How To Setup Goals In Google Analytics

If you are optimizing your web site for a range of keywords for getting more sales results for your products  then this article is a must read for you.

Only getting good ranks for a number of keywords doesn’t imply getting as much conversions as you expect. You must have to analyze which keywords are actually paying you higher and are pushing more visitors to your site.

Well it is not much hard to get this data. The reply to this question lies in your Google Analytics account. What you have to do is to follow some simple steps and you will be able to get answer to all your Search queries very easily.

If you are aware of Goal setting feature of analytics then it’s extremely easy and if you are not aware of Goal Set till now, don’t get bothered I’m going to explain it in full details here.

Setting Up Goal

After clicking on +Goal Under Goals (Set 1) you will be getting following options:
1. Goal Name – Assign an informative name to your Goal Set.

2. Goal Type – It will be having 4 Types:

• URL Destination
• Visit Duration
• Page/Visit
• Event

You can select anyone from above 4 mentioned options as per your needs and the services you provide. I am going to explain it by going for “URL Destination” and keeping in mind a site which is dealing with own Products online. So if you are going to choose this type then you will getting some more options as shown below:

Goal URL:  It should be like the URL of the webpage on your site which the visitor will be encountered after completing a successful purchase order like a thank-you page. So if any visitor have encountered this url like ( www.yoursite.com/thank-you-for -purchase.html) then it means visitors have purchased the order or have performed the required action whichever is true for your case.

Goal Value: Goal Value indicates if there is any specific value that will be resulting after the visitor has taken the needed action. Suppose your product is having price value of $50 then you can put the Goal value equal to this much but as its optional so you can leave it as well.

So once the Goal setup is completed then to see the results in form of reports, you just need to wait for some days to get the exact results.

So after some days, log in to your Analytics account. Click on “Standard Reporting” Tab and follow the following steps:

• Go to SideBar
• Click on Traffic Sources
• Go to Search
• Under Search option Click on Organic or Paid (whichever you are interested in and applying to your site)

So you will see a general report about site statistics giving you information about total visits on your site, keywords which generated the visits, Pages/ visit, New visitors percentage etc.

Now go above the graph and there you will find an option Under EXPLORER -> Goal Set 1.
Click on Goal Set 1 and you will get the full report with really important information.

Let’s explain then report in details.

1.   Firstly there is Keyword Column which is showing what keywords are being used to get to your website.

2.   Second Column – Visits, Shows you how many visitors visited your site for any particular keyword.

3.   Next is Goal Conversion Rate which specifies percentage of visitors actually completed your goal means come to your mentioned URL in URL destination field during Goal Setup by using the particular keyword.

4.   Fourth Column is Per Visit Goal Value, which indicates how worthy each visit for that particular keyword is, keeping into consideration the total number of visits and total value of goals achieved.

5.   Next columns show you the Goal conversion rate per goal independently.

You can also filter the data by sorting it out. Suppose you have sorted the data as per the Goal Conversion Rate and suppose you are getting 1 visit for a keyword which is showing 200% Goal Conversion Rate.

You might wonder how there can be 200% conversion rate while there is only 1 visit. This happened actually if you have combined other goals as well under same goal set. So if you have put 4 goals under one goal set and only 1 visitor visited you for a keyword which is showing 200% Goal conversion rate, then it means that the visitors have accomplished 2 goals under that particular goal set.
So don’t just make your decisions on basis of small data sets but look for other options as well.

Next you should try collecting data for Per Visit Goal Value for each keyword by clicking on this column and the data will be sorted automatically in reference to this column. It will show you the actual keywords which are paying you most.

So this is this is the simple procedure for having information about which keywords are helping you getting more money by completing the goals set up by you. But again I would like to advise you to take in consideration the complete data in mind like visits for a keyword, the value per visit etc to make right decision and optimizing your website especially for those money making keywords.

Please share your views below for any query. I would like to solve it personally as well if you are having confusion in any point.

Saif Ullah is an SEO & Internet Marketing expert working as a social media marketing manager. He loves to play with gadgets and Google. He has been running Saif Ullah Butt for sharing his personal adventures in Internet life. You can catch him on Facebook. Do you want some guidelines in SEO ? Get Quote Now for SEO !