A whitepaper from Elon Media Analytics Students. This paper describes some of the benefits of using Google Analytics to plan web content for small businesses.

1. FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
By
Jasper Pike and Ifeanyi Obi

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary…………………………………………….page 3
Introduction…………………………………………………...page 4
Increase Traffic Through SEO…………………………………….page 5
Better Understand Audience……………………………………..page 7
Optimize Web Presence………………………………………....page 9
About The Authors…………………………………………….page 11

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Google Analytics is a completely free, easy to use tool that helps business owners optimize their online
presence. After a quick and simple install, Google Analytics will give business owners data and
recommendations in order to help them increase traffic to their website, better understand their
customers, and optimize their web presence overall.
Start using Google Analytics for your business right now by going to:
“​google.com/analytics​”

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INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
Google Analytics is the industry standard for back-end analytics of websites, with over ten million websites using the
service currently. The free service gives websites a plethora of data that is nearly unparalleled in the industry. People who use
the service call it an “essential” part of their online efforts. Business who use Google Analytics are far better setup for online
success than those who don’t, no matter the company’s size. Analytics gives business owners easy-to-learn and understand
tools to make your business competitive in the digital media age.
Google collects it’s data using a tracking code that you
insert into the back-end of your website. All you the business
owner has to do is copy and paste the script into your website’s
code, and then you are good to go. Google then tracks who is
visiting the website, how much time they spend on it, which pages
they visit, just to name a few features. On the right, you’ll see a
sample dashboard, which is how Google will deliver the data to
you. Google Analytics also gives business owners the opportunity
to take advantage the massive amount of data Google has at its
disposable from it’s search engine. Google Analytics gives data on consumers broken down by almost every demographic
availible. To put it simply, what previously took entire consulting firms to figure out, now is done by just a few lines of code.
The best part is that the service is completely free.. The service gives you up-to-date reports on website data as well
as recommendations on how to maximize the website’s potential. For Business Owners in the digital age, using Google
Analytics is an absolute no brainer. Every small business owner should use Google Analytics in order to increase traffic,
optimize their web presence, and to better understand their audience.

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INCREASE TRAFFIC THROUGH SEO
Google Analytics can give any business the tools necessary to increase traffic to their website. Google provides
businesses with data on nearly every aspect of their consumer base, almost anything a business owner could want to know
about a their online audience is available through the program. But even more important than knowing a website’s current
audience, Google Analytics will provide suggestions on how to grow that audience.
The biggest way Google Analytics can help drive traffic to a website is through SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.
Google is the world’s foremost search engine, and partnering with the company for analytics provides businesses with an edge
in the incredibly competitive SEO market. An overwhelming amount of studies have shown that consumers are very unlikely to
go past the first page of a Google search, so making sure your website comes up near the top of a search results is of the
utmost importance for a Small Business owner. Search Engine Optimization is the practice of making sure your site ends up on
the top of the list. Google accomplishes this through keyword optimization. The service collects data on what search terms
consumers are using to find your website, those are called keywords. Google will then help the small business owner make
sure each of the website’s pages is tagged with the keywords that have proven to be most successful. They will also help you
determine which tags are not working, and need to be
rethought in order to perform better.
On the right is a sample of a Google Analytics
report page. On the bottom right-hand corner, is a sectioned
labeled “Keywords”. These are the terms people are using to
find your website. You’ll see exactly how many people are
using those terms to find your website, and what percentage

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of your traffic those people make up. For most small businesses, a very large percentage of traffic comes from online search
engines.
That’s why staying being on top of SEO is crucial towards a website’s success, and the easiest way for a small
business owner to do that is through Google Analytics. Through keyword analyzation and optimization, as well as audience
research, all of the tools for success are at the fingertips of the small business owner. In the digital media age, SEO can
make-or-break a business, and Google Analytics gives small business owners an unquestionable leg-up on the competition.

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BETTER UNDERSTAND CUSTOMERS
Understanding your customers is a vital part of being a business owner and can pay dividends down the line. Google
analytics can inform you on the geographical location of your customer, the search terms they used to find your site, how often
they visit your site, and the places they traveled to on your site. By analyzing this data, and which social media outlet your
customers use the most, you can get a better understanding of who exactly your customers are, both in real life and online. This
will help you engage your customers more effectively through your website by being able to tailor your website specifically to
your customers. Now, you may have noticed that
infamous buzz word “engagement” and stopped because
you weren't quite sure what it meant, but ironically
enough that's exactly what engaging content does.
“​Engaging content offers something new: a new
perspective, an unexpected laugh, bits of knowledge, or
something helpful, inspiring, or entertaining. Engaging
content gives your reader a peek at something he or she
hasn’t seen before, but can relate to in some way.”
Google Analytics provides business with tons data on
your customers, including age, browser, mobile platform, gender, and geographical location (As seen in the sample report
above). This data will allow business owners to know who is visiting their website, and whether that matches up with your
company’s target audience. A target audience is a particular group of people that have been identified as the intended
recipients of an advertisement or message.

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“Too many companies measure social media marketing success by only counting esoteric measures such as “Likes”
and Followers.” Unfortunately, these measures don’t go far enough to demonstrate a proper ROI (Return On Investment) which
is a way to formulate the efficiency of a product or a strategic campaign is worth the money to implement. This is why it is
critical to understand where your customers are actually engaging with your content so your not spending $10,000 on
advertising on your Facebook only to find out that your Facebook isn’t actually referring any users to your site. By using Google
Analytics, you will be able to analyze the social media habits of your consumers, allowing you to more effectively communicate
with them and better advertise your brand. This will allow you to save money, time, resources and give your customers an
engaging and effective experience.
Now that you have identified your customers and better understand their needs, you can now begin strategizing on
how to get the most out of your social media campaigns. A social media campaign is a coordinated marketing effort to
reinforce or assist with a business goal using one or more social media platforms. One thing that you should keep in mind as
you develop your campaigns is that while Google Analytics provides real-time data on your site, measuring the impact of your
social media campaigns aren’t as reflexive as some of your other data and will require monitoring for the better span of a
month. You should also focus on one social media campaign at a time and work from your most engaged social media outlet, to
the least engaged. That way you can be sure the data you are receiving correctly corresponds with the changes you are making
in social media.

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OPTIMIZING YOUR WEB PRESENCE
Optimizing your web presence is an ongoing process that never truly ends. However, by taking the time to analyze
your data and asking the right questions you can tailor your content to your customers to give them the best web experience
possible. Google Analytics provides powerful digital analytics for anyone with a web presence, large or small. Google Analytics
gives you constant feedback on how people get to your website and where your website needs improvement. It is truly a
powerful advantage for business owners to have.
There are a couple of easy steps to complete within the
Analytics program so the reports can be more specifically tailored to
your business. The first thing you should do is to choose your
business’s “industry,” “country,” and “company size” on the
application. You can find these options in the drop-down menus above
the report. Next, you should chose the “Search Engine Optimization &
Marketing Industry” option found under the “Internet & Telecom >
Web Services” dropdown menus. You should also check the “Web
Design & Development Industry” option, also available under the “Web Services” menu, so you can have access that data as
well.
Selecting these options allows Google Analytics to customize its reports and recommendations to your business. It
will also allow the program to focus on collecting data that is relevant to your business and industry. Google Analytics offers so
many different options when it comes to data collection, without a tailoring the experience towards your business it can be
challenging to figure out which data actually matters and what isn’t as important.

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Once you have Google Analytics running on your
site, you should start seeing data being collected. After your
data is done collecting you should start analyzing your data
and asking questions. This may seem simple at first, but
uncovering relative trends, and asking the right questions
that pertain to that data can be difficult. The reports that you
will be analyzing are multidimensional and will consist of
analyzing organic searches, referrals, sessions, page views,
page/session, avg. session duration, and bounce rate, etc. If
any of those terms are a little foreign to you, they are defined
on the table on the right.
Using this information allows you find out what interests your customers the most on your site, and what they are
missing. You can then start asking questions like “Why do my customers spend twice as much time on my mobile site than on
my website?” After you have figured out your questions you can now spend the time implementing solutions. When
implementing your solutions you should focus on a piece at a time, so that you can use Google Analytics to see if your changes
are making a difference. For example, if you noticed that the landing page for your app wasn’t getting as many views a your
website, or that your Facebook page isn’t pulling in as much traffic as your Twitter page then you would focus on either making
your Facebook page more engaging, or revising the web page for your mobile app, but not both. You should spend at least a
month on each campaign, because your social campaigns are not as reactive as other results that you get from Google
Analytics.

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Google Analytics is a powerful tool that allows your business to thrive online. It allows your business to make
informed decisions regarding your online presence, and get real-time, scientific feedback on those decisions. For a small
business owner, signing up is a no-brainer.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jasper Pike
Jasper Pike is a Junior Media Analytics Major at Elon University. When he’s not watching
his hometown LA Clippers or writing about the latest TV show on his pop-culture blog,
Jasper spends most of his time trying to explain what "Media Analytics" even means.
Ifeanyi Obi
Ifeanyi Obi a senior at Elon University majoring in Media Analytics. He is the CEO and
founder of Our-Watch, a workout fanatic, and hip hop enthusiast.