Here are 6 ways I use Google Analytics to help identify these golden opportunities for improvement.

Find 2nd page organic rankings to boost

In most cases, the easiest way to increase your organic search traffic is to focus on increasing your rankings for keywords you are already ranked for. Moving a ranking from the second page to the first page can result in a noticeable increase in traffic, because roughly 90% of searchers click on results on the first page.

The easiest way to pinpoint which keywords you want to focus on improving is as follows:

Find and fix the primary sticking point in your conversion funnel

If your website’s goal is ecommerce sales or lead generation, focusing on increasing conversions is an extremely effective way to boost revenues. Ensure that you have setup a funnel for your goal(s) in Google Analytics, then use the funnel visualization to pinpoint steps in the process where purchasers drop out.

Go to Conversion > Goals > Funnel Visualization to view the report. This example shows a site with a checkout page that is a “weak link”in the conversion funnel, since 70% of visitors abandon the checkout process at that point:

Boost traffic to your highest converting landing pages

Working to improve your website’s weaknesses can boost revenues, but maximizing your website’s strengths is oftentimes even more effective. Identify the highest converting landing pages on your website then work to increase traffic to these pages using tactics such as:

To view goal conversions by landing page, you will need to create a custom report in Google Analytics. Alternatively, you can just copy the custom report I created, which shows total goal conversions and goal conversion rate by landing page: “Total Conversions By Landing Page”. This screenshot shows the report:

Get organic rankings for your best performing paid keywords

The best keywords to focus your search engine optimization efforts on are those which have already proven to be profitable through paid search marketing. Use Google Analytics to export a list of your top performing (i.e. most conversions and/or highest conversion rate) paid search keywords. Any keywords in the list that you don’t have strong organic rankings for should be added to your top priority list for SEO.

Go to Traffic Sources > Incoming Sources > Search > Paid, then click on the Goal Set 1 or Ecommerce tab to view conversion data.

Boost traffic from your highest converting keywords

Go to Traffic Sources > Incoming Sources > Search > Paid, then click on the Goal Set 1 or Ecommerce tab to determine your highest converting keywords. (You’ll notice that Google Analytics no longer shows visitor counts on these tabs – you can create a custom report if you want to see the number of visitors each keyword sent.) Once you have determined your top converting keywords, use these 5 tactics to increase traffic from each keyword:

1. If you are getting mostly paid traffic for a keyword, focus on SEO in addition

2. If you are getting mostly organic traffic for a keyword, start running PPC ads in addition

3. Launch PPC ads on additional search engines (MSN AdCenter, second-tier engines, etc.) for that keyword

4. Increase your PPC bids for the keyword

5. Launch contextually targeted ads for the keyword

I have created a custom report “Conversions By Keyword” you are welcome to use. Here is what it looks like:

Make your top converting products more prominent

If you run an ecommerce store, this is an easy tweak you can make to boost conversions – maximize traffic to your highest converting products by increasing their visibility across your site. How to identify your highest converting pages will vary based on your site structure and traffic patterns – you may be able to just use the “Total Conversions By Landing Page”report or you may need to create a different report. Once you have determined which your highest converting products are, use these strategies to make them more prominent:

1. Make them featured products on your homepage and/or sidebar

2. Make them ranked at the top of each category they are in

3. Make them more likely to appear in related product displays

4. Make them more likely to appear in upsell/cross-sell displays

5. Link to them from email newsletters

6. Write reviews of them and feature them on your blog

Conclusion

Most sites will be able to implement one or more of these strategies quickly, resulting in a fast, easy win. How have you or will you use these tactics? What are some of your favorite “quick wins” you look for in Google Analytics?

The tradition of tracking Santa began as an accident in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. ad for children to call Santa misprinted the phone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in Chief’s operations "hotline." The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check radar for Santa making his way south from the North Pole.

They’ve been tracking the fat jolly guy ever since, and over the last couple years, they’ve begun working with Google by way of Google Maps and Google Earth, but Google has now announced that NORAD relies on Google Analytics as well. A post at the Google Analytics Blog says:

Initially, the Santa Tracking team at NORAD implemented Google Analytics last year because they simply wanted to see how many visitors came to the site. But they got a lot more out of it. We spoke with Major Stacia Reddish, NORAD Tracks Santa Program Manager, after Christmas last year. "For us, 2007 was a benchmark because we didn’t have analytics data before. It will be really interesting and useful to compare last year’s statistics to this year’s." Last year, the website was featured in 6 languages and it literally got traffic from all over the world, which NORAD learned from Google Analytics. "In 2007 we had visitors from 212 countries and territories with the majority of traffic from the US, UK, and Canada," Major Reddish told us. "We logged almost 11 million visits!"

Major Reddish said that Google Analytics has been invaluable for planning and evolving the site. For instance, last year, the team made a goal to translate the site into at least one additional language for this year. But which language would be most helpful to visitors? Google Analytics reported that visitors from China spent twice as long on site as the average. So Chinese was chosen as the additional language option for 2008.

Last year’s visits to NORAD’s Santa Tracking site came from
almost every country on the planet, denoted by areas in green

Google is all about the holidays this year. They’ve been offering a ton of tips on different products, like Google Mobile (including video tips, which they’ve been tailoring specifically toward holiday situations). They’ve released holiday-themed templates for Google Docs, and of course the NORAD thing. Google’s never been one to shy away from the holidays, but it’s almost as if they’re looking to become tradition, like the Santa Claus Coke cans, Budweiser Clydesdales, and marathons of a Christmas Story.