In your journey to become an internet business master, one of the most important things to learn is how to use web analytics. Analytics data is useful for optimizing your content, specifically in keyword ranking, landing page development, visitor retention, social engagement, and more. But in order to use analytics data, you must first understand analytics data. Each week I will add a way to use Analytics to benefit your websites; this week is keyword ranking. Here is a rundown of what metrics to use for keyword ranking and search engine optimization using Google Analytics.
Keyword Ranking Part I
Google Analytics is extremely helpful for this type of work and has not only provided traffic source data but also information specifically tailored to search engine optimization. In the traffic sources menu, you can see the number of visits that came from the organic traffic medium, which means that visitors used a search engine which displayed organic (non-ad impression) search results that included a page on your website. If you have a lot of visits using the organic search medium, it could indicate that your website's pages are ranking for some search query (usually in the top 3 pages). You can view the keywords that were being searched to identify exactly which terms you may be ranked for or should be optimizing to rank for.
Once you are ranking for some keywords, Google Analytics can also display information for the number of impressions that your site has within search results. An impression, in this situation, is simply the presence of your site's url within any search result display. For some keywords your site may be ranking multiple times (but with different pages at each ranking position) and more than one keyword can be ranked to the same page(s). Analytics also shows the number of clicks on those impressions, the average position within search rankings (numeric value), and the click through rate (CTR), which is the percentage of clicks out of all impressions. Low CTR's could indicate that you should improve the quality of the meta description of your site's pages. The meta description is the short trail of information that appears directly below the title of your listing in search results.
To sum up, these are the specific metrics that you should be looking at when performing an analysis for keyword ranking:

• Medium - the means through which visitors were sent to your site; this is not the technology used with the internet browser. Examples include organic, referral, and email.


• Keyword - what keyword phrase were searched when traffic was sent organically Queries - what search query was entered when your site appeared in search results


• Impressions - the number of times a page from your site appeared in search results


• Average Position - the average search position that a page from your site is ranking for a given keyword; this is a numeric value which is created by averaging the ranking of your site over the course of the time period you are viewing data for.


• CTR - this is the click-through-rate of your impressions; it is given as a percentage, and is calculated by this equation: (Clicks/Impressions) 100

Doing proper keyword research is vital and should be your first step to building a strong foundation for your search engine optimization or any of your online marketing because if you get this step wrong, everything else you do later on can come crashing down around you.
Proper keyword research can be broken down into seven simple steps or phases
Brainstorming Phase:
The brainstorming phase can be described as the step where you identify your perfect audience and then properly survey your perfect audience to identify the specific keywords and keyword phrases that they will be using to search for the products or services that you offer on your website.
Categorizing Phase:
During the categorizing phase, we will break down our keywords and keyword phrases into specific themes. Examples could be specific products or model numbers of products that your customers are searching for. Or perhaps the problems or concerns that your customers are looking for you to solve.
Keyword Research Phase:
Typically allot of Internet Marketers jump right into this phase of the process of keyword research by firing up some new fancy keyword research tool without having any clue who they are speaking too and what message they should be presenting to their audience, thus they fail.
And as there are allot of keyword research tools out there in the market, some free and some that have a subscription, we are often asked which tool we would recommend.
Well that depends and I’ll explain it this way.
Just as an auto mechanic has various tools in his toolbox that he can choose from to do his job properly, to be successful online you should have a toolbox complete with the proper tools to do your job right. Now I am not saying that you should go out and buy every new SEO tool that comes down the road, no!
What I am saying that as you progress in your journey and learn SEO and Keyword Research with us, we will point out the various features of the various keyword tools that we will be teaching you. If you find that a certain feature of a certain tool fits your needs, then add it to your toolbox. If it doesn’t fit your needs then simply move on.
During your SEO Training you will also discover that many of the free tools that we will be sharing with you also have the same, if not better features of some of the paid tools.
Review Phase:
In the review phase we will be compiling our lists of keywords into a spreadsheet then sorting them, categorizing them based upon the level of search, the competitiveness level and the relevancy to your website.
You’ll discover in this phase that many of the keywords that had come up in your brainstorming or through your keyword research just are not worth the time or effort in targeting because they may not have enough search volume, or that no one searching for them, or the competition for those words is through the roof and that are more profitable long tail keywords that you could target instead.
Selection Phase:
After you whittled away at your keyword list in the review phase, you will often still find yourself with a list of hundreds, if not thousands of keywords that you have to choose from, that is why many Internet Marketers say that this fifth phase is one of the hardest for them to master.
Well it really shouldn’t be once you understand a few key issues;
First off you’re probably realizing the fact that there aren’t enough hours in a day, let alone a month, to properly optimize your website for all the keywords that you have on your list.
Therefore make it easy on yourself, remember my rule of five.
5 keywords = 5 articles + five hours a week
What I mean by this is that for each keyword that you will be initially optimizing your website for you should be writing a minimum of one article a week for your website and spending at least an one hour a week obtaining onsite links and off site links to that page.
Now I understand that some keywords will be harder for you to optimize for then others, that is why I also recommend that you include a couple root keywords for your long term investment along with a few long tail keywords that you can quickly optimize for that hopefully will start paying out in the short term.
As your long tail begin paying you the dividends that you’re happy with then consider replacing these with some new long tail keyword phrases, while still working on those main root keywords as your long term commitment.
Test Phase:
This is often the most overlooked phase by even the most seasoned Internet Marketers.
Before you go out and break your back and spend hundreds of hours doing SEO for your website, wouldn’t it be nice to know that the product or service that you’re promoting will actually convert and make you money?
Through a Pay Per Click you can quickly launch a campaign using the keywords that you selected and if you making money or just breaking even, then you will know that it is worth your investment in moving forward.
However, if find that you’re not making any sales or conversions then it wise to re-evaluate the keywords that you have selected and/or to focus on the conversion factors on your website.
Repeat Phase:
As you travel in your journey to operating a successful online business you will want to remember that common phrase written on shampoo bottles” wash, rinse, repeat” in that as long as you’re marketing your business, these same set of instructions used to wash your hair should also be applied to any facet of online marketing that makes you successful.
Review:
Lets again quickly review these 7 simple, but powerful phases of keyword research that we will be covering with you in this chapter of your SEO Roadmap Video Training Series.

1. Brainstorming – Identifying your perfect audience and the keywords they would use
2. Categorizing – We will then categorize these keywords into specific topic areas
3. Keyword Research – We will use the various keyword tools such as the Google Keyword tool, Insights for search, the Google Wonder Wheel, Market Samuari, Word Tracker and SpyFu and save the data into a spread sheet
4. Review- We will then review the various keywords and then sort them on the volume of search, the competitiveness and remove keywords from our list that may not have enough search volume, are just too competitive, or are just not relevant for our website
5. Select – We will then go through our list and based upon the rule of 5, select the keywords that we would want to target in the launch of our new campaign
6. Test – We will then test the keywords for conversion using PPC to make sure that they can make us money, before we start our SEO campaign
7. Wash, Rinse, And Repeat.