News Releases from Department of Health

Do you ever wonder how many people visit your program webpages on the DOH website, how people found your page, or how long they stayed? Google Analytics provides valuable insights that can help you answer these and other questions. The benefits include:

• No registration or cost
• Automatic collection of data
• Customized reports
• Understand why visitors bounce off your webpage.
• Find out about your audience: what device they use, what language they speak and which region they come from.
• Understand which social media to focus on
• Learn which topics people view the most
• Measure goals

Here are three major areas to help shape your webpage:

1. Review your webpage data

Our Health Information Systems Office set up instructions in this intranet document which includes how to log in to Google Analytics and pointers on what to look for. There’s a wealth of information available through Google Analytics – often more than you need. Follow HISO’s instructions in the document and you will learn how to find your most visited pages.

2. Improve search engine optimization

According to Google Analytics, about three in five visitors to DOH webpages arrive via Google search. Your webpages contain valuable information for the public, so how do people know which search result to click on? When someone says, “Google it,” they rely on good search engine optimization (SEO). This is the process of proving to search engines that your webpage is an authoritative and credible source to answer a given search query. The higher a webpage ranks in search results, the better. The information on your webpage affects how easily it can be found.

The elements of webpages are constantly being read by search engines. Each search query is matched with content that is relevant, so one key to improve the SEO of a webpage is to ensure that the same word appears in the paragraphs, in the page title or in the metadata. Think of metadata as the captions for your information or the alternate text to tell you what an image is, in case the image does not appear.  

 

3. Assistance and Answers

Practice your new SEO knowledge by searching “how to use google analytics” and noting what is in bold in the search results. Click through to a few sources and you should find at least one helpful answer. If you feel you are not finding an answer online, or you are unsure about the credibility of a source, consider sending your specific question to the HISO Help Desk. If you are truly stumped with a question about your webpage, try literally submitting your question to Google. It is likely someone else in the world has already asked it and the online community has answered it. And when SEO works properly, the best answers rise to the top. Just think, what kind of questions does your audience ask?

Adapted from: 10 Good Reasons Why You Should Use Google Analytics