Great! So, your law firm’s website is up and running and you are receiving traffic. What do you do now? How can you track your online marketing?

Well, you need to optimize your website, improve its search engine optimization and enhance its user interaction. For these three things to happen, Google Analytics is critical.

What is Google Analytics?

Before moving forward, let’s answer the question of what is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is an analytical tool that allows you to track and report website traffic.

It’s a free tool that anyone can use. To use it, you need to:

• Sign into Google Analytics with your Gmail account

• Select the Admin Tab

• Under PROPERTY, you will a Tracking Info

• From the Tracking Info, you will get the Tracking Code

• This tracking code must be applied to your site. If you do not know how to apply it, contact your web designer to do it.

Once you set up Google Analytics to track your legal website traffic, you access amazing data on your website.

The Metrics

Now that you are collecting data on the traffic visiting your legal website, Google has several metrics which you can use to grasp how visitors are interacting with your website.

Audience Overview

There 5 major elements about audience overview you should be aware of.

1. Session: A session is an interaction on your site by a single user within a specific time-frame.

2. PageViews: Page views refer to a page being loaded or reloaded for a user to see.

3. Average Session Duration: The average time that a single user spent on your site.

4. Bounce Rate: It is the percentage of users that bounce or left as soon as the page loaded.

5. New and Returning Visitors: The percentage of new visitors vs the old, returning visitors.

 

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Geography

The location metric will tell you where you are receiving your traffic from.

Users Flow

User flow showcases how users interact with your website, which pages are seen, and which pages do they drop off from.

Acquisition>Traffic

The traffic metric will give you insight into where the traffic is coming from. Google Analytics further categorizes the data into:

• Social: Traffic source from social media platforms

• Organic Search: Traffic source from search results

• Referral: Other domain websites that have your website URL included

AdWord

The AdWord metric is useful only if you are running a Google Ad Campaign. It is an effective metric to grasp how well the Ad campaign is performing.

These are just some of the major metrics you should be tracking. Combined, they tell a story of how well your legal website is performing in terms of SEO and user interaction. So, this brings us to the question of – How do you build that story?

Do you have a high bounce rate?

If your legal website has an average bounce rate of 50%, then it’s in trouble. A high bounce rate suggests that your web page is not answering the user’s query. In turn, Google will interpret this metric, assume that your website is not catering to the audience’s query and your SEO rank will be lowered.

Assessing Google Analytics metrics is key to comprehending how to reduce your bounce rate. Why do you have a high bounce rate?

• Your website is not answering the user’s query

• The content quality presented is bad

• The structure is poor

The reason can be any one of the above. Metrics gives you the data and it is upto you to interpret it.

Content quality includes:

• Well written sentence

• Good grammar

Good page structure includes:

• Have paragraphs and sufficient white space

• Section headers that allow the reader to easily follow the page

• Navigation menu

If your website does not have high quality content or good page structure, then this may be the cause of the high bounce rate.

Are you targeting the Right Keywords?

Keywords play a key role in helping users find your legal website through online searches. Target the wrong set of keywords and your website will receive the wrong audience.

For example, if your legal website was listed in the search result of ‘plumbers in Edmonton’, you can expect to have a high bounce rate and low conversions – as you do not provide that service at all.

So, for which search queries (keywords) is your legal website appearing on?

Acquisition>Traffic>Channels> Organic Search

It is within Organic Search that you will find keywords which are attracting traffic to your site. Assess the keywords. Are the keywords ones your target audience would use? Do the keywords attract the right target audience to your legal website?

If the Organic search metric shows you keywords that are not attracting your target audience, then your keyword optimization needs to be redone. Keyword optimization spreads across on-page and off-page SEO, so take a look at your on-page and off-page content and recalibrate the keywords.

What if the Keywords are Right, but Conversion is Low?

If the keywords are bringing high traffic, but the bounce rate is high and conversion is low, you need to perform your keyword research again. The problem here is that you are targeting the wrong keywords.

Good SEO optimization is about constantly trying new things. If one set of keywords does not work, you must try another.

Does a particular keyword bring you high traffic and conversion?

Through the organic metric, you can find out if a particular keyword brings your legal website high traffic. To identify high conversion keywords, look at the bounce rate, session time and conversion goals to assess if your users have been converted.

If you have identified a particular keyword that has brought you high traffic, such as ‘best legal firm in Edmonton’, then you need to leverage this keyword more. You can do this by creating a web page and adding the keyword to your home page, and even writing several blogs that include that keyword.

Reading the metrics of your legal website is a complex process. However, once you learn how to read it, you can improve your search engine optimization and enhance your AdWord campaign to gain you maximum benefit. A crucial element to keep in mind is that reading and interpreting analytical metrics is a process of elimination. For example, if keyword optimization is not the problem, then look at design, if not design, then the content, if not the content, then the user interface. As you eliminate each possible problem, you grow closer to enhancing your legal website’s search engine optimization.