Should i install analytics?

[gwebstech]

I run a local business and i rank well on all the map listings but not so much the local organics, it doesnt help that im not near a city to rank for. I also run some Google ads. Ive not added analytics because last time i checked, you would get punished if your bounce rate was high, or if other similar stats were not at a certain level.

As far as i can see, my site is useful, loads fast, has all the info people need easily found etc but i was getting a lot of bot traffic on my analytics last time and that was affecting my bounce rate, even though id tried to eliminate bot traffic from analytics which is part of the reason i deleted the tracking tag from my site.

So my question is: do you still get demoted in the rankings if your bounce rate or other stuff isnt excellent? i think analytics would be useful for my adwords but im not so soure if it would help or hinder any other organic listings, it would help with conversion tracking at least for my paid ads.

Whats the latest with all this stuff?

thanks

 

[Chris Barnard]

No, you won't get demoted for a high bounce rate, more like a high bounce rate could be one reason why you're not ranking that high - but not in and of itself a penalty applied by Google because it's high.

Yes, 100% install Google Analytics. You can't measure what you don't track. You won't be penalized for a high bounce rate. Rather, it could help you learn why people are bouncing off your site, in addition to other user behavior and key events you want to track - calls, contact forms, chats, texts, vids watched...etc.

Furthermore, if the bounce rates of your ads' landing pages are high, you could reduce ad costs and improve conversions by doing things to bring down that bounce rate.

Bot & spam traffic is inevitable, and you can go down a never-ending rabbit hole learning how to block and clean the data. Without making this an analytics tutorial, which I'm not qualified to provide, here are a couple resources at the top of the SERPs for that issue:

https://twooctobers.com/blog/removing-bot-traffic-from-ga4-reports/
https://datadrivenu.com/bot-traffic-google-analytics/

 

[gwebstech]

Thanks for that Chris, really helpful

 

[Thompsonpaul]

Definitely get Analytics installed and start using it to monitor and optimise your site's performance!

Google doesn't use Analytics data for ranking purposes. It's just too unreliable, too easy to manipulate, and not available for so many important sites that don't use Google Analytics.

To whatever extent Google is using user behaviour as a ranking input, it's coming from the clickstream data that Google collects directly from its Chrome browser usage.

Especially if paying for Ads, you need the full conversion optimisation power and benefits that come from "closing the loop" on the other visitor actions that @Chris Barnard mentions.