A brief introduction to Google Analytics Content Groups for university and college marketers

1. Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed
Marketing
Slide 1
Google Analytics Content
Groups for Higher Ed
Marketing

2. Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed
Marketing
Slide 2
1) Site Architecture
2) Content Groups
3) Groupings
4) Conclusion
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed Marketing

3. Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed
Marketing
Slide 3
 Higher ed websites have complicated architectures designed
to organize and optimize information about lots of different
topics for lots of different audiences.
 The architecture of your site provides a natural structure that
Google Analytics uses to organize and report on the traffic
and behavior of the real people who visit your site.
 But what if the default structure of your site doesn't give you
quite the right “dimensions” of analysis that you really need
to see what’s happening with respect your particular digital
marketing priorities.
1. Site Architecture
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed Marketing

4. Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed
Marketing
Slide 4
 For example, what if you wanted to …
 Roll up, compare and drill down into the traffic on all the
separate continuing education pages spread across every
academic department of your large university site?
 Compare and analyze blog page activity for all departments
across your college website?
 Provide summary tracking and analysis on “marketing” page
traffic for each of your marketing department managers,
cumulatively and individually, for each of their assigned
departments across your institution?
1. Site Architecture
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed Marketing

5. Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed
Marketing
Slide 5
 Content Groups is a new tool in Google Analytics that allows
you to easily do these kinds of things by arbitrarily grouping
together related content, and then providing traffic data and
reports on these custom defined groups of pages.
 This feature allows you to logically organize your content
according to your own business rules and prioirites.
 Then, rather than seeing your traffic and behavior data
based on page URL or screen name, it is viewed based on
your specifically defined content groups.
 Each content grouping contains multiple content groups.
2. Content Groups
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed Marketing

6. Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed
Marketing
Slide 6
 A content group contains multiple pieces of content.
 For example, in the Content Group organized as below, you would
see the aggregate of all pageviews at the Faculty level, and then drill
down to see each URL or page title activity within Departments.
3. Groupings
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed Marketing

7. Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed
Marketing
Slide 7
 Content Groupings are created in Admin/ Content
Groupings. There is a maximum limit of five Content
Groupings, but within Groupings, there is no limit to the
number of Content Groups that can be created.
 There are three ways to assign content to a Group.
 1. Tracking Code (modify the tracking code on each web page)
 2. Using Extraction (extract content based on URL or page title using
regular expressions)
 3. Using Rule Definitions (add code that ID’s the content group that
the content belongs to)
 About 24 hours after you create a Content Group, the data will
appear in your GA reports.
 Content Groups are only applied from the moment you configure the
functionality and are not applied to historical data.
3. Groupings
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed Marketing

8. Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed
Marketing
Slide 8
 Content Groups are a powerful means to customize your
Google Analytics reporting to provide you with the data you
need to better manage your higher ed business goals and
priorities.
 At HEM, we are just beginning to work with our clients on
Content Groups to help better refine their reporting and
analysis of data for better marketing ROI.
4. Conclusion
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed Marketing

9. Google Analytics Content Groups for Higher Ed
Marketing
Slide 9
Questions?
1.514.312.3968
info@higher-education-marketing.com
Visit our Website: Higher Education Marketing
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