Most would agree that it is important to be able to track your progress so you can see what is working and what is not. Tracking allows you to see where your traffic is coming from and it can show you areas that need some improvement.
Google Analytics – What Is It?
Google Analytics is a service offered by Google for free that generates statistics for websites that show information about the traffic that is visiting the website. This free service is promoted as a tool that website owners can use to get information about their website’s performance and it is also a very well known and commonly used service. Of the ten thousand busiest websites online, fifty-seven percent of those websites use Google Analytics.
Using Google Analytics is extremely easy because it only requires you to insert a couple lines of code on your website. The statistical data that Google Analytics provides you with will allow you to see what your website’s strengths are as well as what your website’s weaknesses are. Information like that can help you use your website and the internet to get the most return on your investment and get the biggest benefits as far as increased sales and profit.
There are many statistics that Google Analytics can provide you with, including the ability to identify the keywords that are attracting the most customers to your website. Other statistics that are available by using Google Analytics include the number of visitors on your website, the number of pages that those customers click on, the length of time they spend on your website and what your bounce rate is. The bounce rate is the number of visitors that click away from the page right after they arrive on it.
You can use information like that provided by Google Analytics to see what aspects of your website are doing very well and you can also decide which aspects of your website you need to make some improvements on. You can use Google Analytics to measure the results of any optimization efforts you have made as well. All of this is important because any good business needs to know how their investment in their website and online presence is paying off for them.
Advantages of Using Google Analytics
If you know the statistics that are vital to your website’s performance, you are able to see what is performing well on your website and what is not. Google Analytics offers you a system that allows you to set all kinds of parameters to help you decide whether or not a particular part of your website is doing what you wanted it to do for your business. As an example, you can look at the number of visitors that came to your website during a specific period of time. You can look into that information even more by looking at what part of the world those visitors are from.
Google Analytics provides businesses with quantifiable answers for statistical questions. You will be able to see if the visitors that came to your website came from a link on another website or if they found your business website through a search engine. You will also be able to get answers to questions like “Which pages did my visitors view?” and “How long were my visitors on my website?”
There are many other pieces of statistical information that can be obtained by using Google Analytics. You can find out what kind of browser your visitors were using, what internet connection speed your visitors had, and you can even find out if the visitors on your website turned on their JavaScript to maximize the graphics on your website. This more user specific information can help you tailor your website to the preferences of the majority of your visitors.
How well your keywords are benefiting you is another big part of what Google Analytics can do for you and for your website. It shows you which of your keywords you currently rank for and which of your keywords are bringing you the most visitors. Knowing which of the keywords you are currently using is performing the best can help you determine which keywords your entire website should be optimized for to attempt to increase your ranking and get more traffic to your website.
You can spend hundreds of dollars on programs to track your website’s statistics or you can utilize Google Analytics for free. Google Analytics actually has just as many as and in some cases more statistics than some of those programs you can purchase. It is your choice if you would like to take advantage of Google Analytics or if you would prefer to purchase another analytics program, but you definitely need to have some way of tracking your website’s performance in place so you can keep track of your website’s progress and measure the success of any improvements that you make.
