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• CCPA vs GDPR : Understanding Their Impact on Data Analytics

  19 mars, par Alex Carmona

  With over 400 million internet users in Europe and 331 million in the US (11% of which reside in California alone), understanding the nuances of privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is crucial for compliant and ethical consumer data collection.

  Navigating this compliance landscape can be challenging for businesses serving European and Californian markets.

  This guide explores the key differences between CCPA and GDPR, their impact on data analytics, and how to ensure your business meets these essential privacy requirements.

  What is the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) ?

  The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a data privacy law that gives California consumers control over their personal information. It applies to for-profit businesses operating in California that meet specific criteria related to revenue, data collection and sales.

  Origins and purpose

  The CCPA addresses growing concerns about data privacy and how businesses use personal information in California. The act passed in 2018 and went into effect on 1 January 2020.

  Key features

  • Grants consumers the right to know what personal information is collected
  • Provides the right to delete personal information
  • Allows consumers to opt out of the sale of their personal information
  • Prohibits discrimination against consumers who exercise their CCPA rights

  Key definitions under the CCPA framework

  • Business : A for-profit entity doing business in California and meeting one or more of these conditions :
    • Has annual gross revenues over $25 million ;
    • Buys, receives, sells or shares 50,000 or more consumers’ personal information ; or
    • Derives 50% or more of its annual revenues from selling consumers’ personal information
  • Consumer : A natural person who is a California resident
  • Personal Information : Information that could be linked to, related to or used to identify a consumer or household, such as online identifiers, IP addresses, email addresses, social security numbers, cookie identifiers and more

  What is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) ?

  The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a data privacy and protection law passed by the European Union (EU). It’s one of the strongest and most influential data privacy laws worldwide and applies to all organisations that process the personal data of individuals in the EU.

  Origins and purpose

  The GDPR was passed in 2016 and went into effect on 25 May 2018. It aims to harmonise data privacy laws in Europe and give people in the European Economic Area (EEA) privacy rights and control over their data.

  Key features

  • Applies to all organisations that process the personal data of individuals in the EEA
  • Grants individuals a wide range of privacy rights over their data
  • Requires organisations to obtain explicit and informed consent for most data processing
  • Mandates appropriate security measures to protect personal data
  • Imposes significant fines and penalties for non-compliance

  Key definitions under the GDPR framework

  • Data Subject : An identified or identifiable person
  • Personal Data : Any information relating to a data subject
  • Data Controller : The entity or organisation that determines how personal data is processed and what for
  • Data Processor : The entity or organisation that processes the data on behalf of the controller

  CCPA vs. GDPR : Key similarities

  The CCPA and GDPR enhance consumer privacy rights and give individuals greater control over their data.

  Dimension	CCPA	GDPR
  Purpose	Protect consumer privacy	Protect individual data rights
  Key Rights	Right to access, delete and opt out of sale	Right to access, rectify, erase and restrict processing
  Transparency	Requires transparency around data collection and use	Requires transparency about data collection, processing and use

  CCPA vs. GDPR : Key differences

  While they have similar purposes, the CCPA and GDPR differ significantly in their scope, approach and specific requirements.

  Dimension	CCPA	GDPR
  Scope	For-profit businesses only	All organisations processing EU consumer data
  Territorial Reach	California-based natural persons	All data subjects within the EEA
  Consent	Opt-out system	Opt-in system
  Penalties	Per violation based on its intentional or negligent nature	Case-by-case based on comprehensive assessment
  Individual Rights	Narrower (relative to GDPR)	Broader (relative to CCPA)

  CCPA vs. GDPR : A multi-dimensional comparison

  The previous sections gave a broad overview of the similarities and differences between CCPA and GDPR. Let’s now examine nine key dimensions where these regulations converge or diverge and discuss their impact on data analytics.

  

  #1. Scope and territorial reach

  The GDPR has a much broader scope than the CCPA. It applies to all organisations that process the personal data of individuals in the EEA, regardless of their business model, purpose or physical location.

  The CCPA applies to medium and large for-profit businesses that derive a substantial portion of their earnings from selling Californian consumers’ personal information. It doesn’t apply to non-profits, government agencies or smaller for-profit companies.

  Impact on data analytics

  The difference in scope significantly impacts data analytics practices. Smaller businesses may not need to comply with either regulation, some may only need to follow the CCPA, while most global businesses must comply with both. This often requires different methods for collecting and processing data in California, Europe, and elsewhere.

  #2. Penalties and fines for non-compliance

  Both the CCPA and GDPR impose penalties for non-compliance, but the severity of fines differs significantly :

  CCPA	Maximum penalty
  	$2,500 per unintentional violation $7,500 per intentional violation

  “Per violation” means per violation per impacted consumer. For example, three intentional CCPA violations affecting 1,000 consumers would result in 3,000 total violations and a $22.5 million maximum penalty (3,000 × $7,500).

  

  The largest CCPA fine to date was Zoom’s $85 million settlement in 2021.

  

  In contrast, the GDPR has resulted in 2,248 fines totalling almost €6.6 billion since 2018 — €2.4 billion of which were for non-compliance.

  GDPR	Maximum penalty
  	€20 million or 4% of all revenue earned the previous year

  So far, the biggest fine imposed under the GDPR was Meta’s €1.2 billion fine in May 2023 — 15 times more than Zoom had to pay California.

  Impact on data analytics

  The significant difference in potential fines demonstrates the importance of regulatory compliance for data analytics professionals. Non-compliance can have severe financial consequences, directly affecting budget allocation and business operations.

  Businesses must ensure their data collection, storage and processing practices comply with regulations in both Europe and California.

  Choosing privacy-first, compliance-ready analytics platforms like Matomo is instrumental for mitigating non-compliance risks.

  #3. Data subject rights and consumer rights

  The CCPA and GDPR give people similar rights over their data, but their limitations and details differ.

  Rights common to the CCPA and GDPR

  • Right to Access/Know : People can access their personal information and learn what data is collected, its source, its purpose and how it’s shared
  • Right to Delete/Erasure : People can request the deletion of their personal information, with some exceptions
  • Right to Non-Discrimination : Businesses can’t discriminate against people who exercise their privacy rights

  Consumer rights unique to the CCPA

  • Right to Opt Out of Sale : Consumers can prohibit the sale of their personal information
  • Right to Notice : Businesses must inform consumers about data collection practices
  • Right to Disclosure : Consumers can request specific information collected about them

  Data subject rights unique to the GDPR

  • Right to be Informed : Broader transparency requirements encompass data retention, automated decision-making and international transfers
  • Right to Rectification : Data subjects may request the correction of inaccurate data
  • Right to Restrict Processing : Consumers may limit data use in certain situations
  • Right to Data Portability : Businesses must provide individual consumer data in a secure, portable format when requested
  • Right to Withdraw Consent : Consumers may withdraw previously granted consent to data processing

  	CCPA	GDPR
  Right to Access or Know	✓	✓
  Right to Delete or Erase	✓	✓
  Right to Non-Discrimination	✓	✓
  Right to Opt-Out	✓
  Right to Notice	✓
  Right to Disclosure	✓
  Right to be Informed		✓
  Right to Rectification		✓
  Right to Restrict Processing		✓
  Right to Data Portability		✓
  Right to Withdraw Consent		✓

  Impact on data analytics

  Data analysts must understand these rights and ensure compliance with both regulations, which could potentially require separate data handling processes for EU and California consumers.

  #4. Opt-out vs. opt-in

  The CCPA generally follows an opt-out model, while the GDPR requires explicit consent from individuals before processing their data.

  Impact on data analytics

  For CCPA compliance, businesses can collect data by default if they provide opt-out mechanisms. Failing to process opt-out requests can result in severe penalties, like Sephora’s $1.2 million fine.

  Under GDPR, organisations must obtain explicit consent before collecting any data, which can limit the amount of data available for analysis.

  #5. Parental consent

  The CCPA and GDPR have provisions regarding parental consent for processing children’s data. The CCPA requires parental consent for children under 13, while the GDPR sets the age at 16, though member states can lower it to 13.

  Impact on data analytics

  This requirement significantly impacts businesses targeting younger audiences. In Europe and the US, companies must implement different methods to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent when necessary.

  The California Attorney General’s Office recently fined Tilting Point Media LLC $500,000 for sharing children’s data without parental consent.

  #6. Data security requirements

  Both regulations require businesses to implement adequate security measures to protect personal data. However, the GDPR has more prescriptive requirements, outlining specific security measures and emphasising a risk-based approach.

  Impact on data analytics

  Data analytics professionals must ensure that data is processed and stored securely to avoid breaches and potential fines.

  #7. International data transfers

  Both the CCPA and GDPR address international data transfers. Under the CCPA, businesses must only inform consumers about international transfers. The GDPR has stricter requirements, including ensuring adequate data protection safeguards for transfers outside the EEA.

  

  Other rules, like the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2), also affect international data transfers, especially in the financial industry.

  PSD2 requires strong customer authentication and secure communication channels for payment services. This adds complexity to cross-border data flows.

  Impact on data analytics

  The primary impact is on businesses serving European residents from outside Europe. Processing data within the European Union is typically advisable. Meta’s record-breaking €1.2 billion fine was specifically for transferring data from the EEA to the US without sufficient safeguards.

  Choosing the right analytics platform helps avoid these issues.

  For example, Matomo offers a free, open-source, self-hosted analytics platform you can deploy anywhere. You can also choose a managed, GDPR-compliant cloud analytics solution with all data storage and processing servers within the EU (in Germany), ensuring your data never leaves the EEA.

  #8. Enforcement mechanisms

  The California Attorney General is responsible for enforcing CCPA requirements, while in Europe, the Data Protection Authority (DPA) in each EU member state enforces GDPR requirements.

  Impact on data analytics

  Data analytics professionals should be familiar with their respective enforcement bodies and their powers to support compliance efforts and minimise the risk of fines and penalties.

  #9. Legal basis for personal data processing

  The GDPR outlines six legal grounds for processing personal data :

  • Consent
  • Contract
  • Legal obligation
  • Vital interests
  • Public task
  • Legitimate interests

  The CCPA doesn’t explicitly define lawful bases but focuses on consumer rights and transparency in general.

  Impact on data analytics

  Businesses subject to the GDPR must identify and document a valid lawful basis for each processing activity.

  Compliance rules under CCPA and GDPR

  Complying with the CCPA and GDPR requires a comprehensive approach to data privacy. Here’s a summary of the essential compliance rules for each framework :

  

  CCPA compliance rules

  • Create clear and concise privacy policies outlining data collection and use practices
  • Give consumers the right to opt-out
  • Respond to consumer requests to access, delete and correct their personal information
  • Implement reasonable security measures for consumers’ personal data protection
  • Never discriminate against consumers who exercise their CCPA rights

  GDPR compliance rules

  • Obtain explicit and informed consent for data processing activities
  • Implement technical and organisational controls to safeguard personal data
  • Designate a Data Protection Officer (DPO) if necessary
  • Perform data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) for high-risk processing activities
  • Maintain records of processing activities
  • Promptly report data breaches to supervisory authorities

  Navigating the CCPA and GDPR with confidence

  Understanding the nuances of the CCPA and GDPR is crucial for businesses operating in the US and Europe. These regulations significantly impact data collection and analytics practices.

  Implementing robust data security practices and prioritising privacy and compliance are essential to avoid severe penalties and build trust with today’s privacy-conscious consumers.

  Privacy-centric analytics platforms like Matomo enable businesses to collect, analyse and use data responsibly and transparently, extracting valuable insights while maintaining compliance with both CCPA and GDPR requirements.

  Start your 21-day free trial today !

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• How to increase conversions to meet your business goals

  8 septembre 2020, par Joselyn Khor — Analytics Tips, Marketing
   Through optimizing your messaging, content, or your page layouts, you can increase conversions by getting your visitors through a clear pathway to achieve your business goals.

  Conversion Rate Optimization

  When we talk about optimizing websites to improve and increase conversions, we’re really talking about conversion rate optimization (CRO).

  CRO is the process of learning what the most valuable content/aspect of your website is and how to best optimize this for your visitors to increase its chance to convert. It typically involves generating ideas for elements on your site or app that can be improved, learning which pathways visitors are most likely going to take to conversion and then validating those assumptions through A/B testing and multivariate testing to transform learning into actionable insights.

  Conversion Rate

  The conversion rate is expressed as a % and the goal for any business should be to increase the % of conversions for any given goal e.g. in February a website had 200 newsletter sign-ups from 1,000 visitors on its sign-up page, a conversion rate of 20%. CRO should be used to increase the sign-up rate from 20% to 25%, and then eventually from 25% to 30% and so on.

  CRO cheat sheet

  You need to consider your website or business’ objectives (bigger picture) as well as your website goals (smaller achievements). Whatever the aim of your website, it’s crucial for this to be your starting point. Figure out what you want your website to do and what you want visitors to get from it. When you do that, you’ll know what conversions to focus on.
  

  • Define your business/website’s objectives. Do you want the website to drive sales ? Is the website a hub to raise awareness for a charity ? Do you want to increase readership for your news site ?
  • Define what your conversion goals are. This helps you narrow your focus so you follow a path to meet your overall objectives. By defining these, you clarify for yourself the next actions you should take, such as wanting to funnel users through to a sign up landing page. Then you’ll need to optimize and test your sign up landing page. If conversions are low, then tweak it and measure the results until you find you’ve increased conversion rates.
  • Conversion goals can include :
    • Purchases in your ecommerce store
    • eBook downloads
    • Sign ups to your mailing list
    • Visitors successfully filling in a contact form
  • Figure out what your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are and the metrics you need to focus on to achieve them.

  How to increase conversions with Matomo

  1. Set goals
  2. Heatmaps
  3. Session Recordings
  4. A/B test
  5. Form Analytics
  6. Funnels
  7. Behaviour

  1. Set goals

  “Make Sure Goals Are Clearly Understood. To prove the value of an analytics-focused company, any project you take on needs to have clear goals. If you don’t have a goal in mind you’ll fail. Everyone involved in the project needs to be aligned around the goals.”

  A goal is the measure of a successful action that you want your visitors to take. The more goals you track, the more you can learn about behavioural changes as you implement and modify paths that lead to conversions over time.

  

  You’ll understand which channels and campaigns (SEO, PPC, newsletter, blogging etc.) are converting the best for your business, which cities/countries are most popular, what devices are working and how engaged your visitors are before converting. Learn more

  2. Set Heatmaps

  This is vital to show how your visitors are engaging with your website, blog pages, signup and sales pages. If you want to learn how your visitors really engage with your website to increase conversions, Heatmaps lets you see the results visually without any guesswork.

  

  By showing where your visitors try to click, move the mouse or how far down they’re scrolling on each page, you can effortlessly discover how your visitors truly engage with your most important web pages. Rather than guessing, rely on facts to prove if the changes you make actually improve your website or not. Learn more

  How to improve conversion rates with Heatmaps :

  • If you’ve got important information that will sell your service/product or bring you loyal followers, make sure it’s in the hot zones as shown in your heatmaps.
  • Try to rearrange parts of your pages to see if that increases engagement.
  • Make it easy for people to take important actions by having the CTA above-the-fold where 100% of visitors see it. Make sure you don’t clutter this section with too many messages or actions.
  • You can also identify areas to add links as heatmaps shows where people want to click.
  • Find what content is most popular on the page

  3. Session Recordings

  This is a conversion research technique where you learn what your users are trying to do and make sure your website is optimized to give them what they want. With Session Recordings you can playback all the interactions your visitors took on your website, such as clicks, mouse movements, scrolls, resizes, form interactions and page changes in a video. Truly understand how real visitors are using your website and what experiences they’re having.

  Also, by understanding what’s working you’re increasing the usability of your website, Session Recordings allow you to identify problem areas as well as where users are getting stuck. Learn more

  

  How to improve conversion rates with Session Recordings : For example, on a product landing page, you see your visitor highlighting specific words and putting it into search. With this you can observe what they’re trying to find and what they’re actually interested in. As you tweak the page to ensure what the visitor wants can be easily found, you’re taking steps to increase the chance for more conversions.

  4. A/B Testing

  Test anything and test anywhere to increase your conversions. Grow your website by comparing different versions of your landing pages to determine what works best for your users. Subtle tweaks across different versions of your landing pages can have a significant impact on converting incoming traffic.

  

  The changes for each landing page could be :

  • A different headline
  • Less copy vs more copy
  • Different calls-to-action
  • Colour schemes, forms, fonts, links, testimonials,
  • Or, it could be an entirely different page layout altogether.

  The idea is to see if either page A or page B (or C or D) was most successful in getting your visitors to the next step in the conversion funnel. Learn more

  How Matomo used A/B Testing : For our sign up page we tested three different CTAs and found how phrasing words differently could help improve conversion rates. Both “Start improving your websites” and “Start converting more users now” were stronger CTAs and converted 7% more than, “Start my free 30-day trial”.

  5. Form Analytics

  Form Analytics gives you powerful insights into how your visitors interact with your forms (like cart, sign-up and checkout forms).

  

  Online forms can come in thousands of different variations. It’s an area on your website that if not done right, could lead to you missing out on converting a large portion of your visitors. Rely on facts when you change your forms. Learn more

  How to improve conversion rates with Form Analytics : By proving whether your form is doing better when you change it and by how much. This lets you consistently increase form submission rates (conversions) on your website which is crucial to the success of your business.

  6. Funnels

  At a glance you will learn the steps (actions, events and pages) your users go through to the desired outcomes you want them to achieve whether it’s a sale, sign-up or any other particular goal you have defined.

  

  Looking at the entire conversion funnel and focusing on usability, you’ll be able to identify where your visitors are having problems, where they aren’t understanding the flow of your webpages and identify obstacles that get in the way of your users reaching that end goal. Learn more

  How to improve conversion rates with Funnels : Learn what makes your visitors take action (or what stops them) in progressing to the next step in the conversion funnel. At each step, you’ll discover what content/layout resonates with your visitors and you can optimize your website to have the greatest impact on your business.

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  7. Behaviour

  This is one of the most important features to help you optimize your website for conversions. Learning visitor behaviour is a driving force to increase conversions. How ? It lets you identify where you could be taking action to increase conversions. You get to learn first-hand what content or feature on your site is or isn’t working for your visitors. 

  

  Engagement is essential to help increase conversion rates. If your visitors aren’t interested in the content on your site, then there’s very little chance they’ll be interested in what you have to offer. Learn more

  How to improve conversion rates with Behaviour : Get started by reducing bounce rates on important pages, testing messaging on your most popular entry pages, testing on the highest exit pages to reduce visitors leaving the site, learning pathways through Users Flow and Transitions to see if users are taking pathways that lead them to conversions or are the journeys currently long or go in odd directions. Discover how your visitors are responding to your content. The happier your visitors are to stay on your site, the more likely they’ll be able to move through the journey to help you achieve the goals you’ve set for your site.

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  Do privacy-focused industries need conversion optimization ?

  For industries that place extra emphasis on privacy and security, Matomo is a complete analytics tool that can cater for all your needs. You get the full benefits of a web analytics and conversion optimization platform as well as peace of mind knowing Matomo places emphasis on security/privacy and adheres strictly to GDPR.

  If you operate in a data sensitive industry like in government, healthcare, finance, education etc. you can rest assured knowing your user’s privacy is respected and that you will have 100% data ownership.

  Other conversion optimization metrics in Matomo to look at :

  Get a good indication that your conversion optimization efforts are working by knowing where to look and this starts by going through the metrics in your analytics. Below we list how you can make a start.

  “Best” metrics are hard to determine so you’ll need to ask yourself what you want your site to do. How do you want your users to behave or what kind of customer journey do you want them to have ?

  You can start with :

  • Decreasing abandonment rate
  • Decreasing bounce rate
  • Increasing interactions per visit
  • Reducing exit rates on pages that significantly impact your visitors to leave your site
  • Constantly test and learn what content resonates with your visitors
  • Look to advance more users through each stage of the conversion funnel
  • Improve your forms to increase submission rates
  • Always improve the conversion rate % for your goals e.g. if you currently have a 5% conversion rate for selling a product, aim for 10% ; if 30% of your visitors are downloading your e-book, then aim for 40%, then 50% and so on.

  Through optimizing your messaging, content or your page layouts, you will increase conversions by getting your visitors through a clear pathway to meet your website’s goal.

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• Organic Traffic : What It Is and How to Increase It

  19 septembre 2023, par Erin — Analytics Tips

  Organic traffic can be a website’s most valuable source of visitors. But it can also be the hardest form of traffic to acquire. While paid ads can generate traffic almost instantly, you need to invest time and energy into growing traffic from search engines.

  And it all starts with understanding exactly what organic traffic is. 

  If you want to understand what organic traffic is, how to measure it and how to generate more of it, then this article is for you.

  What is organic traffic ?

  Organic traffic is the visitors your website receives from the unpaid results on search engines like Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. 

  The higher your website ranks in the search engine results pages and the more search terms your website ranks for, the more organic traffic your site will receive. 

  Organic traffic is highly valued by marketers, partly because it has a much higher clickthrough rate than PPC ads. Research shows the top organic result has a 39.8% CTR compared to just 2.1% for paid ads.

  

  So, while you can pay to appear at the top of search engines (using a platform like Google Ads, for instance), you probably won’t receive as much traffic as you would if you were to rank organically in the same search engine.

  What other types of traffic are there ? 

  Organic traffic isn’t the only type of traffic your website can get. You can also receive traffic from the following channels :

  Direct

  People familiar with your site may visit it directly, either by entering your URL into their browser or accessing it through a bookmarked link ; both scenarios are counted as direct traffic.

  Social

  Social traffic includes visits to your website from a social media platform. For example, if someone shares a link to your website on Facebook, any user who clicks on it will be counted as social traffic. 

  Websites

  Social media isn’t the only way for someone to share a link to your website. Any time a visitor finds your website by clicking on a link on another website, it will be counted as “websites”. This is also known as referral traffic on some analytics platforms. 

  Campaign

  Campaign traffic encompasses both paid and unpaid traffic sources. Paid sources include advertising on search engines and social media (also known as PPC or pay-per-click), as well as collaborations with influencers and sponsorships. Unpaid sources, such as your organisation’s email newsletters, cross-promotions with other businesses and other similar methods, are also part of this mix. 

  In simpler terms, it’s the traffic you deliberately direct to your site, and you utilise campaign tracking URLs to measure how these efforts impact your ROI.

  A word on multi-touch attribution

  If you are interested in learning more about types of traffic to track conversions, then it’s important to understand multi-touch attribution. The truth is most customers won’t just use a single traffic channel to find your website. In reality, the modern customer journey has multiple touchpoints, and customers may first find your site through an ad and then search for more about your brand on Google before going directly to your website. 

  

  You are at risk of under or overestimating the effectiveness of a marketing channel without using multi-touch attribution tracking. With this marketing analytics model, you can accurately weigh the impact of every channel and allocate budgets accordingly. 

  What are the benefits of organic traffic ?

  Getting more organic traffic is a common marketing goal for many companies. And it’s not surprising why. There’s a lot to love about organic traffic. 

  For starters, it’s arguably the most cost-effective traffic your site can receive. You will still need to pay to create and distribute organic content (whether it’s a blog post or product page). You don’t need to pay for it to show up in a search engine. You continue to get value from organic traffic long after you’ve created the page, too. A good piece of organic content can receive high volumes of monthly visitors for years. That’s a stark difference from paid ads, where traffic stops as soon as you turn off the ad. 

  It also puts your website in front of a massive audience, with Google alone processing over 3.5 billion searches every day. There’s a good chance that if your target audience is looking for a solution to their problems, they start with Google. 

  Organic traffic is fantastic at building brand awareness. Usually, users aren’t searching for a specific brand or company. They are searching for informational keywords (“how to brew the perfect cup of coffee”) or unbranded transactional keywords (“best home workout machine”). In both cases, customers can use search engines to become aware of your brand. 

  Finally, organic traffic brings in high-quality leads at every marketing funnel stage. Because users are searching for informational and transactional keywords, your site can receive visits from buyers at every stage of the marketing funnel, giving you multiple chances to convert them and helping to increase the number of touch points you have.

  How to check your website’s organic traffic

  You don’t need to complete complex calculations to determine your site’s organic traffic. A web analytics solution like Matomo will accurately measure your site’s organic traffic. 

  In Matomo, on the left-hand sidebar, you can access organic traffic data by clicking Acquisition and then selecting All Channels.

  

  You’ll find a detailed breakdown of all traffic sources, including organic traffic, within the specified timeframe. The report is set to the current day by default, but you can view organic traffic metrics over a day, week, month, year or a date range of your choice.

  If you want to take things further, you can get a detailed view of organic visitors by creating a custom report for “Visitors from Search Engines only.” By creating a custom report with the segment “Channel Type is search”, you’ll be able to combine other metrics like average actions per visit, bounce rate, goal conversions, etc., to create a comprehensive report on your organic traffic and the behavior of these visitors.

  Matomo also lets you integrate Google, Bing and Yahoo search consoles directly into your Matomo Analytics to monitor keyword performance.

  How to increase organic traffic

  Follow these six tips if you want to increase the web traffic you get organically from search engines. 

  Create more and better content

  Here’s the reality : Most websites don’t get much traffic from Google. Only 40% of sites rank on the first page, and just 23% sit in the top three results. 

  Let’s take quality first. The best content tends to rise to the top of search engines. That’s because it gets shared more, receives more backlinks and gets more user engagement. So, if you want to appear at the top of Google results, creating mediocre content probably won’t cut it. You need to go above and beyond what is already there. 

  But you can’t just create one fantastic piece of content and expect to receive thousands of visitors. You need multiple pages targeting as many search terms as possible. The more pages search engines index, the more opportunities you have to rank. Or, to put it another way, the more shots you take, the greater your chances of scoring. 

  Use keyword research tools

  While creating great content is essential, you want to ensure that content targets the right keywords. These keywords receive a suitable amount of traffic and are easy to rank for. 

  Keyword research tools like Ahrefs of Semrush are the easiest way to find high-traffic topics to write about. Specifically, you want to aim for long-tail keywords. These are search terms that contain three or more words. Think “Nike men’s basketball shoe” rather than “basketball shoe.”

  

  As you can see, long tail keywords have a lower monthly search volume (250 vs. 1,100 using the example above) than broad terms but are much easier to rank for (14 vs. 41 Keyword Difficulty).

  

  While the above tools can help you find new topics to write about, Matomo’s Search Engine Keywords Performance plugin can help highlight topics you have already covered that could be expanded.

  

  The plugin automatically connects to APIs from all significant search engines and imports all the keywords people search for when clicking on your websites into your Matomo report. 

  If you find a cluster of keywords on the same topic that generates a lot of visitors, it may be worth creating even more content on that topic. Similarly, if there’s a topic you think you have covered but isn’t generating much traffic, you can look at revising and refreshing your existing content to try to rank higher. 

  Build high-quality backlinks

  Backlinks are arguably the most important Google ranking factor and the primary way Google assesses the authoritativeness of your site and content. Backlinks strongly and positively correlate with traffic — at least according to 67.5% of respondents in a uSERP industry survey. 

  There are plenty of ways you can create high-quality backlinks that Google loves. Strategies include :

  • Creating and promoting the best content about a given topic
  • Guest posting on high-authority websites
  • Building relationships with other websites

  Ensure you avoid building low-quality spam links at all costs — such as private blog networks (PBNs), forum and comment spam links and directory links. These links won’t help your content to rank higher, and Google may even penalise your entire site if you build them. 

  Find and fix any technical Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) issues

  Search engines like Google need to be able to quickly and accurately crawl and index your website to rank your content. Unfortunately, many sites suffer from technical issues that impede search engine bots. 

  The good news is that certain tools make these issues easy to spot. Take the Matomo SEO Web Vitals feature, for instance. This lets you track a set of core web vital metrics, including :

  • Page Speed Score
  • First Contentful Paint (FCP)
  • Final Input Delay (FID)
  • Last Contentful Paint (LCP)
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

  Take things even further by identifying major bugs and issues with your site. Crashes and other issues that impact user experience can also hurt your SEO and organic traffic efforts — so it’s best to eliminate them as soon as they occur. 

  

  Use Matomo’s Crash Analytics feature to get precise bug location information as well as the user’s interactions that triggered, the device they were using, etc. Scheduled reporting and alerts allow you to automate this task and instantly detect bugs as soon as they occur.

  Improve your on-page SEO

  As well as fixing technical issues, you should spend time optimising specific elements of your website to improve how it ranks in search engines. 

  There are several on-page elements you should optimise :

  • Image alt tags
  • URLs
  • Headings
  • Title tags
  • Internal links

  Your goal should be to include a target keyword in each element above. For example, your URL should be something like yoursite.com/keyword.

  It’s best to err on the side of caution here. Avoid adding too many keywords to each of these elements. This is called keyword stuffing, and Google may slap your site with a penalty. 

  Track your content’s performance

  One final way to increase organic traffic is to use an analytics platform to understand what content needs improving and which pages can be removed.

  

  Use an analytics platform like Matomo to see which pages generate the most organic traffic and which lag behind. This can help you prioritise your SEO efforts while highlighting pages that add no value. These pages can be completely revamped, redirected to another page or removed if appropriate. 

  Conclusion

  Organic traffic is arguably the most valuable traffic source your site can acquire. It is essential to monitor organic traffic levels and take steps to increase your organic traffic. 

  A good analytics platform can help you do both. Matomo’s powerful, open-source web analytics solution protects your data and your users’ privacy, while providing the SEO tools you need to send your organic traffic levels soaring. 

  Start a free 21-day trial now, no credit card required.