Universal Analytics (UA) is out and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is forced upon us. Do you know how to navigate the new reports and understand the new terms? This article will help you understand some of the basics to know your web traffic to your author website. It also covers other updates to the Author Platform Tracker, including Amazon Followers. Or go straight to the GA4 Crash Course with Kelly Holmes of Sticky Blogging.
Tools Specific to this Article:
An Introduction to GA4
Last updated: 5 July, 2023
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As of July 1st, we’ve all been made to switch over to Google Analytics 4 – GA4. Some were prepared, most of us weren’t. Most of us kept putting off learning this new, convoluted and not at all intuitive system until we had no choice. Functionality is limited. Information is scarce. Updates are constant. It’s a confusing web.
So what does that mean for people who want to keep an eye on their website’s health and SEO? Specifically, what does that mean for your author platform? A couple years ago I made the Author Platform Tracker, and it included tracking the analytics of your website through Google. I am here to walk you through the new changes and what it means for your tracker and your writer website.
Setting Up Your GA4 Views/Reports
For finding the metrics recorded in both the Basic and Detailed versions of the Author Platform Tracker.
Note: Chances are that if you set all this up before 1 July, you will have to do it again.
You will first need to set up your reports. The only one you will need for your Author Platform Tracker is the ‘Life Style’ report. It should be active by default. If it is not, take the following steps:
1: Go to ‘Library.’ You will see it at the bottom of the left-hand frame.
2. Scroll to the ‘Collections’ portion of the screen. There will be a card marked ‘Life cycle.’
3. Click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner and select ‘Publish.’
Within a few minutes, the Life Cycle report will appear in the left-hand frame.
To see your general report, go to ‘Reports Snapshot,’ at the very top of your left-hand frame. You will still be able to set the date range in the upper right-hand corner as you could in the old Google Analytics. This is also where you will find the ‘users’ and ‘new users’ metric.
To see your ‘session,’ you need to go to Life Acquisition > Traffic Sources. You’ll notice the ‘page views’ line is gone completely from your author platform tracker. If you wish to see this information, you can go to Life Cycle > Engagement > Events.
For the Content Planner on the ‘Web’ Tab of Your Author Platform Tracker
The metrics collected for your pages and blogs posts have also changed. One thing they’ve removed is the ‘entrances’ metric: the number of people for whom that page or post is the landing page. This information is still available on the separate ‘Landing Pages’ report, but I have removed it from the tracker for simplicity’s sake.
To view the new metrics for individual pages and blog posts, simply go to:
Live Cycle > Engagement > Pages and Screens.
And remember: the ‘data date range’ column on your tracker is your customized date range for how long you want to view metrics for that individual page or post.
GA4 Metrics Specific to the Detailed Author Platform Tracker
In diving deeper, you’ll notice there is some new terminology. This doesn’t affect users of the Basic Author Platform Tracker as they have, as the name suggests, a basic tracking system.
Changes to the items we track:
- Average Engagement Time = Session Duration
This tracks how long your website is focused in someone’s browser. - Engagement Rate ≠ Bounce Rate
Engagement rate is not only the opposite of the bounce rate, but is also more accurate. Google used to show you how many people clicked out of your site without exploring more pages. Now they show you how many people are engaged: those who spend longer than 10 seconds or view 2 or more pages on your site.
You can find these metrics in Life Cycle > Engagement > Overview.
For the Traffic Sources section of your tracker:
- Go to Life Cycle > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition
- You can either mouse over the bar chart on the right hand side to show the numbers for each source, or scroll down. The table view usually set to ‘session default channel group.’ This will also tell you how many people reached you via Direct, Organic Search, Referral, etc.
For the Social Referral Sources section of your tracker:
- Under Life Cycle > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition, scroll down to the table view.
- Under the headers, you will see an area to select session sources (there will be a little blue plus sign next to it). Click the drop down arrow, not the blue plus sign.
- Select ‘Source’ or ‘Source/Medium.’ That will show you all your referrals for your set time frame, from social to other websites.
GA4 Crash Course
I have only covered some of the basic of GA4, and not very well. There’s a lot more to understand about why the changes were made, what they mean, and how to do things like custom reporting.
For a much better run-down of how to use the new GA4 system, I recommend Kelly Holmes’ GA4 Crash Course. In her short workshop she goes over:
- Changes from UA to GA4
- How to set up your reports and what they mean
- What metrics are most important to understand your site health and SEO
- How to customize your GA4 reports so you don’t have to go hunting through a million different screens every month.
I also highly recommend her Sticky SEO course while you’re at it. Kelly is a brilliant teacher and she’ll demystify how to get readers to your writer website.
Additional Updates to the Author Platform Tracker
It’s not just Google that’s up to tricks. Amazon and Pinterest have added exciting new metrics too.
New Tracked Metric: Amazon Followers
Amazon recently added a feature to their Author Central reports that shows how many followers an author has. Finally!
This metric has been added to your Author Social Media Tracker. There is no dedicated Amazon tab (there is nothing else to track with them easily), so find your growth numbers on the ‘Web’ tab. There is also a new graph on the ‘Growth Charts’ tab.
New Pinterest Analytics Metrics Tracked
The final update to the Detailed Author Platform Tracker is Pinterest. The UI on Pinterest Analytics has changed a lot since I built the tracker, but the information is generally the same.
Scroll down to the Activity Summary and you’ll see two familiar metrics:
- Impressions
- Engagements
There are now two additional metrics, with corresponding rows in your tracker:
- Total Audience
- Engaged Audience
For the rest scroll to the charts just beneath the activity summary and click the dropdown menu to get your numbers on:
- Pin Clicks (people who have enlarged your pin on their screens)
- Outbound Clicks (people who have clicked through to the link)
- Saves (just as it sounds).
And, as before, you will find your followers and your monthly views at the top of the analytics page or on your profile.
