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Web analytics: above and beyond Google Analytics

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Does your company use Google Analytics to analyze its website traffic? Google Analytics is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, website analytics tools available today. It’s not the only such tool, however, nor the most powerful. Several web analytics tools you can use to supplement Google Analytics—and several go well beyond what Google Analytics can do.

Key takeaways

  • Web analytics track visitors to your website and their onsite behavior
  • Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool available today—and it’s free
  • You can use a variety of tools to supplement Google Analytics’ reporting, including Clicky, Hotjar, Hubspot, Mixpanel, Optimizely, Raven Tools, SE Ranking, SEMRush, Smartlook, and Statcounter

Understanding web analytics and Google Analytics

Web analytics uses various tools to track website visitors and their behavior. The goal is to use that data to improve the user experience—and encourage those users to stick around on your site for longer periods.

Google Analytics is one of the longest-lived website analytics tools available today. Google launched Google Analytics in 2005 and has steadily grown its user base since then. Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool today, used by more than half of the top 10,000 websites. 

Google Analytics is free to use. Website developers insert a short snippet of code on each page to track a variety of important metrics, including:

  • Users
  • Sessions
  • Pageviews
  • Average time on page
  • Bounce rate
  • Entrance points
  • Exit rate

 

How to go beyond Google Analytics with other web analytics

Google Analytics is good for tracking basic web metrics, such as number of visitors and bounce rate, but other tools offer more in-depth traffic analysis. When you want to know not just how many people are visiting your website but who they are, where they’re coming from, and what they’re doing while they’re there, check out these other web analytics tools. You can use these tools, presented here in alphabetical order, in conjunction with or instead of Google Analytics.

Clicky

Clicky tracks many web analytics in real time. It tracks many of the same fundamental metrics as Google Analytics but offers several additional analytic tools, including uptime monitoring, visitor and action logs, and heat mapping. It’s a privacy-focused web analytics tool and is fully GDPR compliant. 

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Clicky offers a free plan with limited functionality and more full-featured paid plans that run from $9.99 per month on up.

Hotjar

When you want a better understanding of how visitors navigate your website, consider Hotjar. This web analytics program uses various tools to track the customer journey, including conversion funnels, heat maps, and user recordings. 

Hotjar’s Basic plan is free, with paid plans running from $32 per month.

Web analytics above and beyond Google Analytics

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Hubspot

Hubspot is a justly popular all-in-one web and marketing analytics tool. It goes beyond basic web analytics to include customer relationship management (CRM), lead generation, marketing automation, and customer feedback management. Its web analytics features include:

  • Adaptive testing to optimize your website’s performance
  • Content attribution reporting to analyze the impact of your website
  • SEO recommendations

Hubspot offers a free version with limited functionality and several paid versions, starting at $25 per month. 

Mixpanel

Mixpanel augments Google Analytics with a full suite of powerful product analytics. These product analytics, designed to improve product development and convert more users, include:

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  • Account funnels
  • Data management
  • Event tracking 
  • Group analytics
  • User behavior analytics

The basic Mixpanel plan is free, with more fully-featured plans priced at $25 per month and up.

Optimizely

Optimizely is a digital experience platform that includes, in addition to other useful features, robust web analytics. The Optimizely platform includes a headless CMS, media management, project management, personalization, A/B testing, and AI-generated insights.

Optimizely offers a variety of plans for different uses, including plans for:

  • Content management
  • Content marketing
  • Ecommerce
  • Feature experimentation
  • Web experimentation 

Raven Tools

Raven Tools automates SEO and marketing reporting. You identify what you want in each report, and Raven Tools runs those reports automatically when you specify. The latest version includes deeper competitive insights and enhanced visualization.

Raven Tools offers different versions for different-sized businesses. Plans run from $39 per month to $399 per month.

SE Ranking

SE Ranking is an all-in-one SEO tool that offers many important web analytics features. Its SEO functionality includes the following:

  • Backlink checking and monitoring
  • Competitive SEO/PPC research
  • Insight website auditing
  • Keyword grouper
  • Keyword rank tracking
  • Page changes monitoring

SE Ranking plans run from $39.20 to $191.20 per month.

SEMRush

SEMRush might be the second most-used web analytics tool after Google Analytics. It’s also one of the more expensive tools—but well worth it, according to many users. 

SEMRush is a powerful tool that includes both SEO and web analytics functionality. SEM Rush tracks: 

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  • Backlink gap
  • Display advertising
  • Keyword gap
  • Organic keyword and traffic 
  • Paid keyword and traffic 
  • Position tracking
  • Social media

In addition, SEMRush’s “drag and drop” reporting makes it easy to create powerful custom reports with just a few clicks of the mouse. Pricing runs from $119.95 per month to $449.95 per month. 

Web analytics above and beyond Google Analytics

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Smartlook

Smartlook moves beyond web analytics into the world of behavior analytics. It records user sessions on your website and combines them with powerful event-based analytics to qualitatively track user behavior. You’ll learn the following:

  • Where users drop off
  • Why users drop off
  • How users use your site
  • Most crucial page elements

Smartlook works with Google Analytics and other web analytics tools. There’s a free version available, along with paid versions running from $39 per month on up.

Statcounter

Statcounter is an easier-to-use version of what Google Analytics offers. It tracks basic web analytics via an easy-to-use dashboard and simple interface. Use Statcounter to track page views, visitors, sessions, and other key traffic metrics. There’s even a live visitor feed to watch what users do on your site in real-time.

Statcounter offers two versions a free Basic plan and a Premium plan that costs $18 per month. 

Get web analytics PLUS with Optimizely 

Optimizely supplements Google Analytics with a full range of analytics for B2B and B2C e-commerce, content management and marketing, and feature and web experimentation. Our visual editor lets you easily make changes to a web page without coding. You can even launch A/B tests with the click of a button and analyze the results with our sophisticated statistics engine. It’s all about identifying the right content for your users—and then optimizing it to maximize monetization.

Contact Optimizely today to learn more about optimizing your conversion rate with A/B testing.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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