Why the Geographic Source of Traffic Matters to Online Marketers

A lot of filtering options are available in Google Analytics, but one that is often overlooked is the ability to sort, filter, and order by geographic location.
This can be applied in a number of ways:

• Country
• City
• Continent
• Region

It's certainly interesting, but is it useful? In fact it's more than that. Knowing the geographic source for keyword (and content) traffic can be vital to making a sale.


For Whom is the Geographic Source Important?


While knowing where the traffic comes from can be important for any online marketer, it is of particular importance to affiliates. Let's use Amazon as an example.


The web sites Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk stock different products, with different prices, ship to different locations and have different affiliate schemes.


If visitors to a specific page come from one geographic reason, and are confronted by products, spellings, and terminology that they are not familiar with, then there is a risk that the sale will be lost.


More than that, they may not even be able to buy the product and have it shipped, or they may be directed to another web site. Either way, the sale is lost to the affiliate.


Targeting pages (content) to specific geographic markets based on specific keyword trends for that geographic location enables marketers to promote the right products, using the correct affiliate account, to the right visitors.


In addition, brands and brand names may also be different. This helps keyword targeting to specific brands; the more niche the better, as people often type specific brand and model names into search engines.


Finally, once the geographic segment is known, and content has been created to fit each demographic, the online marketing strategy can follow it. For example, Twitter can be used to schedule tweets designed to be released at times that are appropriate for the target market.


All of the above needs some research, which is where Google Analytics comes in.


Segmenting Search Traffic by Location


The best way to view this relationship is to select a relatively small time window (say one week to one month) and then access the Demographics filter from the left hand main menu in Google Analytics.


The Location filter can be found under the Audience tab on the main menu.


The Demographics option needs to be selected, and then Location clicked.

Selecting the Location Filter from the
 Left Hand Menu in Google Analytics

As can be seen in the screen shot, the map will then light up with different shades of green indicating the global results returned for each location.


The actual lcoations that return these visitors are then listed below the map, in the usual results pane in the Google Analytics system.


The usual column headings can be found here - page views, time spent, bounce rate and so on - but this is only half the story.


To get the keywords, it is also necessary to add them as a Secondary Dimension.


To do this, the 'Secondary dimension' button is clicked.


From the resulting menu, the Traffic Sources option needs to be selected.


Underneath that, are a number of options, but for keyword research, the Keyword option is the most useful.

Selecting the Keyword Secondary Filter
from the Results Toolbar in Analytics

Having selected the Primary and Secondary Dimensions, the user then needs to sort the keyword list  based on the metric that most interests them.


One interesting metric is likely to be the Bounce Rate, as a high Bounce Rate could indicate that the geographic targeting needs to be adjusted.


This can be spotted by the presence of two identical keyword phrases, each with different source locations. If one has a Bounce Rate that is significantly higher than the other, then that may indicate that different content should be created for that specific keyword.


This is just one of the ways in which geographic tools in Analytics can be used to hone the marketing message, and is a very interesting and valuable aspect of keyword research.