Tyler's essential Google Analytic how to's, plus more. Visit the below spreadsheet for corresponding items throughout the presentation. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FdHE8CvDc-9BIq_jagRAqlCokyyzkitmY1VSZVCVMwU/edit?usp=sharing

1. Top GA Reports
July 2017
Google Analytics: Essential How To’s
Denver SEO Meetup
Tyler Lane – Senior Digital Marketing Consultant
@tlane207

2. @tlane207
Introduction
• 7 – Years of experience
• 2 – Nieces
• 8 – Weddings
• 3 – Successful teams built
• Countless satisfied clients
• Not enough bike rides!

3. @tlane207
• Site Search
• Custom Alerts (Intelligent Events)
• Default Channel Grouping Audit
Overview

4. Site Search
How to: Configure, Analyze and Report
“I’m recording site search keyword data, now what?”

5. @tlane207
Site Search
• Overview: Site Search allows you to configure your website’s internal
search to gain powerful insights surrounding usage of the search
functionality. Metrics such as, what exact keyword phrases a user
entered, percentage of search refinements and percentage of people
who exit the site after searching are essential to monitor.
• Configuration: Reference live demonstration. Or configure them on your
own visiting this article.
• Reporting & Analyzing: Recognize what pages users used to start a
specific search on by using the “start page” dimension. If you are
noticing consistent searches from these pages then the user is either not
able to find the content or you need to create that content to provide a
better user experience.
• Problem areas: Select CMS’s will require custom configuration based on
the limitations of that CMS or depending on how robust your site search
functionality needs are.
Generally users who use site
search are highly engaged
users. Use this free keyword
data to improve current
content layouts, create new
content and/or optimize
your site’s search results to
lead to less exits after search
and longer search page
depth.

6. @tlane207
Site Search

7. Custom Alerts (Intelligent Events)
How to: Configure, Analyze and Report
“My site was down for an entire day and I had no idea…”

8. @tlane207
Custom Alerts (Intelligent Events)
Ensure naming
convention remains
consistent and intuitive. Test
a few alerts out by
configuring them then
receiving the actual alert. If
it doesn't’t make sense to
you at first glance, change
the name to make it easier
to digest to allow for quick
action!
• Overview: Custom alerts are individual alerts you can setup to allow for
daily, weekly or monthly monitoring of important aspects within your
site. From unusually high bounce rates to lower than average sessions in
a given day, custom alerts allow you to stay updated through email
and/or text notifications.
• Configuration: Reference live demonstration or configure them on your
own by visiting this article.
• Reporting & Analyzing: In addition to the automated alerts, GA also
provides a custom alert dashboard that can help to recognize unique
trends within your data. The custom alert dashboard will provide you
important data such as, metrics, segments, period of time and the date
for when the alert fired.
• Problem areas: Not shareable assets.

9. @tlane207
Custom Alerts

10. Default Channel Grouping Audit
How to: Configure, Analyze and Report
“What is the (Other) channel and where is my email data being recorded? ”

11. @tlane207
Default Channel Grouping
• Overview: Channel Groupings are predetermined ”rule-based
groupings” that GA assigns to your traffic sources. These traffic sources
allow you to define success of your specific campaigns that may be
running.
• Configuration: Reference live demonstration or configure them on your
own by visiting this article.
• Reporting & Analyzing: Ensuring your traffic sources are being properly
assigned to the correct channels is a mandatory item. Increase your data
and date sample size to understand channel specific metrics and
benchmarks against other channels. The main channel report should not
be used to determine overarching success of a specific channel as GA
reports only on last click attribution with this report.
• Problem areas: The report isn’t very valuable upon first glance, as it
needs advanced segments to be added to provide more value.
Ensure all of your campaigns
are correctly tagged by using
a UTM tagging structure.
This will allow for a more
accurate depiction of how
channels should be reported
once a user clicks, shares or
bookmarks a specific link
from any of your campaigns.

12. @tlane207
Default Channel Grouping // Audit Process
• Step 1 – Create Channel Grouping Test: Locate channel setting and custom channel grouping beta reports within a
specific property view. Create copy of existing “Default Channel Grouping”. Name as “Test –….”. Save new test
grouping for future reference.
• Step 2 – Review Current Default Channel Grouping: Take a look at channel groupings that are commonly
misrepresented within default settings. Locate select issues to help drive the next step process.
• Step 3 – Export Data From Custom Report: Access your channel report, set your primary dimension to “source” and
your secondary dimension to ”medium”. Ensure your date range is longer than 5 months, but less than 6,500 results.
Export data to custom spreadsheet. Repeat process for all campaign report data as well.
• Step 4 – Review exported data: Begin editing channel grouping and campaign data by assigning it to new groups as
necessary. Assignment associations can and will be unique depending on your business organization’s general focus.
• Step 5 – Build New Channel Grouping Beta within Test Copy: Once you’re confident with your new channel grouping,
start adding them to your Test DCG version by referencing the regex examples using “OR – Source - matches regex”
then copying your new regular expression into the form field. Click save once completed with all edits.
• Step 6 – Test New Channel Grouping: Save test, then review it within the Channels report by toggling to it within the
primary dimension dropdown. Test and then test again as select groupings may continue to have errors or incorrect
distributions. You will have to duplicate your work within the “Custom Channel Grouping Beta” to allow your new
grouping to be transferable to all conversion based reports within GA.

13. @tlane207
Default Channel Grouping // Configuration

14. @tlane207
Default Channel Grouping // Configuration Examples
Before After
Credit: Simon Poulton

15. @tlane207
Default Channel Grouping // Reporting
• Channel Reports
• Multi-Channel Funnels
• Model Comparison Tool
Report Credit: Simon Poulton
Remember to build this new
grouping in both the channel
settings as well as the
custom channel groupings
beta. This will allow you to
easily toggle through the
data from default to test.

16. @tlane207
If we have time…
• Data Sampling
• Custom Dashboards
• Property Views

17. @tlane207
Bonus Material
1. SEO Dashboard: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=zjrYfEgJTsKcheJi5UbJmw
2. Social Media Dashboard: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=LFl1ar7-T5a-bVCPrr9EYA
3. Geography Dashboard: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=LuLXnBoNTNWjwCkXbwhhEg
4. General Dashboard: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=Fn5mQ9QFRBq5YLuMI94GHw
5. Technical Dashboard: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=FxiDmV82QvWkC2YvyF3pBw
6. Mobile Dashboard: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=8l_sXnKiSjOazqkt80FOOA
Enjoy these free dashboards and google sheets. Impress your client or boss!
Make sure you are logged into the specific GA profile before clicking on the links

18. @tlane207
Helpful Resources and Industry Influencers
Annie Cushing
www.annielytics.com
Simo Ahava
www.simoahava.com
Avinash Kaushik
www.kaushik.net
analytics.googleblog.com - lunametrics.com - optimizesmart.com - analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/

19. @tlane207
Let’s keep in touch!
Services:
• Lead Generation and Retention (SEO, PPC, CRO, Display, Paid Social and Content)
• Web Analytics Configuration and Implementation
Email: tyler.lane11@gmail.com
Twitter: tlane207
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tylerlanedigital
Website and content coming soon.
Thanks again.