Google Analytics vs. Serpstat

Honesty, there is no reason that a company wouldn’t want to implement Google Analytics. The regular version is completely free, is very easy to configure, and provides immense volumes of website data. There are also tangible benefits to the other Google tools it can connect to, and it integrates with any BI/data platform that you might use. The only time I’d advise not using standard Google Analytics is if you’ve purchased Google Analytics 360.

Incentivized

Recently switching domains provided a lot of headaches for our marketing team. However, with Serpstat we were able to locate all our broken links and contact all the editors to be able to update our link. This alone took us from a DR of 25 to 34. Another practical use was for researching keyword volume for our on-page SEO - title tags and meta descriptions. With Serpstat we were able to determine keywords were worthy of us using in these values.

Incentivized

• Multiple reports to see website use and behavior
• Allows you to customize reports with days, weeks, months, and years
• You can build out a dashboard to easily view stats from multiple websites in one place
• You can share analytics reports via the dashboard, automatically emailed PDFs or in other formats

Incentivized

• Keyword data provided for multiple sites: this is a standard feature in lots of SEO toolsets. It's not the worst, but not the best.
• Backlink data: the link data is ok, but suffers from the same issue as the keyword data. If you pay for 100 results per report, expect ONLY 100.
• Rank tracking: the rank tracking is also standard. It does a good job of benchmarking progress.

Incentivized

• While raw data is nice to have, I do wish there was an easier way to provide reports from Google Analytics directly. Something that could answer questions straight-forward for people.
• I would appreciate "helpful hints" or a cheat sheet of some sort, so when quickly searching for something such as time on a certain page, I can find it quickly.
• I really don't have a third point!

Incentivized

• The daily query limit is sometimes frustrating.
• For a new person the menu system could be a bit confusing along with terminology, it would be great if there was little help icons next to each selection to help you better understand what they do.

Incentivized

Having used Google Analytics for the last 9 years, I have no intention of discontinuing my service. Google Analytics is a fantastic product that provides me with almost everything I could wish for. The positives in this product outweigh any negatives that you might find. I can not think of a single reason to not immediately start using Google Analytics for your business.

I am very happy with the program and their services.

Incentivized

Google Analytics provides a wealth of data, down to minute levels. That is it's greatest detriment: find the right information when you need it can be a cumbersome task. You are able to create shortcuts, however, so it can mitigate some of this problem. Google is continually refining Analytics, so I do not doubt there will be improvements

Serpstat is great to use on the desktop. Being able to get around the site is easy, and using tools such as rank tracking and filtering are intuitive if you’ve used other SEO software. However, their app is not mobile friendly. I do a lot of my work on mobile when traveling or when dad’ing, and it would be much appreciated for the the app to have better mobile UI functionality. I know I’m dreaming, but other SEO software I use is able to accomplish this.

Things like filtering and how powerful it is are not aa easy to understand until you watch some tutorial videos. I think making this feature more intuitive would also help the sites early on adoption from new users.

Incentivized

We all know Google is at top when it comes to availability. We have never faced any such instances where I can suggest otherwise. All you need is a Google account, a device and internet connection to use this super powerful tool for reporting and visualising your site data, traffic, events, etc. that too in real time.

This has been a catalyst for improving our site's traffic handling capabilities. We were able to identify exit% from our sites through it and we used recommendations to handle and implement the same in our sites. We have been increasing the usage of Google Analytics in our sites and never had any performance related issues if we used Analytics

The Google reps respond very quickly. However, sometimes they can overly call you to set up an apportionment. I'm very proficient and sometimes when I talk to reps, they give beginner tutorials and insights that are a waste of time. I wish Google would understand my level of expertise and assign me to a rep (long-term) that doesn't have to walk me through the basics.

Incentivized

I believe I've only contacted support once because I had a question about access to a feature, and they told me it wasn't available on the plan I was on. No big deal, they were polite and prompt to respond and answered my question to my satisfaction. I haven't had any real issues with the software, so I haven't needed much in the way of support outside of that question, but I have no reason to believe their support wouldn't be helpful in more pressing situations.

Incentivized

love the product and training they provide for businesses of all sizes. The following list of links will help you get started with Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented by Google Analytics.

1. How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners – Mahalo’s how-to guide for beginners.
2. A beginner’s guide to Google Analytics – A free eBook walking you through Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented.
3. Getting to Know Your Google Analytics Dashboard – The title says it all! This is a brief post with one goal: to introduce you to the Google Analytics dashboard.
4. Google Analytics for Beginners: How to Make the Most of Your Traffic Reports– This guide doesn’t cover setup, but it does a great job of helping you to better understand the data being presented.
5. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 1: Setup – A video presentation that walks you through Google Analytics setup.
6. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 2: Essential Stats – A video presentation that introduces you to some of the most important data being presented in Google Analytics.

Make sure to put the tracking code on every page. Ideally this would be part of a template or "include" so you can update the code on all pages (or at least within pages of the same category) at once.

I have not used Adobe Analytics as much, but I know they offer something called customer journey analytics, which we are evaluating now. I have used Semrush, and I find them much better than Google Analytics. I feel a fairly nontechnical person could learn Semrush in about a month. They also offer features like competitive analysis (on content, keywords, traffic, etc.), which is very useful. If you have to choose one among Semrush and Google Analytics, I would say go for Semrush.

Incentivized

We chose Serpstat over other SEO tools because of its an all-in-one toolset as well as having a clean, easy to use UI. The price point was also a deciding factor since we were able to do the majority of our SEO research using a single tool with a single monthly subscription.

Incentivized

Google Analytics is currently handling the reporting and tracking of near about 80 sites in our project. And I am not talking about the sites from different projects. They may have way more accounts than that. Never ever felt a performance issue from Google's end while generating or customising reports or tracking custom events or creating custom dimensions

• Great for visualizing website drop-off pages to theories and test update/iterations.
• Bounce rates on pages to pinpoint bugs and issues.
• Inaccuracy can lead to incorrect conclusions and decisions around CRO.
• Segments can be very useful for validating split testing, providing a free tracking of variation vs. control - great ROI.

Incentivized

• Serpstat has allowed us to confidently suggest keywords and SEO friendly updates to clients to implement
• Serpstat reporting has saved us time when delivering reports to clients
• Serpstat app integrations allows our other data sources and Serpstat data to be combined to create Reportz (app) for client delivery
• Serpstat is one of the first places I go to check organic words for content ideas and places to improve our SEO

Incentivized