I have around 75 sites running Google Analytics, I can grant full access to you so you can see your statistics. There is also a video tutorial I have created which gives a very brief overview on interpreting the information. The video can be found on this page: Video Tutorials
Interpreting the data
There is a great deal you can do with Google Analytics, and there are some specialists that make a living out of using it, and interpreting it. I would encourage everyone to take a peek at it. It will show you how many hits your site receives per month, and what people are looking at. I would not however take it as gospel. It does need some interpretation, and at best it gives you an indication of how many visitors you had expressed as a range, rather than an absolute value. For example some visitors arrived by accident. They tend to leave from the page they arrived on. These are recorded as “bounces”. What is not clear though is how long they spent on the page, and whether they got what they were looking for.
Doing your bit
There are some organisations I have worked with that have not followed up and checked their sites rankings in Google. There are things that I can do to improve your ranking through the development of the website, and there are things that you can do. Without both of us working together on this, you cannot benefit from being at the top of an organic search. It is important to point out here that the goal is to be at the top of a google search without paying anything to influence your ranking. You have all probably seen an email from an organisation saying we can put you on page one of google. Well, yes, and that comes at a price, and is possibly a bit of a con. One entity that I researched wanted £150 per month to manage this for you. (See this post).
If you have a low number of visitors it is probably because you have not done your own legwork. Here is what you need to do:
Make sure you benefit from Backlinks
Open a browser with Google as the search engine (We choose Google because they are the market leader). Search for your entity. So for example if you were homestartaylesbury.org.uk then you might enter “Home-Start Aylesbury”.
This will return a list of results.
In this case, right at the top is Home-Start UK which is a sponsored advert that they have put there.
Immediately below is a set of entries for Home-Start Aylesbury. This is what you should get.
My results were different
If you do not get a result like this then check who else is listed and why. If you are a new site where no site existed before, it may take some time to get to this position. It is also worth checking who else may be referring to you.
Go through the first 15 entries and verify that where an entry listed by Google is referring to your organisation, check that the entry contains a backlink back to your website. Also check it contains your address, telephone number and email address.
What if they don’t?
Contact them and request that they amend their entry to include you with current information. NEVER PAY FOR THIS SERVICE. If it is not free, move on to the next one. You don’t want to spend a penny on this activity. It is possible to get yourself on page one without spending any money doing so.
What you are doing here is adding backlinks back to your site. This increases the number of sites that point to your site. This will influence future searches.
Generally you can get there with say 10 to 15 of the highest scoring listings and making sure they point to your current site and are accurate and up to date.
You can take a horse to water…..
One of the most troubling things here, is that despite tutorials and guidance on this, there are still some sites that are not even listed with their parent organisation. That has to be the simplest thing to do. So if you are part of a network of charities, then make sure the parent is listing you. It would be crazy not to take this elementary step. it would yield the biggest benefit to you, and more people will be able to locate you as a result.
Form a Network of mutual connections.
I developed around 50% of the Home-Start sites in Hampshire, and many of the sites in Lincolnshire as well. In both cases I have added additional entries in the Useful Links page that point to the organisations in the area.
The logic here, is that someone in Hampshire (or Lincolnshire) may be looking for a Home-Start organisation, but cannot locate the nearest one. By listing all of them on each site, then if the one they land on is not the local one, they can still find the nearest one. If everyone did this, you would be automatically creating backlinks to each other and providing mutual support. In this way you would be helping each other. This is an example where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
Conclusion
Check your statistics, and check your listing in Google. Make sure you have followed up and all of those listings that refer to you carry your up to date information. If there is a parent or UK wide organisation in your group. Make sure their details are up to date.
It is also worth checking to see if local government could or should be carrying an entry for you, as these are high value websites as far as improved rankings are concerned.
Need some help here? Let me know.