One of the least known features of Google Analytics is also the most powerful. We have seen that we can use Google Analytics in several ways including Visitor, Content, and Traffic Source analysis. However, each business is different and more importantly, each SEO professional performs his or her work in a unique manner with a distinct workflow. For these individuals, the Custom Reporting functionality of Google Analytics is a true swiss army knife.

For example, while evaluating traffic, I prefer to start with the Keywords and then for each keyword, drill down to see which pages on my site are being visited. For another, it might be the reverse. Google Analytics allows you to design your reports using Metrics and Dimensions on a drill down grid. Dimensions include those properties of pages that you want to see, and metrics are various aspects of that property. For example, if the dimension is “Page Title”, Metrics will include how many visitors, bounce rates etc.

The features also allows you to drill down from each dimension to another. So for example, if you click on a certain Page Title, you can view the “Keywords” dimension, giving you the keywords that people used to get to the page form various search engines. You can drill down even further to other dimensions if you want.

Mining data in various ways allows you to view it from several angles getting insights both into how people use your site, as well as how to improve your content or structure. Use the custom reporting functionality in Google Analytics to be a cut above the rest of the SEO experts!

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