Creating an online presence that accurately reflects your values and represents your brand as you desire is a complex process. At The Reputation Management Company, we use a wide variety of tools and resources to accomplish the goals you have for your brand. One of these tools is Google Analytics. 

If you’re familiar with this resource, you may only know it as another website tracker for gauging the success of your search engine optimization. However, this tool’s insights can tell us more about your online reputation than you imagine. 

Through the analytics provided by Google, The Reputation Management Company can determine what the best courses of action are for your reputation campaign and measure our team’s success in reaching your goal. Learn more about how our team uses Google Analytics to improve your reputation. 

The Basics of Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool provided by Google for collecting and analyzing website performance data. It’s typically used for SEO and digital marketing to identify weaknesses and measure KPIs of any given campaign. 

The primary goal of the tool is to gather data about website visitors and their behavior, which means that you may be able to track everything from where a user came from to how much time they spent on a landing page and the rate of conversions. 

Based on the data collected, website owners are then free to improve the published content and optimize websites to increase the likelihood of conversions. 

The Metrics

Google Analytics tracks hundreds of data points from how many visitors your website gets to how long they stay there and who a user is. This can be useful to you as a business owner and can even provide key insights that you would otherwise miss into how your brand is perceived online. 

However, there are a few data points that The Reputation Management Company looks at to track your presence online. These data points inform our efforts in giving your brand the desired reputation so that our initiatives are information-driven rather than shots in the dark. 

Here are just a few key points that we look at as your online reputation managers:

Traffic Sources

According to reports, organic traffic accounts for 53% of site traffic. This means that if someone arrives at your page, the chances are that they got there through organic means: was taken to your site through another site’s link or searched keywords that then recommended your site on the search results page. 

Because of this, you want to know what brought them to your page (what keywords, site, content, etc.), and Google Analytics can tell you. 

Keywords

What keywords are people using to find you? With Google Analytics, you can review the keywords your users search and see what they reveal about your online reputation. Are they positive, negative, or neutral? 

Tracking

The goal of your website is not only awareness but converting leads. You want a user to sign up for your newsletter or buy your product. Something needs to change if you have a high bounce rate of over 60%. 

This may be that your branding isn’t consistent, leading people to believe they’re clicking on something different than they are, or the content on your website isn’t doing its job to represent your brand positively. The Reputation Management Company will track your bounce rate and conversions to help you improve your online branding. 

Social Media Campaigns

Social media is an essential part of improving your online reputation. Google Analytics can tell you what site visitors are coming from social media posts and reveal who is talking about you and whether your social media campaigns are successful. If you’re seeing low success or finding that users come from harmful social media posts, The Reputation Management Company can help. 

How It Works

There’s a lot of data available from Google Analytics, but where does it all come from?

When you visit a website, you may notice a banner request. This asks if you “accept cookies.” Of course, this isn’t asking whether you’d like a tasty treat; it’s asking if it can use your data to inform a website’s analytics. 

The cookies act as a bug to gather information. What brought you to a site, how long do you spend scrolling a page, and do you eventually purchase the website’s offered product or click away. Google Analytics gathers these cookies and creates reports that website owners can review. 

For those familiar with cookies, this does reveal a limitation of Google Analytics: it can’t gather anyone’s data who declines to share cookies. Because of this, Google Analytics shouldn’t be understood as a complete and detailed report of everyone who visits your site. Instead, it creates a general idea based on whoever is willing to share data. 

The Importance of Monitoring

How will you know you’ve traveled a mile unless you know where you started? The same question can be applied to improving your online reputation: how will you know you’ve improved your brand’s perception if you’re unaware of what’s out there?

Google Analytics offers crucial monitoring tools. For example, you may see a spike in organic traffic that implies something has recently been posted. If you see a high bounce rate, you may not be branding yourself effectively in ads or on your website to show customers what you’re all about, as a high bounce rate implies customers aren’t seeing what they need to see to be converted. 

Without data, you’re wandering blind. But ranking content that’s friendly to your brand and converting the customers you attract requires careful strategy. 

If you’re not sure what to look for in monitoring your online reputation with Google Analytics, let a manager from The Reputation Management Company guide you through the process. 

Knowing What Content to Target

It can be challenging to know where to begin with identifying harmful content that hurts your brand. But identifying the harmful content and turning public sentiment is crucial in online reputation management. 

For example, only posting positive things won’t be enough to bury negative pieces. The online world and search results specifically are powered by keywords. If your positive content doesn’t target the search results pages that the negative ones are ranking for, you won’t be able to kill bad press effectively. 

Learn more about how Google Analytics helps you target the content that’s setting back your branding campaign. 

Keywords

Google Alerts is a popular tool for identifying harmful content in the online space. A popular service provided by our team is negative content removal. However, Google Alerts doesn’t always reveal general sentiments online. There may not be new negative content, but something could still be amiss. 

This is where keyword search insights provided by Google Analytics come in. This tool shows how traffic arrived at your site. This works with sites (so if someone is directed from a negative piece of content and then leaves your site, you’ll know) and reveals what keyword search brought a user to your page. 

If positive keywords bring them, e.g., “your brand favorites,” that’s a great sign! But there may also be negative keywords like “your brand controversy.” If people are inspired to search these negative keywords, you need to be sure you’re counteracting this sentiment with positive content or further burying old, negative pieces. 

Timing

Timing is everything. The longer a negative piece of content sits online, the more attention it garners and directs people away from the positive content on your brand. If many users are brought to your page through negative keywords, the time to act is now. 

As soon as you notice any negative trends, you can send out email newsletters, renew a removal campaign, or post positive content to bury negative sentiment. The sooner you act, the more effective your efforts are likely to be in your overall online brand campaign. 

Tells More about Your Audience

Imagine that someone sees your business for the first time online today. What branding will be awaiting them, and what will be their first impression? Will it be the type of brand that they want to see? 

Using website insights, you can learn more about who sees your pages. By understanding where they’re coming from, you can make informed decisions about who your audience is currently. For example, if they’re all coming from Instagram ads, they may skew younger. 

The better you understand your current audience, the better you can adapt your marketing strategy or adjust to reach your target audience. If you’re not reaching the people you want to reach, your online reputation management may not be focusing on the right venues where your target audience would interact. 

Knowing your audience is always important. When you partner with The Reputation Management Company, we can help you understand the data’s insights and help you decide what to do with this information, and create actionable steps. 

Start Managing Your Online Reputation Today

If you’re not using real data to inform you of your online branding and reputation, you’re not going to get the results you’re looking for. At The Reputation Management Company, we guide our expertise with trusted SEO tools, including Google Analytics. 

Contact our team if your online reputation isn’t where you want it to be, or your brand isn’t communicating as it should. We’ll get your brand where you want it to be with Google Analytics and our team of knowledgeable reputation managers.