If you have a website . . . if you are paying for online directory listings . . . if you are tweeting, active on LinkedIn or Pinterest, you need to know how to measure the traffic that you are getting (and not getting) from each of these sites. If you are like me and have struggled to figure out whether your marketing efforts online are paying for themselves or just costing you your hard-earned cash and time, then this is going to be your lucky day!
Today I have invited therapist-turned-geek Becky DeGrossa to clue us all in on the simplest (and totally free) way to start measuring our effectiveness online. Becky works with therapists and other allied health professionals to help us make informed choices related to marketing online. I have found Becky to consistently be generous in sharing her knowledge (as you will see here today) and eager to make all-things-tech more accessible to mental health professionals. I know you will be as excited as I am to find a geek who can hold the space for client-centered work to be enhanced in a tech-centered world.
(If you are interested in writing a guest post, check out the guidelines here.)
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A Guest Post by Becky DeGrossa
Why Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a tool that can help you determine if you’re on the right track with your marketing. It is really quite powerful, but unfortunately, many of us in the counseling field under-utilize it, or don’t even have it set up for their websites.
The purpose of this post (and video) is to introduce you to the power of this tool if you’re not yet using it, or to serve as a reminder of the insights you can gain, if you’re already using it.
Google Analytics can give you quick insight into:
- what is happening with your marketing right now
- the progress you’re making, over time
- which marketing efforts are yielding results and which are not
- what traffic sources are delivering relevant, interested visitors (and which aren’t) — i.e. where you should spend more time/money and where you shouldn’t
- whether or not you are really engaging these visitors (or leaving them wanting)
- whether there is something wrong with your website (via alerts)
This video won’t cover everything that Analytics can tell you about your marketing, but it should serve as a good introduction and will give you some ways to use analytics to help your marketing right now.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/QO1ADEtA8C4[/youtube]
What Does the Data Mean?
High Level Data
- Total # visits vs. Unique Visits – Unique visits are most important
- Pages/Visit – The more engaging your site is, the more inclined visitors will be to continue clicking beyond the entry page.
- Average Visit Duration – the more engaging your site, the longer they’ll stay
- Bounce Rate – The more engaging your site is, the more inclined visitors will be to continue clicking beyond the entry page.
- % New Visits – you want to have new visitors, yes, but you also want to see that some folks are coming back to your site. There’s a common set of statistics in marketing: Only 2% of “buyers” buy on the first exposure. 80% of buyers buy on exposure 5-12. So, if you’re not engaging folks enough to have them come back, you’re starting over each and every month with no marketing momentum.
Traffic Sources and What They Mean
- Direct – someone has typed in your URL, clicked your URL in an email, etc.
- Referrals – traffic from other websites
- Organic search – traffic coming from Google or other search engines
- Paid – paid traffic (Adwords)
- Social – visitors coming from FB, LinkedIn, etc. (Social, network referrals)
What Can You Learn?
Engagement Level – Is it Good?
- Check on general engagement levels for all kinds of traffic. Generally, those therapists that have a well-constructed blog on their site will have much higher engagement levels than those who don’t.
- Bounce rates exceeding 60% indicate that either the wrong folks are being attracted, or they can’t find something, immediately, to keep their interest
- Visit duration less than 3 minutes can indicate that you’re not giving them ENOUGH to read, or that it’s not obvious WHERE to keep reading.
Organic Traffic – Are You Getting the Right Visitors?
- Make sure you’re getting traffic for more than searches on your name (look at the keywords) — though Google hides a lot of keywords from us these days.
- Make sure you’re getting traffic for terms that are relevant to what you do (keywords)
- Make sure you’re getting traffic that is local to you (demographics)
Referral Sources – Which are Delivering and Which Aren’t?
- If you’re getting visitors, are they quality visitors (i.e. are they staying for awhile)? I’ve found that some therapy directories, for instance, deliver a good number of visitors, but they don’t stay. It may not be worth it for that therapist to keep paying for a listing on that directory.
- If you’re blogging for someone else (i.e. Psychology Today), is it resulting in visits to your site?
- Are the visits from social media sites staying? Which ones end up with the highest engagement levels? (You might want to put more energy there).
Some Things to Do Right Now with Analytics
- Install it on your site if you don’t have it.
- Check overall engagement (bounce rate, relevant traffic local to you, visitor duration, etc.)
- Check to see which search terms (keywords)are bringing traffic that stays.
- Begin Annotating Your Timeline (every time you do some marketing activity–new blog post, email to your list, marketing on Twitter/Pinterest, writing a blog for another site, etc.– put an annotation for this on your timeline. 6 months from now, you’ll forget what to attribute that surge in your traffic to. Annotations will remind you what was helpful.
- If you’re far enough along in your marketing to be building an email list, then set up a goal to track how it’s working. Here is a great video on how to easily set up a goal to track email opt-ins:
Wrap Up
I hope this gave you an introduction as to how Google Analytics can help you gauge how well your private practice marketing is going.
If you have any Google Analytics insights to share, or questions to ask, please comment below!
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Becky DeGrossa
After spending 20 years with IBM, Becky left to do something more meaningful, and got her master’s in counseling psychology. Through smart online marketing, Becky built a thriving private practice within 1 year of being out of school. In the end, however, she found that she enjoyed marketing a private practice more than sitting in the therapist’s chair! With CounselingWise.com, Becky brings her love of marketing to therapists so that they can do the good work of the world.
I discovered Becky almost two months ago from a call on GoodTherapy.org. She had such great information to share! I immediately started pouring over her website and have been implementing the suggested changes. It’s been a lot of work, but I can already tell the results are starting to pay off. I really appreciate this article on Google Analytics and can’t wait to watch the video a little later when I do my web work. Becky has a ton of great information. Glad to see her post here!
Tammy, I know exactly what you mean! Becky and I have become e-friends – to finally meet in person later this week – and, like you, I’ve been so impressed with her depth of knowledge and her generosity in sharing, too. I think you will be quite pleased with the depth of knowledge she shares in this video about Google Analytics. I learned several new ways to make this tool work for me.
Looking forward to actually meeting you face-to-face this week, Tamara!
Hey, Becky! Here’s a quick tutorial on how you can set up your gravatar – http://www.allthingsprivatepractice.com/how-a-tiny-picture-of-you-can-help-drive-traffic-to-your-website-or-blog/. It’s been a great little tool for building community here at Private Practice from the Inside Out.
Tammy,
Thanks so much for your kind words.
Blush, blush 🙂
I hope you find the video informative!
Becky
I get so excited each week when I receive the email from Google Analytics. I guess it doesn’t take much to entertain me! LOL
Seriously though, I pay close attention to how people are finding me. Thanks, Becky, for taking the time to share your insights into Google Analytics.
Sure, Pam, no problem! How have you changed what you’re doing based on what you’ve seen in GA? Do you have an example you can share?
Thanks,
Becky
I’m a child therapist and when a parent initially contacts me via email or phone I jot down the words they use to describe why they’re seeking my services. I’ve learned those are the same words parents use to search for a child therapist so I make certain to have those words on my web site.
Pam, this is an excellent example of how a therapist’s active listening and mirroring skills transfer into support of our businesses! I was just talking to a group this last week about the many ways our clinical skills including relationship building and problem solving are easily transfered into practice-building. You just proved my point.:)
Great thinking, Judy!
Also, in looking at your analytics, you’ll see other terms they use that you haven’t thought of. I’m amazing at what I find… that I’d never have thought of on my own.
You also brought up a good point. When you said, “I get so excited each week when I receive the email from Google Analytics”…. so you’ve got it set up for GA to send you a report each week.
Easy and SMART to do, but not something that I covered in the video!
If anyone needs to know how, we can address that here, so just ask.
OK, Becky – I’m game! Mine isn’t coming to my email and I want to know! Care to share here or is that another guest post? Either one works for me!
Becky and Tamara, thanks very much for this informative video! I learned some new things, and will definitely put them into practice. Judy.
Good morning, Judy! So glad you are finding the info helpful. Me, too! I’m getting ready to watch it a second time to pick up a few more tips myself!
Hey, I noticed that you don’t have a tiny little picture of you up beside your comment. Those are called “gravatars” and are really easy to set up. Here’s instructions for how you can do it.
Hi Judy,
No problem! Let us know how it goes once you start using the ideas.
Hey! I “see” you! Sweet! Thanks for adding your gravatar!
Thanks for the useful information about how to use analytical. I noticed when I switched from blogger to WordPress there was a significant difference sin what the blogger stats showed and analytics. I’m not sure if blogger was inaccurate or if the move impacted the amount of visitors I get.
Hi Jill,
I take it that you seem to have lost a lot of traffic? (Ouch. I actually just looked at Semrush — looks like it’s gone down a lot since last summer. Bummer.)
When did you move to WordPress?
It looks like you have a nice sized site. You should not lose traffic in switching from Blogger to WordPress.
I’m assuming that you deleted your old content from Blogger to avoid duplicate content penalties…
I see that you have Sitelock on your site, making me wonder if you were hacked. If so, did it bounce back after that?
One of my normal “health check” tools couldn’t scan your site, making me wonder what’s up.
Ah, Jill — I think I may see why… well, one reason, anyway: You have way too many tags and categories. Your post on the Boston tragedy, for instance, is going to appear on 28 pages of your site, as each category has it’s own page and each tag has it’s own page.
You really want to limit the number of categories you have and the number of tags so that you don’t create duplicate content pages. With the algorithm changes last year, this is even more important.
Not sure if that’s the only reason. More investigation most likely needed, but something’s sure up.
Hope that helps. Let me know if not clear.
Becky
I moved to wordpress over a period of last fall/winter, with one of my sites (I have two) and did Jill’s Writing and Play Therapy Page last. (I did a test run with a newer site to see if I could do it). I followed instructions a cousin sent me and had all my posts moved, and the blogger (blogspot.com) address connected to it directs to the wordpress site, but I still have a blogspot account, as all the photos are still hosted there. Anyway, I use site lock because facebook things http://www.jillosborne.org is a spam site and blocks it, so I was trying to scan for malware and also used some free scans and didn’t find anything. Macafee had my site black listed briefly (i don’t know why) but I cleaned that up easy just by contacting them. So basically I can post anything from http://www.jillosborne.org to facebook, and I went from being on page 1 of google search to like page 5 yuck. Anyway, I will work on the tagging thing, I am still learning a lot about my site. If you want I can email, send you the info I used to move my site. Took me 2 hours the first time only because I couldn’t figure out where to upload files to my host. I also know I could post more :). Can you direct me to a good post on tags and categories? Thanks.
Sure, Jill! I always trust the info I get directly from WordPress so here’s one that talks about the differences between tags and categories. I tend to think of tags as the index in the back of a book and categories as the major subjects or table of contents.
Becky, thanks so much for staying engaged here with the questions! I was out of state last week and am woefully behind. That’s not to say that I would have known about Semrush – What’s that?!
Nor would I have thought to remember about deleting the old content to avoid duplicate content penalties! That’s exactly! why I was so happy to have you share your knowledge of Google Analytics!
“Health check tools?” Now you’ve got my interest!
“. . . limit tags and categories?” Got suggestions about what to limit them to . . . ? Or is this yet another guest post in the making?:)
Jill, I would differ with Becky’s comments in one way. It in not uncommon to lose readers when you switch from one platform to another unless that switch is carefully handled i.e. give your readers a heads up, remind them once or twice that you plan to switch, and if you have that email list that Becky is so infamous for touting then you definitely want to reach out to them to let them know that there will be a change a-coming. After all, now they need to go to a new URL and that requires a little effort on their part.
I’m sorry you are experiencing a reduction in visitors but know that in the long run, you and your business will be much better served on a WordPress platform. And, hopefully you will win your readers back over. After the switch, it usually takes Google up to 60 or even 90 days to “find” you and get you listed. (Correct me, Becky, if that has changed.) After that, you should get up to speed fairly quickly with visits and followers.
And, once again, you are presenting the exact reason it is so important to choose a great platform to start off your website on – so that you don’t have to change because you’ve outgrown your old platform. Here’s your reminder.:)
Ah, I totally agree with you Tamara, if you changed URLs. But, I don’t believe Jill changed URLs — I think just the platform.
Here are traffic changes, as tracked by semrush.com, for http://www.jillosborne.org
(shows that the URL was in existence for a long time).
http://screencast.com/t/79yDn9yjBt
Here’s the ranking loss that presumably drove that traffic loss: http://screencast.com/t/mZoMICrfrQ9
Both ranking and traffic began taking a huge hit in June, even before Jill switched, if I’ve got the timing right. Is that right, Jill? You really moved this site in the fall?
That’s why I guess that it was a Google algorithm change and duplicate content penalties hurt more than anything else.
Hope that clarifies!
Becky
Ohhhh, that’s so cool that you can see and tell all of that! Thanks so much for sharing! (Hope Jill chimes back in to confirm the timing of that change!)
Forgot to comment on the 60-90 question. Indexing now is much faster than that. You should be “found” within days now, but rankings will settle out over a longer period.
B.
Sweet! Within days!? This tech stuff is just getting faster and faster! That’s the good news . . . and the bad news, isn’t it, for those in private practice. It’s so important to get those websites up and running and create a plan for your marketing. Flying by the seat of your pants just really isn’t a viable option in our field – not if you’re in private practice!
Hi Jill,
I personally don’t have experience transferring blogger sites to WordPress. I can only see that there are problems on your site, now. And, the transfer process doesn’t really matter. What matters is fixing what’s wrong, now.
Here is a good post about categories and tags: http://weblogbetter.com/2012/06/27/tags-and-categories-how-many-should-i-use-in-a-blog-and-why/
That should help you streamline that so that you don’t have a duplicate content problem.
Another issue you have is that the image of you in your sidebar is 2.8mb — a bit excessive for a 300px x 200px photo. It’s slowing down the load time for your site. Slow site load time directly affects your ability to be ranked by Google. (Also, this large image may be indicative of other image size problems.)
Here is what I’d do if I were you. Make that image size smaller (not the size on the page but the file size). If you need help, I can have my graphics person do it for a small fee.
And, condense your categories and tags.
Then, if you want me to spend more time digging into things to get your rankings back, contact me at CounselingWise.com
Sound good?
Becky
Yikes, I’ve had a blog for almost a year now and have not set up Google Analytics (I’ve been relying on the Site Stats that come with WordPress). I’m going to put this on my to do list today! I confess that this end of the blog world does not come naturally to me, so I’m grateful for informative posts like this….
Mary, I know exactly what you mean! But, you are going to be AMAZED at the info you can glean from Google Analytics. I hope you’ll drop back in and let us know how it goes!