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Application for Custom Reports in Google Analytics: What pages were viewed because of a keyword?

Toma    Google Analytics     Google Analytics

If you’re using Google Analytics to track how your website performs then Custom Reports is something that you should pay really close attention to. You can basically choose to see only what matters to you and most important you can also customize a single Custom Report to serve different purposes.

You can show different metrics about the same dimension depending on what each department needs. The Custom Report that I want to talk about today will show you what pages were viewed on your website because of a keyword.

So, when someone types a keyword in a search engine and that person clicks on your link, because of that search, what pages he/she saw on your website, what was the bounce rate, how many visits, how many new visits, what was the avg. time on page and so on.

The answer to all these small questions is a Custom Report. So, in case you know nothing about Custom Reports, I have an article about how to create custom reports in Google Analytics. In case you do know how to create one, log in into your Google Analytics account and hit create new custom report.

Here are the suggested metrics to place in your custom report (you can place what metrics you want): Bounce Rate, Page Views, Avg. Time on Page, Visits, New Visits, %New Visits. As dimension you’ll chose, of course, Keyword and as additional drill down dimension chose Page Title. Create the report and view it.

The first thing you’ll see is a table with a list of keywords and all the metrics you selected above. Click on one of those keywords (I like to start with those that have more Page Views) and now you’ll have a table showing you what pages from your website were viewed by a user that arrived on your website through that specific keyword.

While you are viewing this second table you have the option to display a secondary dimension. Chose Landing Page from the drop down menu and you’ll see on what page the reader entered your website.

Let me know what you think about custom reports and how you use it. Share your experience and if you find this article useful please consider subscribing to my blog.

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Related Articles :

• Google Analytics: Use Custom Reports to Better Understand Your Website
• Google Analytics Custom Reports for Happy Returning Visitors
• Understand Traffic Sources from Google Analytics
• Google Analytics: Set Analytic Alerts
• Do You Know What The User Clicked On Your Website?

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4 Comments to “Application for Custom Reports in Google Analytics: What pages were viewed because of a keyword?”

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  Beverly February 17, 2010 at 5:44 pm

  Thank you for your custom reports article. I have just began to use them. I am trying to design one that will give me better understanding of the performance of our site, so I can help our organization (not for profit) understand where we need to go with our site. What do you suggest for metrics and dimensions? The keyword word report is great and I created one of those today. Thank you so much for your articles and I look forward to getting them in my inbox, they have been a great help.

  Reply
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    Toma February 18, 2010 at 10:52 am

    Thank you Beverly for your comment. Custom reports should come as an answer to a question (you should aim for something specific) and this way it will be easier to built them.

    Reply
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  Tim March 19, 2010 at 8:57 pm

  Great article. One question that I can’t seem to get a definite answer to is…. if I just want to figure out the typical path to goal completion (path to conversion in my case), Is this the right selection of dimensions?

  Dimension 1: Landing page (want to see where people are coming into my site)
  Drilldown 1: Page (what page they visited next)
  Drilldown 2:Page (what page they visited next)
  Drilldown 3:Page (what page they visited next)
  Drilldown 4:Page (what page they visited next)

  So, if the report overview has the home page as the landing page with most goal completions and I click on that and see that the Items on Sale Page is top of the list on the subsequent report page, I can keep drilling down to see the paths that the user took? I hope that made sense.

  thanks so much!

  Reply
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    Toma March 19, 2010 at 9:44 pm

    Hi Tim,

    I’ll try to explain as short as possible:
    1. the wrong thing with in the way you constructed your report is that you can’t know how many pages a user visits before they hit you conversion page
    2. the right way is to control the process. This means to build a mecanism that will lead the viewer to your page. To view this in GA you’ll create a goal and a funnel (this is a series of pages that you want a user to visit in a certain order to convert). You have to control the experience not to let it go with the flow
    3. you can also start with the end page (the conversion page) and see from what page(s) people arrived on it and where they went after. If most of them visited another page, after your conversion page, then depending on your conversion type you can decide if they converged or not.

    I think you have to track it from as many angles as possible in order to fully understand what is happening.

    I hope this short answer helped you!

    Thanks for your comment,
    Toma

    Reply