Top Website Analytics Tools To Optimize For Google’s Search Algorithm

Meeting Google’s standards to optimize your website’s rankability is like trying to hit a moving target. Google’s search algorithm is continually updated to improve user search experience, making it challenging to maintain a strong online presence over time. Creating a successful digital marketing strategy that adapts to these algorithm updates requires frequent monitoring and informed decision-making.

The digital marketing team at Blue Compass uses various website analytics tools to effectively analyze our clients’ website performance and search engine optimization (SEO). We focus on key website metrics that play a significant role in Google’s search algorithm to address ever-changing ranking factors. Discover our favorite tools and how they can help your website outrank competitors in search results and keep users engaged on your website.

What Are Web Analytics?

Website analytics refers to the collection and measurement of data to help digital marketers understand how a site is performing on search engines and user behavior. They empower businesses with insights into website usage, SEO health, search rankings and more.

Website analytics are necessary to effectively understand what on your website is working well and identify any potential pain points to optimize it for search. Many website analytics tools include default and custom reports so you can monitor your website over time and refine your digital strategy. Let’s dive into some of the top tools Google offers including our digital marketing experts’ every day favorites.

Our Favorite Tools To Monitor SEO Health & Website Performance

With many website analytics tools at our disposal, it is difficult to choose the right ones. Our experts have years of experience bringing customized digital marketing strategies to life to help our clients continually grow and reach their goals. We’ve tested various tools with differentiating features and capabilities and put together a list of our favorite ones.

We use these tools each day to understand website performance and user behavior, and build insightful reports that influence effective decision-making and optimizations.

Here’s our guide to the website analytics tools we use, including tips to help elevate your website and connect your business with your target audience.

Google Search Console For SEO Analysis

Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google that monitors and analyzes your website's traffic and performance in organic search. As we know, organic search performance ties directly to how good your website's SEO is, making Google Search Console a valuable tool for gaining an SEO analysis of your website over time. Search Console measures factors like keyword performance, how well your pages perform, how often Google bots crawl your website, what pages are indexable, which aren't and much more. Plus, it alerts you if something goes wrong with your site, like technical issues or security problems.

Google Search Console is also a great place to get a snapshot of your website's core web vitals (CWV), a group of metrics Google uses to measure a website's user experience. It considers factors like perceived page load speed, responsiveness and how well it supports visual elements.

At Blue Compass, we've made it a best practice to get into Search Console on a regular basis to stay informed about our clients' SEO health and overall website performance in organic search. We recommend making this valuable website analytics tool a part of your SEO strategy if you haven't already.

Google Analytics 4 For Website Analytics

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's latest version of its analytics platform. It uses event-based tracking to provide a detailed overview of how users interact with your website. This information helps you make smart decisions about what to change or improve. It's like knowing which products are selling well so you can stock more of them.

In addition to GA4's insightful analytics, the platform offers improved reporting capabilities so marketers and website owners can more easily monitor user activity. The platform has several secondary features that allow its users to track key events, group visitors into relevant audiences and create custom reports. GA4 has a lot to offer and can be an overwhelming tool to use in the beginning. Our experts cover key website metrics to track in GA4 to help you get started.

Website Metrics To Track In GA4

GA4 metrics can be grouped into three categories, or metric types: filtered, counting and calculated.

Filtered metrics are data points that result from filtering the Total User or Session counting metric based on specific criteria. They are useful for gaining a more granular understanding of data within the context of a larger report. Filtered website metrics we recommend tracking include:

• Engaged Sessions
• Users
• New Users
• Returning Users
• Unique User Scrolls
• User Activity Over Time

Counting metrics are simply quantifiable user interactions. They are best when used to provide context to a report, but they lack the depth and actionable nature of other metric types since they aren't often as specific or easy to analyze. Counting metrics we recommend tracking include:

• Conversions
• Event Count
• Sessions
• Total Users
• Views

Calculated metrics are generated by a calculation involving two or more counting or filtered metrics. They provide valuable insights about various aspects of your site like user experience, audience value, user retention and more. Calculated metrics we recommend tracking include:

• Average Engagement Time
• Average Engagement Time Per Session
• Engagement Rate
• Engaged Sessions Per User
• Events Per Session
• Event Count Per User
• User Engagement
• Views Per User
• User Retention

Google Business Profile For Local SEO Analysis

Google Business Profile (GBP) provides Google with important information about your business, helping boost your brand's credibility and local traffic to your website. They also inform users about your business's opening hours, location, phone number, star rating, etc. A GBP is essential to rank high for local searches on Google, driving valuable prospects to your business.

When you create a GBP, you'll gain insights into how customers interact with your GBP listing on Google Search and Maps, including key metrics like search queries, profile views, calls and website clicks. These reports can help you understand your online presence and make informed optimizations to improve your local customer engagement.

Google PageSpeed Insights For Website Performance

Google PageSpeed Insights is a great tool to test how fast your website loads for its visitors, a key CWV metric. Page speed is vital in today's fast-paced world, where users have more resources available to them directly in search results and are less patient to wait for a slow page to load. With PageSpeed Insights, you can paste your domain or a specific URL into the tool and receive a score from 0-100 based on several performance optimization best practices.

In addition to your score, PageSpeed Insights will provide several recommended optimizations you can implement to help improve your website's user experience and SEO. To determine rankings, Google uses PageSpeed Insights to an extent, so it's important to check in periodically. Nobody wants to wait for a slow page to load, so this tool gives you tips on how to make your site faster to keep users engaged.

Rich Results Testing Tool For Schema Markup

Schema markup is a piece of code you can implement on your website to provide a blueprint of a page written in a way that is easy for search engines to read and understand. If you are already utilizing schema on your website, then having a tool like Google's Rich Results Testing Tool is essential for validating your schema and ensuring it's eligible for rich results on Google.

Rich results differ from organic search results because they appear with enhancements and often take up more real estate on Google. For example, if you write a how-to blog with schema, it might appear for a user searching for that topic in the form of a step-by-step guide users can easily follow. This format is more scannable, provides more information directly within search results, creates an optimal experience for the user and takes up much more space, driving eyes to your business.

With the Rich Results Testing Tool, you can paste any domain or URL and observe whether or not it has schema markup, any errors in the schema code and whether the page is eligible to show for rich snippets. If you aren't currently using schema markup, we recommend adding it to your SEO strategy! It plays an important role in telling Google the key takeaways from your content and your business, and it improves how your website appears in search.

Screaming Frog SEO Audits

Screaming Frog is our go-to tool for SEO audits, and it's free if your website is 500 pages or less. Essentially, Screaming Frog crawls your website the same way Google bots do, giving you a comprehensive view of your website's SEO health. The tool is customizable and easy to use, allowing you to set your parameters for your website and custom filters if you want to extract more in-depth information.

Its reports identify any existing errors that could prevent Google bots from crawling a particular page or set of pages on your site and negatively impact rankability on Google. These errors are organized into three categories: on-page SEO, technical errors and image corrections. As a best practice, we recommend running an SEO audit using Screaming Frog at least once per year, ideally twice, to ensure your website aligns with Google's search algorithm ranking factors and user experience standards.

Google Trends For Industry Insights

Google Trends is a powerful tool for SEO analysis where you can discover search trends, keywords related to your business and keyword popularity. It can help you spot trends and adjust your marketing or offers accordingly. For example, if you notice a spike in searches related to a product or service you offer, you might consider developing content around that topic.

To use Google Trends, enter a keyword you want your website to rank for in search results. The tool will return insights such as related topics users search for, associated queries, geographic location of related searches and overall user interest in the topic over time. You can filter the data in Google Trends by location, date range, category and search type (such as web, image, or news). These insights can help you optimize your content and SEO strategy further by capitalizing on current trends and aligning your content with hot topics, and influencing how you present or format information related to a particular topic or search query.

Website Analytics & SEO Analysis Support Tailored To Your Business

Our team can uncover and resolve hidden SEO issues that may be holding back your organic performance. With a dedicated group of full-time digital experts, we’re committed to helping your brand thrive online. Whether you need support for a single initiative or a comprehensive digital strategy, we offer both standalone digital services and fully integrated marketing solutions.

At Blue Compass, digital marketing has been our core focus from day one. If you don’t already utilize these web analytics tools to monitor your website performance and optimize for Google’s search algorithm, we recommend making them a part of your digital marketing strategy. Get started with a visitor behavior audit where we can help ensure you’ve optimized your platform settings to capture the most relevant insights, or sign up for a full digital discovery and receive a comprehensive overview of your online performance through a series of audits.

Confidently Take On Google’s Search Algorithm With Blue Compass

Whether you want to learn more about effectively tracking your website’s analytics or need help implementing optimizations and SEO best practices to increase your brand’s rankability and user engagement, we can help! Talk to one of our experts today by calling us at (515) 868-0010, or schedule an appointment.