Looking for a faster way to create visualizations of your SEO work is a helpful move. This can give you a good sense of the marketing metrics you set out when starting your campaign. One of the best tools you can use for this is Google Data Studio.
Google Data Studio is a great tool that allows you to create reports for your business. It’s a powerful tool that can let you use the information you gathered from your campaign. With the right knowledge, you can take advantage of Google Analytics Data Studio.
In this guide, we’ll teach you how you can build a dashboard in Google Analytics Data Studio. With this, we can help you create a dashboard based on your campaign goals and SEO targeting.
1. Create Goals For Your Dashboard
Before you even fire up your Google Data Studio, you would want to create a goal for the dashboard. You’re not doing this all for testing or discovery purposes. Rather, you want to have the right data and see the metrics that powers up your campaign.
What do you want to do?
You can use the dashboard to answer a specific question to achieve your campaign goals. You can try to use data to help refine your campaign’s targeting. You can even create a dashboard in Google Analytics Data Studio to see areas of marketing you want to be measured.
Take some time to think of the purpose of your entire dashboard. This will help you get you the best use of your data.
The biggest mistake many marketers make is trying to measure everything and anything. Not all information is crucial for your needs.
You can’t expect to manage a data report that is up to 30 pages long every week. That’s unrealistic and lacks the focus you need.
When considering campaign goals, focus on your key performance indicators. Focus on 3 to 4 core KPI metrics, with around 10 to 15 secondary metrics. If you’re looking into how to pick the right metrics, you need to answer two questions.
- Does it create revenue or increase ROI?
- Does it curb costs or focus on the campaign?
Metrics that don’t answer either of these questions are tertiary KPIs and are not important.
Storytelling With Your Data
When creating a dashboard in Google Analytics Data Studio, it’s best to tell stories with your data. It sounds weird, but you want to make your data speak about the growth and progress you aim for.
Your data is not a magic conch. You can’t ask a question, pull a string, and make it spit answers out. That will be the most reductive way of using your data, and it will mask underlying context with issues.
It’s crucial to ask a qualitative question that will show a significant impact on your data. The conclusions that you get should drive your decision-making process. A focused question will create more specific and more actionable findings in the end.
2. Drafting Layouts and Potential Visualizations
Now you know what information you want to learn from Google Analytics Data Studio, you need to visualize your report.
You want to create a rough draft of what your dashboard would look like. This might sound like mulling over aesthetics, but there’s a reasoning for it.
You want to create a dashboard that makes sense. You want to group your information with logical sense to you and the people who will see it. This allows for faster consumption of information for stakeholders.
When you build dashboards in Google Data Studio, make a paper outline of what needs to be shown. You would want to use graphical data that reflects the importance of the metrics.
It doesn’t have to be pretty; it can be rudimentary but still effective. You want to focus on the data or metrics of the dashboard rather than aesthetics.
Make a dashboard outline that’s sensible to your needs, and you should be good to go.
3. Building A Dashboard
Now you’re ready to start making the dashboard itself. To start, sign in to your Google Analytics Data Studio account and create a blank template. It’s best to use the same account as your Google Analytics to make everything easier for you.
Once you are into the dashboard window, add your data source. In this situation, your data source should be Google Analytics. There are some instances where some people might add their Google Search Console to help.
Once you pick Google Analytics, start arranging your data on the dashboard. Starting with a blank canvas is better. It can work better than most options available on Google Analytics Data Studios.
There are different types of tables, graphs, and scorecards you can choose from. You can use details such as HTML, images, themes, dynamic filters, and even segments.
If you have experience in using landing page creation tools, it should be within the same parameter. Put a name on your report.
4. Crucial Details For Your Dashboard
From this point, it’s up to you what details you want to add on your dashboard. There are details that you can add that can help make the dash clearer.
Among the first elements to add is the date range. This will allow the users of the dashboard to change the time frame of the report. This can give you a greater perspective on how the data changes.
If you’re looking to understand your demographic further, you can add maps. This can show you which areas are responsive to your campaigns and which ones need more work. If want to create custom geofencing of your campaigns, use the map to show the performance.
Some data like traffic distribution across different channels and touchpoints can be another great pick. You would want to watch over traffic sources and add scorecards to see any changes. You can also watch which eCommerce website pages do better than the others.
Picking the Right Elements
Depending on your needs, every element has its own advantages. Every element in your Google Data Studio has its own value.
Using line graphs and time series will give you visualizations of what happens over time. These can be changes in your traffic, which can affect which areas you should focus your resources on.
Pie charts can show which social media channels, markets, and even demographics contribute to your success. Through this, you can give extra attention to areas that are struggling and find out why. You can also try to double down if you’re having a tremendous advantage in one market.
Scorecards are always great to show off raw metrics within your campaigns. If you use the dashboard for your stakeholders, these are a great way to show growth. Many times, it’s best if you use different scorecards instead of a single one.
5. Adding Branding and Aesthetic Elements
Once you have your elements in, you can start adding labels and branding images to your dashboard. For example, text headers are a great way to present data and label them. You can choose different parameters that can help reflect your brand colors.
There are many different reasons why you would also want to add images to your dashboard. The simplest example of this is adding your brand logo on top of your dashboard.
Once you finish adding images and text labels, you also have styling options. This can help make your Google Data Studio look more aesthetic for presentations. These styling choices divide between:
- Global styles
- Adjustable element styles
- Branding makeover options
Each of these has a way of accentuating your dashboard.
Understanding the Right Aesthetic
Global styles change everything in your dashboard from the layout and theme sidebar on the right. From here, it will give you different layout options for all elements and the entire dashboard.
In layouts, you can adjust header visibility and even the navigation position for your dash. You can change your display mode and even canvas sizes for the entire report.
For themes, you can pick general details on your dashboard. You can pick your chart colors to reflect the branding colors that you want. You can even use competitor colors if you’re looking for a specific type of competitive analysis.
For element styles, every element you use will have its own customizable properties. Many of them will try to pull details from global styles, but you can do your own fine-tuning. The same goes for branding makeover.
Start Your Dashboard With Google Analytics Data Studio
Using your Google Analytics Data Studio to create a dashboard should be quick and easy. Use it to learn metrics and information that relate to your campaign goals. Tweak as much as you can, and make sure you use the right information from your data.
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