Jason Hennessey is an entrepreneur, internationally recognized SEO expert, author, podcast host, business coach and CEO of Hennessey Digital
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I've always loved the moment in The Wizard of Oz when the wizard, frantically turning cranks and pulling levers, yells, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" Not only is his character hilarious, but I find it wildly relatable as someone who works with websites for a living.
I've noticed that many business owners see their website in this way—as a system of buttons, levers and gears they are too afraid to look at. Maybe it feels too confusing to understand. Maybe it's easier to pay someone to look for you.
But I want to demystify website performance and tell you that knowing "what's behind the curtain" is absolutely critical to effective website marketing. Fortunately, there are plenty of free tools that help you do just that. Google provides some of the best—covering everything from page speed to user experience to search engine optimization to user flow to conversion and beyond.
Google Analytics: Learn Where Your Visitors Come From
By analyzing your website traffic and engagement, you can gain valuable insights that can help you improve your website's user experience, content and overall performance. Google Analytics provides a wealth of information to help you see what channels drove visitors to your website, which pages they visited next, whether they took action (made a purchase, filled out a form, etc.) and what keywords they searched for to land on your site from organic search.
You can track new users to your website and see whether your traffic has decreased, increased or plateaued over time. You also can create custom reports that include average engagement time, new versus returning users, total revenue, gender and age demographics, and more.
Google Analytics is completely free and only requires adding a script to your website and then validating it within the tool. This tool will take you from guessing about where your customers are coming from to knowing for sure what the most impactful traffic channels are for your website.
PageSpeed Insights: Gauge Your Site's Speed And User-Friendliness
A fast website (that loads in three seconds or less) is the standard when it comes to SEO and UX. With a slow website, you're at risk of deterring potential customers and of Google deprioritizing your site in the search results.
PageSpeed Insights is a free website speed testing tool that diagnoses performance issues on the mobile and desktop versions of your website. Even if your site appears to be loading well for you, a close analysis may tell a different story.
PageSpeed Insights provides you with multiple scores across the following metrics:
• Accessibility (cumulative).
• SEO (cumulative).
In essence, these are all metrics that pertain to how content is rendered on your website, whether it loads quickly for users, whether it is easy to navigate on mobile and desktop devices, and whether any performance-hindering issues exist. This is measured against what are called Lighthouse factors, which play a role in whether your website ranks well in search engines.
Page speed and UX are two things you don't want to ignore. These could make the difference in whether your website generates less or more organic traffic, and whether users convert on your website or decide to go somewhere else.
Google Search Console: Analyze Your Organic Search Performance
SEO seems to be a bit of a black-box area of marketing, where many business owners don't know where their traffic is coming from or what keywords drive people there. So business owners end up making guesses about what keywords to target, how to optimize and what efforts are moving the needle.
Guessing, in this case, is truly silly because Google Search Console is one of the best tools we have that tells us exactly the keywords that are driving performance, at what position our website is ranking and how much traffic has changed over time.
All you have to do is create a new property in Google Search Console, copy the TXT record and paste it into your DNS record (your web development team can do this), and verify your property. Then, Google Search Console will begin tracking your traffic, core web vitals, mobile usability and more.
The search results report is my favorite because it gives a simple view of your organic impressions, clicks, keyword positions and keywords. You can then filter by your top or lowest organic pages and start making decisions about what pages need to be optimized.
Cool, right?
Don't Be Afraid To Look Behind The Curtain
You don't need to know everything about how your website works in order to have a good website marketing strategy, but it's critical to at least peek behind the curtain of performance. Knowing what drives people to your website, what content engages users most, what keywords matter most for your business, and whether your site is fast and user-friendly enables you to make smart marketing decisions.
It's time to stop guessing and start analyzing your website to make better decisions about your website marketing.
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