To get your FREE copy of the Special Report:
"The 7 Biggest Internet Marketing Mistakes"
To get your FREE copy of the Special Report:
"The 7 Biggest Internet Marketing Mistakes"
Google Analytics is a useful tool to help you understand some important aspects about your website. It doesn't tell you everything you need to know, but it does help you draw some conclusions and hopefully improve your site's performance. The results mean more as your site matures and length of time online increases.
Any SEO expert or SEO consultant will advise you that it isn't enough to have a search engine optimization plan. You must analyze the results of the plan to see which strategies are working and which ones should be modified or replaced.
These are some main feature points regarding Google Analytics.
1. Site Visits
Every individual visit to your site, whether the visitor goes to several pages or only the landing page, counts as a visit. Someone who leaves and comes back is counted for a visit each time they return.
You assume two things occur as visits increase; 1) more new visitors are coming to your website, and 2) some of the previous visitors are returning. Of course, you want the numbers to increase as you continue your marketing efforts.
2. Number of Page Views
Once someone lands on your home page, they may choose to navigate your site to obtain more information. A visitor may even visit several pages, and each one counts as a page view.
An increase in page views indicates that visitors are finding your material either via the navigation on your website, landing there based on searches for a particular keyword, following links from other websites, or arriving as direct traffic. You want to have visitors to many of your pages, not just the home page.
3. Pages per Visit
Simple math gives the average number of pages a site visitor views after arriving at your site. Page views divided by visits is the formula. What it tells you is whether your landing page was interesting to most visitors.
Don't be too surprised that you have less than a 2-page average when you first launch a site. Actually, 1.5 is not a bad start even for an SEO expert. If you continually add interesting original content to your site, this number should increase as time passes.
4. Bounce Rate
If your visitors don't go past the first page, they are considered to "bounce" off. There are several reasons why this happens. Some people may come to your site by accident.
This can happen because of typing your URL instead of one they intended or selecting a link to your site because they think it is something else. Some may be totally unhappy with the site once they see it or they just take a quick look and decide they want to go somewhere else.
5. Percentage of New Visitors
If your site's cookie is in a visitor's browser, they are not considered a new visitor, but many people clear their browsing history regularly so that they appear to be new visitors, and this obviously presents an error factor. If the number of new visitors tends to increase each month, it means something you are doing is attracting more people.
6. Average Time Spent on the Site
As you might guess, if this number rises, people are finding reasons to stay on your site after they arrive there. It is hard for analytics to maintain great accuracy with this feature, so it can seem erratic from month to month. Hopefully it means visitors are finding useful content and products/services that interest them.
7. Source of Traffic
The traffic sources overview section shows you where your traffic is coming from. You want a mixture of traffic sources and these include referring sites, direct traffic, and search engines.
Referring sites are good meaning you have links coming to your website from other websites. This could be from article resource boxes you have in your content posted in articles directories, for example. Search engine traffic means people are finding you in their searches and clicking through to your site.
These seven features indicate some valuable information about your website. Google Analytics is a useful tool and an SEO expert will use it in conjunction with other website monitoring resources. Knowing how your site is performing is the key to tweaking SEO efforts to maximize results.