Google Analytics 4 offers marketers plenty of surface-level reports and insights that serve as snapshots. However, pre-built reports can only do so much for your reporting, and that’s where GA4’s Explorations come in handy.

Custom Explorations allow marketers to sift through data and generate a mix of graphs and charts to visualize valuable acquisition, user behavior and conversion data that can reshape marketing strategy with just a few clicks.

GA4 Reports vs. Explorations: What’s the Difference?

Reports and Explorations rely on the same data and offer many of the same filters, metrics and comparisons. GA4 reports are pre-built and include many of the same default reporting categories as Google Universal Analytics’ main navigation menu.

Explorations are more robust and customizable, allowing for the usage of custom metrics and dimensions that you’ve set up in GA4.

More About Reports

Pre-built does not mean useless. Many of these reports include the benchmark KPIs that measure marketing success at organizations of all sizes, including sessions, users and quality metrics like engagement rate and conversions.

Google also added filter features to Reports that are easier to access and toggle on and off, making them more valuable for marketers trying to spot trends and opportunities.

Think of reports as the cookie-cutter option; they’re all the same shape, and you can decorate them a little, but you’ve had a few, they all look and taste the same.

More About Explorations

GA4 Explorations, on the other hand, give marketers a new level of control in shaping site or app data to find hidden trends or behaviors that go deeper than most standard reports.

Why Use Explorations

Explorations allow for more customization, visualization and data manipulation. Marketers can compare dozens of variables at once with just a few clicks, including:

• Standard and custom dimensions.
• Traffic and demographic segments.
• Standard and custom events.
• Key Events (formerly Conversions).

Explorations also allow marketers to filter results by dimension and click on the charts and graphs to automatically “zoom in” on various dimensional breakdowns.

Finally, visualizations are easier to save, export, and share.

The default “Free Form” Exploration in GA4 is the most flexible tool, and Google offers several other Exploration templates for specific insights.

These additional templates are:

• Funnel exploration.
• Path exploration.
• Segment overlap.
• User explorer.
• Cohort exploration
• User lifetime

Each of these templates is worth experimentation, but put our three favorite Explorations at the top of your to-try list …

The Three GA4 Explorations Marketers Should Master

1. Google Analytics 4 Path Exploration

Path exploration in GA4 looks brilliant. This template uses a tree-and-branch graph to help marketers visualize navigation pages, providing useful insight into where users land, what actions they take and where they either convert or bounce.

It’s an incredibly valuable tool for identifying where users get stuck or how they interact on specific pages. Once you know how to use the path exploration, you can build and support page optimization strategies, improve paid landing pages and shorten conversion paths to improve marketing performance.

2. Google Analytics 4 User Explorer

If path exploration is like a bird’s-eye view of a busy highway, the User Explorer tool gives marketers eyes on a specific vehicle – and don’t worry, privacy hawks, you can’t tell who’s behind the wheel.

While path explorations show aggregated data like sessions and users, this tool allows marketers to view historical user data from specific, anonymized user IDs over the past 90 days. With time, marketers can identify user habits from certain channels or along conversion paths.

The most useful way to use User Explorer is to compare similar segments and identify opportunities to improve. For example, compare the conversion rate of weekly users (active within the past seven days) and monthly active users (active within the past 30 days) and ask yourself questions like:

• What different landing pages do weekly users land on that monthly active users don’t?
• Do converting users come back to the same page they landed on?
• What day of the week does each segment convert on, in most cases?

Taking a user-by-user approach provides a granular, personal approach to marketing; you’re putting yourself in the user’s shoes and following their lead. 

3. Google Analytics 4 Funnel Report

The GA4 funnel report is all about conversions. To keep driving on the highway metaphor, funnel reports consider the users’ destination (conversion/Key Event) and point out where all the drivers who didn’t make it turned off the highway.

There are two ways to use the funnel report:

• Pre-built funnels are built on specific conversion events, such as a purchase or form submission. This exploration shows the most common drop-off points along the conversion journey.
• Custom funnels have marketer-defined events and/or pages included in the funnel. This is useful for analyzing user behavior based on specific content categories or unique goals.

Funnel explorations help improve user experience by highlighting pages or functions that negatively impact conversion, potentially due to user experience and accessibility problems. 

Use All Your Tools

Marketers have a lot of tools built into Google Analytics. Path Explorations, User Explorer, and Funnel Explorations are underutilized, offering a reporting and strategic advantage for marketing professionals willing to dive just a bit deeper into site or application data.

It may take a little practice, but once you get the hang of GA4’s Explorations, they’ll be an integral part of your strategy and reporting for good.

The post The Three GA4 Explorations All Marketers Should Know appeared first on SiteProNews.

Shopify has grown into the world’s dominant ecommerce platform for all businesses including custom phone case companies, phone repair Red Deer shop, and iPhone repair Calgary store. Since its founding in 2006, the ecommerce site builder has poured revenue into feature improvements, a robust API and App Store, plus competitive, accessible pricing that brought nearly 5 million storefronts to the site by 2023. SEO has been a key focus of Shopify’s most recent improvements. With new tools and changes to its Liquid template language, Shopify users can make substantial SEO gains and win valuable positions on the SERP.

More than 80% of global web traffic is generated by organic search. Shopify SEO optimization is the most cost-effective way to capture qualified customers and grow your brand. Here’s how to do it.

How to Improve SEO on Shopify: The Basics

Whether you’re just starting out or a Shopify pro, you need to address the essentials of any successful SEO strategy.

1. Index Your Content

Set up Google Search Console (and Bing Webmaster)

Google Search Console is free, easy to use and easy to verify. Google holds 87-91% of global search traffic, with Microsoft’s Bing a very distant second with 2-4%. These two platforms will allow you to verify that your content is being indexed and that users can naturally find it online. Once you verify your domain with these tools, submit your XML sitemap. Submitting a sitemap is the most impactful way to ensure these search engines index your pages and consistently register new or updated content.

2. Know Your Metrics

Set Up a Google Analytics Account

Marketers can’t afford to guess; when metrics matter, you need a tool to measure every view and click. Google Analytics 4 is free, intuitive and a lynchpin of SEO reporting and decision-making. Once you create your account, you can add your Google Analytics measurement ID to Shopify and track a range of metrics and conversions, such as organic sessions and active users.

3. Get Your SEO Tools

Consider investing in paid SEO tools like Moz or Semrush, or familiarize yourself with free tools like Surfer SEO and Google Trends. For premium Shopify users, there are several SEO apps built into the platform, including Plug-in SEO Optimizer. Optimizer is Shopify’s answer to WordPress’s Yoast SEO tool, and while it’s not quite on the same level, Optimizer covers a lot of SEO basics. These tools can help you understand what queries your site is ranking for, track keyword positions and more!

For experienced marketers rolling their eyes, remember that 4.61 million online stores are using Shopify as of January 2024. Offering Shopify SEO set-ups and content packages is a market unto itself and promises immediate results for most users.

Automated SEO Features on Shopify

Despite claims that Shopify isn’t good for SEO, the platform automates some important SEO best practices that other platforms, including WordPress, don’t.

• Canonical tags – Shopify automatically generates canonical tags that mitigate the risk of duplicate content. This is especially useful for brands with large product catalogs with frequent photo and description updates.
• Sitemaps – Shopify automatically generates and updates your XML sitemap. Once you’ve submitted that sitemap to Google Search Console, Shopify takes care of the rest. We recommend auditing your sitemap every 6-12 months to ensure pages are properly indexed.
• Robots.txt – Shopify also adds pages to your robots.txt file, which prevents site crawlers from Google and Bing. This keeps administrative log-in pages and other content off the SERP.
• Title tags – While it’s best practice to write custom title tags, Shopify will cook up a unique tag for every page once it’s published because something is always better than nothing.

For premium storefronts, Shopify may offer several additional automations or plug-ins that expand on this list. Check your account or the pricing page to see what else is offered.

Three Shopify for SEO Tips to Swear By

For as much time and budget is captured by paid and social on Shopify sites, there’s still a lot to say about SEO. For Shopify, organic traffic typically generates the most sessions, usually between 60-80% depending on your paid spend. Organic sessions also have a lasting impact compared to paid, which is crucial for younger stores with limited marketing budgets.

If you do anything for your store’s SEO, do these three things.

1. Write click-grabbing title tags and meta descriptions.

We noted that Shopify will automatically generate title tags for new pages; don’t let it. Write custom titles that include relevant product or service information and keyword targets, but keep the user in mind. Search for your product without using the brand or product name and look at the SERP to see what titles the top pages with similar content use – your metadata has to stand out amongst those results. Write something that you would click yourself!

The same goes for meta descriptions, too. It’s okay to include a soft call-to-action (CTA) and a little humor; you’re already in front of the consumer; now you need to stand out!

Keep title tags under 60 characters (or 55, to be safe) and under 155 characters for meta descriptions. We love using this handy tool to check metadata length on-the-fly.

2. Write (great) blogs.

Odds are you’re going to nail your product pages with excellent descriptions, clean page titles and meta descriptions, and stunning photography and videos. However, in SEO, keywords represent the breadth of the conversion. If you’re only talking about product-specific terms, you’ll be left out of much broader discussions in which your audience is actively participating. Writing SEO-rich and industry-relevant blogs adds words to your vocabulary and positions your brand as a participant and leader in those discussions. Target a variety of keyword types like long-tail queries and questions

Conduct a content gap analysis to see what your competitors are talking about, and don’t be afraid to ask your followers on social media what they want to hear from you!

3. Be consistent.

SEO is never done. From creating fresh content, optimizing existing pages, and identifying opportunities to improve with data-driven insight, SEO deserves a dedicated slice of your daily or weekly workload. If there isn’t time in the day to do it all, tag in an outside vendor to help. It might be the best investment your brand makes!

Is Shopify Good for SEO? Yes*

*But it’s only as good as you are. Marketers who leverage Shopify’s built-in SEO tools and put in their own work will enjoy organic success after a few months, with results that last much longer. Consider working with an SEO vendor or a consultant to get started, and let the data and dollars guide your work.

The post How to Optimize SEO on Shopify – Tools, Tips & Tricks appeared first on SiteProNews.

Some of the most impactful technical SEO strategies demand development support and insight. If you’re looking for ways to fine-tune performance, these advanced SEO strategies could be key.

Three Proven Strategies to Improve SEO Results

Developers are the superheroes of many SEO projects. The work they create often bridges the technical skills gap the separates a good site or functionality from being great – and impactful.

We’ve worked with dozens of clients with websites in varying states of health, from brand new websites (with the growing pains and flush-faced acne to prove it) to achingly slow senior sites optimized for the digital world of yesterday (you can almost hear them sighing, “Back in my day…” as the page loads).

1. Start with Schema

Schema has been a core feature of the internet for over a decade but lacks the street cred it deserves. Less than a third of all search results on Google include rich text generated by schema, giving domains that do use schema effectively a tremendous advantage.

Structured data has evolved rapidly since its earliest iterations in 1997. While various rich text standards were developed, the field was unorganized and nearly impossible for sites to implement. It wasn’t until Google, Microsoft and several key players adopted a single schema type in 2011 that the web had a common schema language (so to speak). The result, schema.org, now includes more than 600 schema classes and 965 relations.

How to Leverage Schema Mark-up

Identify the appropriate schema for your site’s content and keep a careful record of both classes and relations to utilize across the various types of content published on your domain. Several free and paid plugins like Yoast can also suggest schema types. Developers can use these plugins or create their own code to implement schema on existing content and future pages automatically.

2. Show Off Your Hidden Content

Officially, hidden or tabbed content doesn’t negatively impact SEO. Unofficially, there are numerous examples of sites with hidden content having poor keyword performance, despite Google’s promises to the contrary. The likely bias against hidden content likely dates back to the days of black hat SEO tactics that included using hidden content to stash lists of keyword targets to game search results.

It’s about more than just page rank, though. Poorly constructed accordion content can’t be “spotted” by screen readers, rendering huge chunks of the page and the valuable information tucked inside it invisible to visually impaired users.

How to Fix Accordion Content for SEO and UX

There’s a nifty workaround featuring ARIA settings that help identify interactive elements of the page, including tabbed and accordion content. Implementing these changes is an easy win for developers and the sites they work on.

3. Turn the Pag(ination)

Pagination gets a bad rap. Only improperly implemented pagination hurts SEO, usually by causing duplicate content or eating up crawl budget. In most cases, a crawlable anchor link that uses href tags for internally linked pages greatly reduces any issues.

Get On the Same Page

Start assessing your domain’s pagination protocol by looking for one or more common pagination issues, including:

• Href link tags placed in the <body> content instead of the <head> section.
• Inaccurate tags, such as a rel=”previous” attribute on the root page.
• “rel=next” attributes on a page, but not a canonical tag to the root page.

Be sure to evaluate pagination across all content, not just indexed content categories. Some legacy practices may have used similar structures to update new pages as they replaced outdated information or even carried over from previous versions of the domain!

The Devil Is in the Details

Investing time and effort in advanced SEO tactics inherently relies on a strong collaborative process between SEOs and developers. Some marketers may dismiss these strategies as small ball, or “manufacturing runs” to borrow a baseball term. And it’s true – these are the types of efforts that result in the 3% session increases or 2% engagement rate improvements, not the home runs associated with a strong paid campaign or creating new blog or service pages.

However, those small percentages are key differentiators that deliver results for established domains or new brands looking to grow. Those results may be measured differently based on the strategy and the industry. Ecommerce brands may benefit more from a dedicated schema mark-up project; you’ll likely see product page position and click-through rate improve over time!

Welcome to the Big Leagues

Advanced SEO techniques like these are the sort of strategies top-performing domains lean on to stay ahead. Depending on your domain, tackling accordion content, schema and pagination may not be high on the to-do list, but never underestimate the value of a rock-solid technical foundation as you build your site. Tactics like these can make all of your existing and future content perform better!

The post Advanced SEO Strategies for Developers: Creative Solutions to Improve Performance appeared first on SiteProNews.