SEOs: Share Top Content Performers and Traffic Referrers in #SEOchat this Thursday

This post was updated Jan. 15 to include the directions on how to identify traffic by day and hour.

Every Thursday, Internet marketers come together to compare notes in the #SEOChat Twitter chat (more about #SEOchat here). This Thursday, Jan. 16, at 10 a.m. PST / 1 p.m. EST Bruce Clay, Inc. is hosting #SEOChat with an experimental new format: a live review of Google Analytics. Join us as we log into Google Analytics (or your preferred analytics software) — as a group, we’ll mine our 2013 data and compare notes on content performance and audience behavior. We’ll ask questions such as:

• What area of your website performed the best in 2013?
• What was the top performing piece of content or blog post?
• What was your top traffic referrer in 2013? Top social referrer?
• What season saw the most engagement?

By identifying patterns and determining what’s working best, when it’s working and why it’s working, we can shape our 2014 SEO and content marketing strategy accordingly.

#SEOChat is going to be an action-packed hour, and in an effort to get everyone on the same page, we’re providing step-by-step instructions on how to access the reports we’re going to look at Thursday. After logging into Google Analytics, we’ll be looking at the following reports:

• Behavior> Site Content> Content Drilldown
• Behavior> Site Content> All Pages
• Acquisition> All Traffic
• Acquisition> Social> Network Referrals

Read on to discover how to efficiently access these reports. (If you’re new to SEO and starting from scratch you can learn how to set up Google Analytics here.)

Behavior> Site Content> Content Drilldown

1. Adjust the the date range to Jan 1, 2013 to Dec. 31, 2013. There will be no need to repeat this step in the following reports, as the desired date range will stay in place unless you change it or log out.

2. To access the Content Drilldown report, type “Content Drilldown” in the search bar on the upper left and select the Behavior> Site Content> Content Drilldown report.

3. Once in the Content Drilldown report, be prepared talk about which area(s) of your website saw the most traffic.

Behavior> Site Content> All Pages

1. Type “Behavior Site All Pages” in the search bar on the upper left and select the Behavior> Site Content> All Pages report.

2. Once in the report, look for particular pieces of content that saw major traffic gains. What saw the most traffic? A blog post? An infographic? A landing page?

3. We will also use this report to answer when we saw the most engagement. Switch to a monthly view to assess traffic by month.

Acquisition> All Traffic

1. Type “Acquisition All Traffic” into the search bar to pull up the Acquisition> All Traffic report.

2. Once there, change the primary dimension to medium.

3. Assess what source brought in the most traffic. How do your visitors find you? Though organic search? Paid search? Social channels?

4. This is also where you’ll find data on your traffic by day or hour. Change the secondary dimension to Day of Week Name and Hour accordingly.

Acquisition> Social> Network Referrals

1. In an effort to break down which social channels bring in the most traffic, we’ll also pull up the Network Referrals Report. Find it by typing “Acquisition Social Network Referrals” into the search bar.

2. Identify which social platform is bringing in the most the traffic to your site. Are those the platforms you are the most active on or that you’ve optimized? This data can lead to a better understanding of where your audience spends their time socially.

Google Analytics Live Review

When analyzing your data before or during Thursday’s #SEOchat, look for any patterns of points of interest that could benefit your fellow Internet Marketers. We want to hear what worked and where it worked so we can determine why it worked. We will see you at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 16 for #SEOChat! (Tweet this!)

Plus … participants will have a chance to win Bruce Clay’s latest book: “Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals.” At the end of #SEOchat, we’ll choose one active and engaged participant who will get a free, author-signed copy. Read more about the book here.

Tweets about “#seochat”

Have a question you’d like to see us address in Thursday’s #SEOChat? Share it in the comments!

Kristi Kellogg is a journalist, news hound, professional copywriter, and social (media) butterfly. Currently, she is a senior SEO content writer for Conde Nast. Her articles appear in newspapers, magazines, across the Internet and in books such as "Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals" and "The Media Relations Guidebook." Formerly, she was the social media editor at Bruce Clay Inc.

See Kristi's author page for links to connect on social media.