Google analytics has long been in the game, from small-time bloggers like me to marketing managers, we all use it. Google is also one of the most popular advertisement platforms and every other newly launched start up I talk to, has their marketing strategy somehow lurking around being prominent on Google search results either via Adwords or just optimizing the content and getting organic traffic.
However, optimizing your content for Google and striving for higher search rankings is not a one-off thing, it needs constant feed of fresh content and analyzing your incoming traffic so you can continue to optimize your content based on the traffic source and keywords used.
But continuous optimization is just one part of the multi-faceted answer to the question of staying relevant in the competitive landscape, other part is understanding your traffic’s behavior so you can start questioning some of your false assumptions. For example; If you are a newly launched startup and following lean methodology you can use your search keywords to get an insight into what features in your product are looked up the most. Having a good idea of your search keywords can also help you in validating your hypothesis, improving your MVP (only prioritizing on the features that are relevant to the most searched keywords) and measuring, learning and building or re-building some features based on your traffic behavior.
But here is the question: Is all this shiny data on Search Keywords that we are talking about readily available at Google analytics platform? sadly, the answer is NO. Almost 80% of the data that can tell you what’s driving your traffic get anonymized by Google. What’s provided is bits and chunks that is not enough to drive insights on how you should position your marketing message or drive product development