Google Analytics custom reports are one of many essential tools in an any online marketers toolbox. The wealth of insights they provide allows you to assess and refine your online marketing activities and measure the results thereof. By analysing your sites search data in Google Analytics you can sometimes get clues and see patterns emerging from your website visitors search queries and their browsing behaviour.
Google Analytics Custom Reports have helped me save lots of time when it comes to needing very specific data analysis. Custom Google Analytics reports – along with the new dashboards – must be one of my favourite features of Google Analytics 5.
How To Get Google Analytics Custom Reports
Below you will find 13 custom Google Analytics reports that I’ve been using the last couple of months which I know will be useful to any online marketer or webmaster. Hopefully you’ll find them useful…
To get the custom reports listed below click on the “Get the ……. Report” link below each of the reports while you’re signed in to your Google profile.
If you have more than one Google Analytics profile, select the profile you want to make the custom report available to and then click on “Create Custom Report”.
In order to access the custom report, click on the “Custom Reporting” link in Google Analytics.
Keyword Performance Analysis
I find this Google Analytics custom report by Avinash Kaushik extremely useful and it comes in really handy when I need to report on keywords that are driving quality traffic and visitors to our websites.
You can also drill down the list of sources to provide more valuable data, like which keywords on which search engine (or other site) are driving quality traffic and leading to the highest conversions.
Get the Keyword Performance Analysis Custom Report
Content Efficiency Analysis
Which of your pages are generating traffic and what type of content are you displaying on those pages? This Google Analytics Content Efficiency report can give you insights about the content your visitors react to. This report is especially useful if you run multiple landing pages and want to know which of them are most effective in converting your visitors.
Get the Content Efficiency Analysis Custom Report
Search Traffic (excluding “not set” & “not provided”)
The impact of Google’s “not set” & “not provided” search results in Google Analytics has made it increasingly more difficult to identify which search audience and keyword traffic is most relevant and converts best on your site. The greatest loss in not having this data is that it can be a challenge to grow and develop your content to be more relevant and useful for your site visitors.
As a total percentage, “not set” and “not provided” can account for 20%+ of your search traffic and so this custom Google Analytics report can provide you with valuable data on search traffic you can identify and build upon.
Get the Search Traffic (excluding “not set” & “not provided”) Analysis Custom Report
PPC Keyword Analysis
Which of your PPC keywords are driving the most visits to your sites? The custom Google Analytics PPC keyword report provides this keyword data so that you can ensure your ad spend goes towards relevant search phrases likely to generate conversions.
Get the PPC Keyword Analysis Custom Report
Indexed Landing Pages That Generate Traffic
This custom Google Analytics report provides you with meaningful insights around which of your indexed landing pages are generating the most traffic. You can view your indexed landing pages by source (e.g. CPC, organic, direct, etc).
I find this custom report particularly useful for analysing organic search results and then tweaking and optimising the content to ensure we get high conversion rates.
Get the Indexed Landing Pages Generating Traffic Custom Report
Link Analysis Report
How well are your link building initiatives working for you? Your link building analysis shouldn’t be about building links but rather about increasing quality traffic and getting better qualified conversions from those visits. This custom report lets you analyse your links by landing page and provides useful data on what is and isn’t working.
Get the Link Analysis Custom Report
Analyse Inbound Links To Pages Not Found (404 Pages)
Not only is it important from a SEO point of view to manage your 404 pages, but even more so to keep an eye on inbound links to those missing pages. This custom Google Analytics report displays which of your sites missing pages have incoming links so that you can ensure you maximise your search traffic and minimise your bounce rate.
Get the Inbound Links To 404 Pages Custom Report
Content Linking Analysis Report
Do you know what websites are linking to your content? If not, this handy Google Analytics custom report will let you know what sites are linking to your site content.
You can drill down the data and get very vaulable insights into which of your sites web pages are being linked to so that you can analyse and monitor those inbound links and any conversions that may arise as a result.
Get the Content Linking Analysis Custom Report
Social Media Analysis Report
The custom social media analysis report is pretty self explanatory… It allows you to analyse which social media networks are driving traffic to your site, which lead to better conversions and which pages visitors from social networks are visiting.
Get the Social Media Analysis Custom Report
Social Media Visitor Loyalty Report
Which of your social media visitors are most loyal and regularly visit the content that you post on social media networks? This custom social media visitor loyalty report provides you with those insights.
Get the Social Media Visitor Loyalty Custom Report
Social Interaction By Day Of Week Report
A lot has been written about which days of the week are best for generating social media traffic. While I suggest you ignore what you read on other sites, your best indicator of which days of the week work best for you would be to use this custom Google Analytics report to provide you with a breakdown of that data generated by your website.
Get the Social Interaction By Day Of Week Custom Report
Site Speed By Landing Page From Organic Search Report
Google have confirmed that site speed is one of hundreds of signals in their search ranking algorithms that they look for when rating a website. This handy custom report gives you a breakdown of how quickly your organic search landing pages load for your visitors. If you run your site on WordPress and are interested in speeding it up, read this post and this one.
Get the Site Speed By Landing Page From Organic Search Report
Browser Report
Analysing what browsers your visitors are using when viewing your site is always a very good idea. Testing your website in different browsers will ensure that it is viewable by all visitors to your site and that your site will display and perform for any audience.
One thing I’ve noticed with browser reports is that browsers differ greatly depending on the type of site it is, e.g. a more technical website or blog will generally have higher visits from Chrome and Firefox whereas SMEs and e-commerce stores generally have higher visits by Internet Explorer users.
Time to start analysing…
These 13 Google Analytics custom reports will allow you to better analyse your site traffic and site visitors so that you can provide a better user experience, more valid content and higher conversions.
If you know of any other time-saving and useful Google Analytics custom reports, let me know about them in the comment section below. Happy analysing!
Pedro Da Silva
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One Response to Google Analytics Custom Reports For Online Marketers
Paul Corcoran 2 January 2013
These are really useful shares. The last one – browser reports – doesn’t seem to have a link. Could you put one in please? :-)