Is Google Analytics a MUST for ranking?

[JohnSmithelJackson]

Yeah, its a free tool, so why not to use it?

 

[JuegosPalacio]

A question. So I guess we can all agree (at least most of us) that Bounce rate and stay on page affect keyword ranking. So when you redesign a page or make other major changes - you are hoping that that will reducing bounce rate and increase stay on page and thus improve your keyword ranking. Right? So if you dont have GA installed and you make website changes how do you know if they have been positive or negative from a User Experience perspective?

Hard to say that you will see and inmediatly effect, but I think the UX is important in general terms for Google. If you appear in the search results and the users just bounce your page, the alg learn from that. If this happens many times of course you will get lower position for that keyword, since you are not helping Google to solve users queries and that's what SEO is about. The average time session could be improved with videos. Most people don't read the article, just scann it, so try to help them to go through the point with index tables and good internalinking. I would say that the last (internal links) are the most important in terms of having a good user behavior over your page. More than the avg time sessions, the pages per sessions is a very important thing to watch out in Analytics and most people just skip it.

 

[Anthony Pap]

I think it mostly has to do with GA being an industry standard and free above all. There are indeed other Analytics tools as well, however if you want to get accurate metrics you usually have to pay.

 

[worke]

A question. So I guess we can all agree (at least most of us) that Bounce rate and stay on page affect keyword ranking. So when you redesign a page or make other major changes - you are hoping that that will reducing bounce rate and increase stay on page and thus improve your keyword ranking. Right? So if you dont have GA installed and you make website changes how do you know if they have been positive or negative from a User Experience perspective?

Very good question! Probably they mean by using alternative tracking methods (plug ins)

 

[Eric Bowie]

Some affiliates prefer other tracking methods but is it giving harm to their rankings?

Or let me kindly ask you from the other way:

Are the sites using GA method rank better than the ones do not use?

Thanks

Google Analytics is not always a must, it is just another powerful tool to analyze your website. And others are able to rank without using it because they've had studied their market well. They've used good SEO tactics to rank, GA will give you an overview but not totally make you the number 1, it's still up to your hard work building everything you need in your site, keeping it active and less of errors. Though there are tons of tools available on the web that can help you.

 

[Roman Doroshenko]

GA is the best tool out there, it can help you understand what pages convert better, what content is crap (if people dont read it, you will see that by looking at the avarage time spent on page), etc.

It wont harm your rankings to not have one, but it deffinately can help you make a better website and answer lots of qustions (if you have the right ones).

 

[Thomas Andreas]

to integrate or not to integrate GA is a tough one.
I think it good to better understand bounce rate and stay on page. But at the same time this damn GA increases you loading pagespeed which is clearly not good

 

[Thomas Andreas]

Basically, what I am saying is that it can negatively affect your ranking by a little bit as it adds to your website loading speed

 

[Goodyni]

A question. So I guess we can all agree (at least most of us) that Bounce rate and stay on page affect keyword ranking. So when you redesign a page or make other major changes - you are hoping that that will reducing bounce rate and increase stay on page and thus improve your keyword ranking. Right? So if you dont have GA installed and you make website changes how do you know if they have been positive or negative from a User Experience perspective?

Agree with you

 

[Biti]

It is not. Some of the best-ranking websites on the most important keywords are not using GA.

 

[Paladin Casino]

I know a few sites which do not use GA, some use Yandex etc and rank just fine in Google.