Google Analytics can be intimidating. Maybe you’re one of those people who log in, see your website traffic stats and then leave — everything else is all too complicated to understand. If you are, you’re not alone. In fact, 80 percent of retailers are using Google Analytics incorrectly.

But don’t give up on Google Analytics just yet. Even though it might be overwhelming now, with just a few tips I can show you how to use Google Analytics to increase your website traffic by leaps and bounds. You don’t need to be a tech wiz to implement these strategies that will grow your website visitors from a minuscule amount into a gigantic crowd.

Get ready to learn how to use your website stats to your advantage, here’s how to use Google Analytics to boost traffic.

Look at SEO queries and landing page reports.

To identify “loopholes” in your website where you can increase organic traffic, you need to look at SEO queries and landing page reports. First, though, you need to connect Google Analytics with your Google Webmaster Tools account.

Once these two accounts are connected, you’ll be able to see the top SEO queries for your website that are getting the highest impressions on search engines. Although these results are getting high impressions, they may not be getting high click-through rates. Look at the SEO report on Google Analytics to see keyword ranking, clicks, and impressions.

Next sort the impressions to show the results with the highest impressions. These keywords are ranking the best for your website but you can improve their click-through rates to get more traffic.

To improve clicks for these keywords keep your title tag around 55 characters and your meta description around 156 characters. You also need to make sure the information you provide matches the intention of those keywords, for instance, if one of your best performing keywords is “bookkeeping services” but nothing on your page has bookkeeping information you need to change that. Write user benefit-driven copy that describes how the info on your page can benefit the user coming through that keyword.

Find your top keywords in keyword report.

Using the right keywords in your content is an effective strategy to increase your organic traffic. Consumers are constantly using search engines to find the solutions to their problems or information about a certain subject, and you should already be using keywords to help your website show up in the results of those queries related to your business. So, head over to the keyword report to see what the top performing keywords are for your site.

Once you’re in the keywords report, you’ll be able to see the keywords that bring that most organic traffic to your site. These keywords are opportunities to optimize your site for even more traffic. Take those top performing keywords and use them in a number of other areas to boost traffic including:

  • Alt tags for images
  • Image titles
  • Page titles and descriptions
  • Anchor text for internal links (in a natural way as to not get penalized)
  • In new blog content

Create better content by looking at top content.

Quality content is the number one source of traffic for a lot of websites. Users will keep coming back to your site over and over again to read your entertaining and useful blog posts. So, to create better content to boost your traffic, you should be taking a look at Google Analytics to find out what your top-performing content is, and create content more like it. Go to your Site Content Overview to find out what your most popular posts are.

Once you’ve determined the content that performs the best, start planning new complimentary content in order to get more of that awesome traffic you had before. At the same time, consider updating and repurposing your top-performing content. Studies show that updating and republishing blog posts with new content and images can increase organic traffic by as much as 111 percent.

Study referral traffic with referral reports.

Organic traffic is the traffic your website gets from users querying search engines but it’s obviously not your only source of traffic. You also get traffic by users finding you through other websites, whether it be by Pinterest or by Quora for instance, which is referral traffic. So, to maximize your referral traffic, take a look at the websites that are sending a lot of traffic to your site.

If you see that you’re top referral source is an online community or forum like Reddit, start commenting, replying and sharing your content in discussion threads related to your business. If the top referral source is a blog or website, start commenting there more, link back to them in your content and try building a relationship with them to get a guest posting spot. And if your top referral source is a social media platform, post more frequently on that platform and repost popular content to increase traffic even more.

Your website analytics will no longer make you freeze up in confusion or break out in stress-hives. Now that you know how to use Google Analytics to boost traffic to your website, you can easily and happily increase your website visitors — and your sales too.