Search engine optimization is a topic that we get a lot of questions about at PhotoBiz. There are a lot of different tools you can use to get data about your website. The most reliable and accurate place to see how your website is performing in regards to Google search results is directly from Google.

Two data points that every business should track for their website are (1) how users interact with their website and (2) how Google’s crawler views their website.

Did you know Google offers two free services that allow you to see data on this? Google Analytics and Google Search Console are both available for free, and we integrate with both of them. All that is required to use these tools is a Google account (free or paid) and adding some code to your website. Then you’ll have access to a lot of valuable data on your website performance.

Let’s take a look at why you should set these up with your PhotoBiz website.

First, we’ll take a look at setting up Google Analytics for your PhotoBiz website. You may have noticed there is a Tracking section in your website builder. This supports Google Analytics and a number of other website analytics tools such as Facebook Pixel and verification tags such as Pinterest Verification. You can place the script provided by Google Analytics in this area.

Once you have set up your Google Analytics tracking, you’ll be able to see how many users are visiting your website, where the users are coming to your website from, where they are located, how much time they’re spending on your website, how many users are accessing your website from a computer vs. mobile device, and much more information about how users are interacting with your website. This data is very useful and identifies where your target market is located for visitors to your site and how those visitors are viewing your page, which in turn can help you optimize your pages for lead generation and user friendliness.

For example, if you see that certain pages on your site have a high bounce rate (people leave your site without interacting with it), you can add an easy to locate call to action to take people further into your website or a lead capture form to engage and connect with visitors. Both options can help bring the bounce rate down and hopefully increase the number of leads you earn from that page on your website.

The other tracking service you can set up is Google Search Console. This service is also free to set up and very easy to complete in a few steps for your PhotoBiz website. This is a great tool that allows you to submit your website directly to Google’s crawler. You simply provide the XML sitemap and RSS feed for your PhotoBiz website to ensure that Google knows exactly what pages your website has available. I promise this is easy.

Google Search Console will also allow you to get an idea about how your site is performing with Google. You can see data such as clicks to your site from organic search results, impressions your website has gotten from Google searches, and more.

Another great benefit of using Google Search Console is that you’ll get status notifications if there are any issues with your site content (e.g., indexing, redirect errors) so you can easily update or fix any potential problems. Quickly resolving these issues can help prevent the issues from hurting your website performance and rank with Google.

If you’re not using these services currently and you’re interested in setting them up, our web consultants can direct you to resources to set them up in your account. If you’d like us to set them up for you, check out our SEO Go service.