Welcome to Part II of Edition No. 41 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
ICYMI Yesterday: What To Do When No One’s Working
Contents
I. Key Stats Added to Google Analytics 4
II. One Big Article, Or Lots of Small Ones? (For SEO)
III. Musk: Twitter Bot Purge Underway
IV. Do I Know You? More Tweets from People You Don’t Follow
V. Haters Gonna Tweet
VI. Schedule LinkedIn Posts Ahead of Time
I. Key Stats Added to Google Analytics 4
🛠 Why does this matter? These stats are no-brainers to make available. They’re also further examples of how GA4 is still growing into itself.
You may remember how bounce rate wasn’t at first available in GA4, either, though it is now. (By a different definition.)
A quick explanation of these two stats:
Views per session: The number of page views – or unique URLs viewed by a user – on your site in a given session aka per unique visit to your website.
This couples nicely with bounce-rate and landing-page analysis. If sessions that begin on a particular landing page also tend to have low “views per session,” then you might want to look at opportunities to guide users from that particular page to other areas of your site.
Average session duration: Google Analytics 4 does a better job of measuring session duration than Universal Analytics. That’s because unless someone is “active” on your site, the session timer stops.
So if you leave your screen open for 15 minutes while you make a pourover coffee, GA4 will stop the session duration timer. That wasn’t the case in Universal Analytics.
This is one of many (if not all) stats that, while having the same name as it did in UA, is not measured the same. That means you shouldn’t be alarmed if GA4 session duration is significantly lower than it was in UA.
The importance of this statistic is pretty obvious: the longer someone is on your site, the better. That’s because…
They become more familiar with your content, making them more likely to return
They could see more ads, which could increase your revenue
You build trust, which makes them more likely to convert (whether that means signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or something else)
We should expect more additions between now and the July 1 UA-to-GA4 transition deadline. My next request?
Custom channel groupings.
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II. One Big Article, Or Lots of Small Ones?
This question came up on Google SEO office hours this month.
Here’s the response from Lizzi Sassman:
These are two perfectly legitimate approaches: it can be good to have a thorough article that deeply explores a topic, and it can be equally just as good to break it up into easier to understand topics.
It really depends on the topic and the content on that page, and you know your audience best.
So I would focus on what’s most helpful to your users and that you’re providing sufficient value on each page for whatever the topic might be.
🛠 Why does this matter? There are two issues at play in this question: duplicate content and thin content.
Duplicate content is when you have the same, or very similar, content on multiple pages of the same site. This creates an issue where Google doesn’t know which page to prioritize in search for that particular topic, and so none of them rank well.
Thin content, which is not at all based on word count, is when you don’t go deep into a topic. To put it very simply, it’s the difference between saying:
1) Apples are a fruit.
vs.
2) There are dozens of varieties of apples. Some of them include fuji, honeycrisp, gala, pink lady and granny smith. This fruit grows on trees, and can be eaten raw, or used in dishes like pies or salads.
Again, a super simplified example, but there’s a clear difference between the thin No. 1 and more-detailed No. 2.
With that background, the answer to the question indicates that as long as your content provides value and helps users, it’s more likely to perform well on search.
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III. Musk: Twitter Bot Purge Underway
Twitter CEO Elon Musk at one point used the “bot problem” to try to wiggle out of his agreement to buy Twitter. Now he’s taking action on that very issue.
🛠 Why does this matter? No one of repute should want an inflated follower count due to bots.
It will be interesting to hear how many accounts were/are purged, if that information is made available. It could either vindicate or thwart Musk’s earlier concerns.
(Not exactly a bot, but Ye was suspended from Twitter (again).)
The benefit for Twitter is the ability to tell advertisers that their inventory will be seen by real people, meaning they can feel better about applying their budget to the platform.
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