You can’t understand Google Analytics? Relax, sometimes, I can’t understand it too. But Google Analytics is important and free tools from Google that ‘speak’ about your website, directly to you, so you have to understand it.
What does acquisition mean in Google Analytics? What is the acquisition?
Acquisition report is one of report on Google Analytics that I often see while working on SEO campaign or paid campaign. It tells you the source of you visitor, their behavior, their conversion, even you can see the performance of your social media and your campaign. Overall acquisition report is telling you about your visitor source, and you can measure your campaign performance both SEO and Paid here.
Then how to read Google Analytics acquisition report? If you already watch my youtube below, you will have a little known about this acquisition report and how important this report.
Let’s see the data and learn how to read Google Analytics 2020!
If you see graph acquisition report above in the first paragraph, you will be like: hey, this is a good graph of… ummm… something on my site? If you are new on reading Google Analytics acquisition report, you will get dizzy as soon as you see the graph. Well at least, that’s what I feel many years ago.
I prefer this All Traffic -> Channels under Acquisition tab, to see the source of the visitor. This tab will tells you about the source and medium of your visitor. This table below will tell you the basic of how to read Google Analytics acquisition channels report.
| Default Channel Grouping | Meaning: Users come to your website from.. |
|---|---|
| Direct | Typing your URL on browser or bookmark your website |
| Organic | Searching on Google |
| Referral | Another website |
| Display | Another website’s display banner |
| Social | Social media |
| Email or email marketing | |
| Paid Search | Google Search ads (SEM) |
| (Other) | paid campaign or paid media |
Too many columns! How can I read Google Analytics acquisition report like this?
In the video of How to read Google Analytics 2020, Sessions (your visitors’ interaction with your website within a given time) is the metric I always use to measure the performance. If you see organic channel has the highest sessions among all channels, the number of users and new users is the highest too.
Then you can see the bounce rate, is it higher than 90%? What is bounce rate anyway? You can search the meaning of bounce rate, but for me, bounce rate is when your visitors do nothing on your site in 1 session, or just closing your site just when they see it. High bounce rate means your content or website is not answering visitors question/need. No worry, you can make your bounce rate 0% or close to this, haha… just search it and implement the script.
In Behavior column group, you can see if your content of your site attractive enough to your visitors or not in average session duration. If your content make your visitors read it and stay on your website, session duration is high. High number of pages per session meaning that your pages on your website can make your users stay on your website in 1 session. You have to create a relevant content to your users. See your users report on Audience tab.
And the last is Conversions column, this is about your goals, revenue or transaction report on each channel. You can check what channel drive the highest revenue or goals. You can set your goals on analytics and search how to set up goals. Still don’t get it how to read Google Analytics? It’s okay, you are not alone, me too.
How to read Google Analytics acquisition organic channel report?
This is become more specific on organic channel. Click organic search, and you can see keywords report. This is list of keywords that users type on Google search before come to your website. I prefer to see the Search Console tab -> Queries to see the keywords performance, because there is no (not provided) keyword on the list. This is the tips of how to read Google Analytics acquisition organic channel report you should know.
Then let’s jump to landing page. This is the list of landing page from your visitors that search your website on Google. You can see and filter the URLs, from advanced filter, to check exact subfolder of the URL.
Another tips on How to read Google Analytics acquisition report
Check your Search Console tab to check a little bit report of your Search Console. Especially, Queries. I usually see this when creating keywords organic channel reports, adding with click, impression and position.
Check your Campaigns tab, to track your campaign performance (paid/non paid). Set your landing page, using free tool URL Builder from Google, so Google Analytics can read the source, medium and campaign name and measure the performance.
I hope until this paragraph, you already understand How to read Google Analytics acquisition report. You can understand a little bit of each tab on acquisition. This report is important to your SEO and Paid campaign to track the performance and you can get many insights from acquisition tab only.
Lisda Ikhwantini Digital Marketing Consultation 
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