How to set up profiles for organic traffic only and traffic to your blog
Setting up profiles to report specific metrics of your site is very useful and lets you quickly drill down to the information you need. In this second blog post on the topic, following on from ‘Setting up an effective Google Analytics account for reporting’, we will be showing you two examples of setting up profiles; the first to show visits to a specific section of your site (in this case, your blog), and the second to just show organic traffic visiting your site.
Organic traffic only profile
Once you have logged in to your Analytics account, you should click on ‘add new profile’. You will be redirected to a new page where you can select whether it is for a new or existing domain as well as the profile name. Choose ‘add a profile for an existing domain’ and enter your profile name making sure that it is descriptive, i.e. don’t choose ‘profile 2’, but instead choose something like ‘organic traffic only’.
Now that you have created this profile, you will need to edit the filters in order to drill down to the information that you require. In this case, we will simply be including organic traffic and excluding all other traffic. In order to do this, click on the edit link next to your new profile and navigate to the filter section. Select the ‘add filter’ link. It is here that we can filter our report to include or exclude any data we feel would be helpful to us.
Allocate a meaningful name to your filter and select ‘custom filter’. Select ‘include’ and choose ‘campaign medium’. In the filter pattern field enter ‘organic’ and select ‘save changes’. Take a look at the example below:
Once you have done this, save the changes and BOOM! your new profile is ready.
Blog traffic report
Understanding the benefits of updating your blog is important as nobody wants to sit there wasting their time on pointless blog posts that don’t get read and which no-one really appreciates. So I will now show you how to set up a profile to report your blog visits.
Click on ‘add new profile’. You will be redirected to a new page where you will be able to select if it is for a new domain or existing one and the profile name. Choose ‘add a profile for an existing domain’ and enter your profile name, making sure that your profile name is descriptive, i.e. don’t choose ‘profile 3’, but instead go for ‘blog traffic only’ or something similar.
Now that you have created this profile, you will need to edit the filters in order to drill down to the information that you require. In this case, we will be simply including traffic to a subdirectory and excluding all other traffic. In order to do this, click on the edit link next to your new profile and navigate to the filter section. Select the ‘add filter’ link.
Allocate a meaningful name to your filter and select ‘pre-defined filter’. Select ‘include only’ and choose ‘traffic to the subdirectories’. In the subdirectory field, you should enter the subdirectory of your blog. I have used ‘/blog/’ in this example, however, you may have chosen a different name for your blog; maybe something like ‘news’ or ‘articles’. Don’t be a ‘monkey say, monkey do’ here!
Once you have done this, save the changes and BOOM! we’re done! Remember, “You are the only person on earth who can use your ability”.
The next post will aim to explain how to set up goals in Google Analytics.
Blair Stubbs
SEO Programmer
