Semantic analytics is a new concept which has gained popularity in the past few years. In simple terms, semantic analytics means combining semantic technology (schema markup) with Google Analytics. When you add your schema markup into Google Analytics, you are able to add context your reporting capabilities and gain business insight that was previously impossible to capture. Publishers will now be able to see which authors drive the highest traffic or which categories readers are most interested in. With this, you will be able to find new ways to group publisher content. E-commerce retailers will be able to see data about specific product characteristics such as clothing color or necklace length. This could allow online stores to create more specific sales forecasts based on which items sell more at certain times of the year. Multi-location business owners will be able to separate insights for each location and create goals for each region (city, state, etc.). Prior to now, adopting semantic analytics took 40+ hours and was very manual. Schema App has solved this problem with their Semantic Analytics solution. Now anyone with schema markup can augment their analytics to get valuable insights.
Pre-requisites
- You must have Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics already set up (with access to edit for both)
- You must have a Schema App subscription
1. Authorize Google Analytics
- Go to the Semantic Analytics new page in Schema App and click on “authorize access” to connect your Google Analytics Account to Schema App so that we can customize dimensions and reports for you, saving you hours of setup time.
- Once connected it will show a green status under Google Analytics Setup.
2. Create a Report
In this step, you will choose from Schema App’s default reports. For the Beta, we ask that you start with the Publisher report. The other two reports, e-commerce and multi-location will add the appropriate markup to your Analytics but will not create a default report in GA yet. It is our goal to get out these two reports the week of November 14th. If you have a e-commerce or multi-location site we would love to develop this report with you.
Once the report is saved, you will see the following screen.
Schema App has created report templates based on the most common use cases for semantic analytics. The 3 existing templates are for Publishers, E-commerce, and multi-location businesses. They can be found below.
Publishers
This template is meant for websites which are content heavy and have many blog posts or articles. It focuses on the schema vocabulary classes Article and BlogPosting. With this template, you will be able to find out if there is more traffic or higher goals converted based on category, keyword, or author. A practical application would be to identify which author drives the most traffic to your website, or which category your users are most interested in.
E-Commerce
This template is meant for businesses who have online stores. With this template, you will be able to track product data like Category, AggregateRatings, etc. This template focuses on the schema vocabulary classes Product and ProductModel You can track nearly any parameter about a product, and use the insight to make strategic decisions. Products can be grouped into specific categories like color, length, or size and these groups can be individually analyzed to identify trends.
Multi-Location
This template is useful for businesses with multiple physical locations. It will allow you to identify which locations are getting the highest amount of traffic. This template focuses on the schema vocabulary class LocalBusiness. This can be useful when looking to identify search performance based on store location, and it is best used by companies with over 10 locations. Address locality, region, postal code, and street are all parameters which can be tracked.
3. Setting Up Google Tag Manager
Schema App will now ask you to add a new custom HTML Tag to Google Tag Manager for Semantic Analytics. Why? Schema App uses this tag to discover your Schema Markup on a page. Note, if you are using Google Tag Manager for your Google Analytics, you will want the Semantic Analytics tag to be fired AFTER the Google Analytics Tag. See instructions below.
If you are not familiar with Google Tag Manager, take a look at their help page here, or watch the setup tutorial here.
4. Add Template Report to Google Analytics
In this step, you will import the Schema App Template Report into your Google Analytics Account. This of this as Schema App’s example of how you can view the new schema markup in analytics. After you have connected Google Tag Manager, you will need to click on the box to import the report. Select the account you want to import the report into, and name the report.
Your Semantic Analytics are now setup with your report. Note, that Google Analytics will only add data into this report moving forward. So if you want to report with schema dimensions, set them up now so they are available to report on later.
You can also use all the schema data in analytics to augment your existing reports. You will find the schema class or property under the Secondary Dimensions.
Custom Reports
In addition to the template reports, you can decide exactly what schema markup data to use in Google Analytics, allowing you to easily create custom reports based on your specific situation. The ability to create custom dimensions is one of the most powerful features of Schema App Analytics. You can add schema markup to a nearly endless combination of parameters to create insightful reports. These custom reports can be saved, renamed, and/or reused at any time in the future.
