Google Analytics (google.com/analytics) is a free service offered by Google that monitors your site and gives you statistics about how many people are visiting it. You can use this information to find out how your site is doing and change your traffic strategy to get better results. And I mentioned already that it’s free, right?
Google Analytics shows where your traffic is coming from, how much you’re getting, and what they’re doing when they get to your site. Everybody with a website who cares whether it gets traffic or not needs to be using Google Analytics and here are the reasons why.
Where Do They Come From?
Probably the best thing about Google Analytics is that it shows you where your traffic is coming from. It lets you see your traffic sources and how many visitors you’re getting from each. This is essential for your SEO strategy because it shows you what’s working and what’s not.
For example, let’s say that I’m submitting articles to article directories with a backlink to my site. After a few weeks of submitting articles, I can see exactly which directories are getting me traffic and which are getting me zilch. I can then drop the sucky ones.
Know Your Visitors and What They’re Doing
You can use Analytics to get demographic information about who’s viewing your site and what they’re doing. You can analyze geography, language, what kind of browser they’re using, and other demographic info. It also lets you choose specific time frames from one day to the entire time you’re site’s been there.
The program lets you track visitor navigation. You can see which pages they visited and when to see if you’re site navigation is working the way you want it to.
Fix Your Content
Analytics shows you the ‘bounce rate’ for each page. The bounce rate is the percentage of entrances to a page that leave the site immediately. This means that they didn’t like what they found there. Either your content was weak or it didn’t deliver what the referring site promised. You can use bounce rate to get rid of low quality traffic that you’re paying for.
Lots to Do and See
And there’s much more. Google Analytics has more than 80 different reports for you to analyze and pore over, and the interface is really easy with drop down menus. They offer tutorials, FAQs and whatever other information you need to figure out what all of this data means.
In truth, most people only check on a few things that really concern them, but it’s fun to find out what else you can do with the service.
Google Analytics isn’t perfect and there are software programs that give you more customizable reports and better support – but they’re not free! For a free program, Google Analytics is absolutely incredible. You can manage your entire SEO campaign using it.
Here’s your Tweet (be sure to include the link to your content or article!):
We haven’t found a better #FREE webmaster tool than Google Analytics. If you aren’t using it, why not?!
