but the keywords are not provided, so you'll probably see something that says not provided, not set.

Meredith's husband: [04:14]
You might see your own brand name because often the keywords that Google will provide aren't is anything related to your brand. So if if you were looking at this on your site, it might say like not provided, you know, a big number of users not set a smaller number of users. And then it might have like Meredith Zinner Meredith Sinter Photography, so it will give you your branded keywords. It will not provide the generic keywords like children's photographer in Brooklyn if somebody uses that search to find you and Google. Google is not going to tell you that, at least not here, so that information is not available. But that's OK, because that's not what we need today. Ok, so once we are looking at just the organic traffic, there is a few links just beneath the traffic chart and the text will say primary dimension. And then there'll be a few links. They'll still say keyword source, landing page and other. I want you to click on landing page because we want to know what pages are people actually coming to from Google to visit our site? Ok, what's their what's their landing? What are the first page they see now? This is going to be the data we want, but likely you are looking at probably the last seven days or 30 days or something.

Meredith's husband: [05:25]
So go up to the top right and they will. There will be a drop a date dropdown and just select something like the last three months. Ok. What I'm doing this I typically do the last three months. It's not terribly important if you have a newer site or you have a you really don't have much traffic at all, then you can open it up to six months or even longer. But I don't want to go too long in the into the past because I want to get an accurate idea of what's kind of happening currently. I don't want to look at a year ago because I'm going to use this to make some, some tweaks to my current site. So I want to look at reasonably recent history. So I think the last three months is a good option. And then you can adjust the there's a selection where you can select for the traffic chart day, week or month. This doesn't really matter. I often look at week, but

Meredith: [06:17]
They look like cats. What looks like cats? If you go back today or whatever it was before. Yeah, see, it looks like cats.

Meredith's husband: [06:27]
Cats, yep, I don't see that, but I totally trust you. If, yeah, what Meredith is talking about is when you look at the traffic, the daily traffic, it's going to be a very jagged line. Weekends are usually the low points. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday are the high points. So the traffic, the daily traffic is going to look like. I think it looks more like shark teeth, which I think you've I think you pointed out before. Yeah, it's very jagged, it looks crazy, it looks chaotic.

Meredith: [06:55]
So it also looks like what are those things called that they in caves, men and men and gates? Do you see if you do it opposite? So the white is the white. Oh, right, right? Ok, if you see it backwards.

Meredith's husband: [07:08]
Meredith, an artist, she is seeing things. She's seeing cats and cavemen,

Meredith: [07:14]
Cave cave drippings. What do they call stagnant stalactites? That's what they look like, do you see? So it's the white stalactites and you're looking down into the cave.

Meredith's husband: [07:25]
Is this stalagmites?

Meredith: [07:27]
Oh, maybe. Or just the cave that you look through the white stalagmites?

Meredith's husband: [07:32]
Oh yes. Wow. This is super deep. Regardless, if you're looking at daily traffic, it's going to be jagged and looks chaotic and is, you know, we want to eliminate anything, all chaos we want to eliminate and we want. Yeah. So that's why I look at the weekly. If you look at the weekly view, it's going to be a whole lot smoother. And yes, like four days, for example, you can't compare your website traffic on a Sunday to a Wednesday. Most likely, you can certainly compare this week to last week. It involves, you know, both of those have a Sunday, they both have a Monday, they both have a Tuesday, et cetera. So that's why I like to at least look at weekly. It just looks more. Palatable. There's no stalagmites or stalactites.

Meredith: [08:16]
No, it's just like a wave clean way.

Meredith's husband: [08:20]
Yeah, it's a it's a it's a hilly horizon. Yeah. Ok, so this is the stuff that we want to be looking at. So now in this table, if you scroll down a little bit, you will see a bunch of landing pages, these will be the landing pages in order of the most popular, to the least.

Meredith: [08:38]
Oh, OK.

Meredith's husband: [08:39]
Now if you see just a dash here with nothing, that's your home page. Very often that will be your most popular page or one of the most popular pages. Sometimes it's not. Very often I have clients who they have a blog page that's way more popular than their home page right now. Meredith and I are looking at my own blog.

Meredith: [08:59]
Ok.

Meredith's husband: [09:00]
And we see it's all my most popular blog page is how to fix the issue. Pages have a low text to HTML ratio and then duplicate each one and then site map and then hreflang. So I have like my home page is like my 30th or 40th most popular page. Well, this, by the way, is was created completely to be a resource blog. So this is intentional. So this is what happens when you if you can create a blog that is truly a resource, people are going to come into that blog through your individual resources, not not your home page. That's that's kind of what we're looking at. So the next step, so I want you to look at the first page that is not your home page. Ok. That might be the most popular page. Your home page might be above it if you don't have any. If there is nothing other than your home page, then then use your home page. But then we're going to go to this page. We're going to go visit that page.

Meredith: [09:59]
Hello. What are we going to pack? Hmm. What are we going to pack when we're going to go visit it?

Meredith's husband: [10:04]
Oh, I don't know. It's a short trip. We don't need to pack anything.

Meredith: [10:10]
Wow.

Meredith's husband: [10:12]
So now that you're looking at this page to try to imagine looking at this page as a user for the first time, which I know is tricky as the website owner, you probably labored, you know, perhaps labored over the content to put on this page, you know, all about your business. You know what your visitors are supposed to do. You know all of this. So it's try to take that knowledge and just put it on the shelf right now and look at this page as if you have no. You've never seen this before. You have no idea what this is. And I want you to answer three questions OK? One, as a user, what am I looking at to? What am I supposed to do? And three, what decision do I need to make? That's the kind of the process that a user is going to go through when they open up a new page or a new site for the first time. If a user doesn't know what they're looking at in the first, they've said two seconds in the past, I think is probably more like two tenths of a second one second. If a user doesn't know immediately what they're looking at. They're frustrated a little bit. Now you do not want somebody coming to your business for the first time, you don't want their very first impression to be frustration. No, now they're not going to consciously, you know, bank that and say, Oh, this person made me frustrated.

Meredith's husband: [11:27]
They might not even realize it. But in that first fraction of a second, if they don't know what they're looking at, they're a tiny bit frustrated. Right. So if that's the case, you need to fix that. That's usually nine times out of 10 going to be the headline, the words and the headline the biggest text on the page, usually at the top of the page. This is all also usually your one heading. You've got to convey very quickly and very simply what people are looking. Hmm. Now, ideally, that would also include your your keywords, because if people are coming to this page through Google, they most likely are, you know, most likely, it's very possible that they did a search for the exact heading that they're now looking. And so my blog? That is true. Somebody did a search for, you know, how to fix or SEMRUSH issues pages that have a low text to HTML ratio. And now on the on this page, my heading is fix capital letters pages have a low text h HTML ratio super simple. Then there's a video right beneath it with a play button that answers the second question What am I supposed to do? Right? So once somebody realizes I'm in the OK this, this is what I'm looking at. What am I supposed to do here as a user? What am I? Am I supposed to just read all this text? In this case, there's a big play button I watch.

Meredith's husband: [12:44]
The video is probably the number one. If you don't have a big visual element like that, like a play button, you want to think of action, words, headings, text in bold, something that says, you know. Read this Watch this. Click here. Here, click there would be the call to action. That's next. But before people, that's going to be the decision that people need to make. But before people get to a decision, before they get to your call to action, they need to know what is there something that's supposed to do now? A lot of websites don't really have this. It's just a bunch of text to read. Maybe some images. If that is your page, I want you to think about how you can make it more clear what a user is supposed to do. Maybe that's a subheading, maybe underneath your heading where it says, you know. So in my case, the heading is fix pages have a low text to HTML ratio. Suppose I didn't have a big play button on a video there. Maybe a subheading could be read the following to learn how to fix this, right? Something like that. Something so that a user says, OK, I know where I am. I know what I'm supposed to do. I know the objective of of the content of this page.

Meredith: [13:54]
So the more hand-holding, big sign pointing, the better. Yes, I'm kidding.

Meredith's husband: [14:02]
Yes, I've said before you need to treat your visitors like dummies. Not because they are dummies, right? But because people don't want to think. At least not right now. When people are surfing, when people are surfing the web, it's not like I. I really want to think about X y z. So I'll I'll I'll go online and surf the web. That doesn't happen, right? At least usually. So the third number three, the third point to think about after you've thought, what am I looking at? What am I supposed to do as a user? What decision do I need to make? That is your call to action.

Meredith: [14:35]
Hmm.

Meredith's husband: [14:36]
So on my particular blog, I actually don't. This is just a resource page. There is no particular call to action here. Aside from, you can go and look at our other most popular guides. These other most popular guides that I have, by the way, lead to affiliate programs. So, OK, so I'm guiding the person to what I want them to do, right? As the website owner, you know, of course they can. They can do all they can do other things. They can go anywhere else in the site. But what I would like them to do, that's the call to action down here at the bottom, they can click on our latest guides and these the content on these. I call them the latest guides. They're they're not actually the latest guides, but those are going to guide them towards a path where I can monetize this site a little bit, but that's what I would prefer. That's why this blog is here. That's why I created this.

Meredith: [15:25]
So for photographers, can you give an example

Meredith's husband: [15:29]
Of of what the call to action would be? Yeah. Yes.

Meredith: [15:33]
So you're back to us. The photographer's interesting about your site. All right. But as photographers, we also want to know for us, right, folks. Right.

Meredith's husband: [15:46]
So you probably have a button that says, contact us, right? Contact me or book a session or schedule a call or whatever. That's your call to action. Now, if you have a. And we've talked about this before in the past, too, if you have a call to action. That is like contact us or contact me or contact. You need to make that better, you need to make your call to action as specific as possible as to what is going to happen next. If the user clicks that button. If it says contact us as a user, just, you know, on a very primal level, do I click that button and then you pick up the phone and we're talking no contact us is is what send you an email? Is it schedule a zoom? Is it? Is it whatever? Be specific that somebody knows exactly what's going to happen and why? And and perhaps, you know, you could say schedule a Zoom that's more specific than contact us, but for what purpose is also important?

Meredith: [16:49]
Usually, I would think though, when you have a contact, contact us, you just click and figure out where it's going to you. Kind of you're packed for the ride, right? You know, like, Oh, where is this going to take me? What's the best way

Meredith's husband: [17:05]
Is that is that the feeling that you want people to have when navigating your site is, Oh, let's just see what happens.

Meredith: [17:11]
Probably not.

Meredith's husband: [17:12]
Right. You want your call to action to be specific, you also want it to sound valuable. You want people to say, Yeah, I want that. That's what I want.

Meredith: [17:21]
Mm hmm. Like, help me make this happen.

Meredith's husband: [17:25]
Click contact us is. And nobody goes online saying thinking to themselves, I want to click a contact us button, right? What do they want? What do they want when they're on your site? And this is this is good because. I know you want you want to think about what people want. Yeah. So what do they want to book a session? Do they want to,

Meredith: [17:48]
You know, probably want more information?

Meredith's husband: [17:51]
Yeah, if they're on a page. So remember, people are coming to this page. This is their first experience, right? With your you're looking at this as a user for the first time. So do they want more information? Yeah. If they if if the biggest call to action on any particular pages for somebody just to get more information, then yeah, have a button that says, learn more about me or something. Yeah, that's a call to action, that's for sure. For sure. That's not your ultimate cult action. And if this is a blog, to be honest, the call to action should not be contact me. If it's a blog, people are coming in and they're just getting acquainted. They're not, you know, they didn't find you because they were looking for a wedding photographer. They're coming to you for probably a very specific search. Right. So the next the call to action from those pages should be to learn more about me or check out my work

Meredith: [18:41]
Or, yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, makes sense.

Meredith's husband: [18:45]
Yeah. So on your home page, if you're looking at your home page and not a blog page, that's probably different, then the call to action is going to be something like Let's chat about a session or whatever, whatever it is, you know, let's schedule a 15 minute chat.

Meredith: [19:02]
Yeah, take it to the next level. Yes, not. Let's get it on.

Meredith's husband: [19:10]
Let's get it

Meredith: [19:11]
On. No, not that. No, no,

Meredith's husband: [19:16]
We just watched a show. What is it? What did they say on opposite day?

Meredith: [19:19]
Yeah, 10. 15 The greatest show on the planet.

Meredith's husband: [19:22]
Yes, it's pretty funny. You could say. Yeah, by that approach, you could say you could make your contact button. Don't click here on opposite day. I think you're probably the only one who thought that was funny.

Meredith: [19:38]
I think so. You're just confused. Yeah.

Meredith's husband: [19:42]
So, OK, so once you've done those three things, I want you to go ahead and try to improve those elements on your page. Okay. Once you have done that on this page, you're most popular page. Go back to Google Analytics, go to the next most popular page and do the same thing. Now you may find this is usually the case that as you go down those popular landing pages, that there's going to be one two three four, maybe more popular blank pages, then there'll be some sort of big drop off and there'll be some much less popular landing pages. Those ones, I would say, don't worry about, just try to go through the ones that are the most popular. Ok, thank you. We'll usually be should be pretty obvious what those are. And if you're just starting a site or you have almost no traffic at all. Well, then this isn't going to work for you, to be

Meredith: [20:31]
Honest, I'm glad we wasted here the past 20 minutes of your time.

Meredith's husband: [20:39]
Yeah, sorry, if that's if that's the

Meredith: [20:45]
Case, you bookmark this for when you have had more time and then come back to it because it will be necessary.

Meredith's husband: [20:54]
We are going to do an episode very soon and depending on when you listen to this, it may already be released of what you need to do if you're just beginning.

Meredith: [21:01]
That's a great idea

Meredith's husband: [21:02]
If you have no traffic at

Meredith: [21:03]
All. That's a great

Meredith's husband: [21:04]
Idea. So what I'm going to do actually is I'll go back and I'll put a note in the beginning of this episode. Hey, if you have no traffic at all, yes, go listen to a different episode first.

Meredith: [21:14]
Yes, I think that's kind. Thank you so much for listening. We hope that this was helpful and we hope you are.

Meredith's husband: [21:23]
Well, yeah, I hope this was helpful. I hope it helped give you a little bit of confidence. I hope that it helped your bottom line. Ideally, what this is going to do is you will get a higher conversion rate, so you don't have to worry about getting more traffic to your website in order to get more leads. This will help get more leads from the people who are who are already reaching your website.

Meredith: [21:42]
Yes.

Meredith's husband: [21:43]
If it helped, let us know on Instagram if it didn't try another episode. Thank you. Thanks.

Episode 19: Get More Leads from Your Existing Traffic

Listen to Episode 19

Listen to Episode 19

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