Whether your website traffic is going badly or your online marketing is doing great, you need to know why and how is that happening. That’s where site analytics come in.
Site analytics is a tool that generates information about your website visitors and what they do on your site. It would even tell you what contents and links are doing you good or harming your site. So if your serious about monetizing your site, an analytics tool is a must from the moment your site is live or online.
It’s great to use Google analytics but just like anti-malware tools, it would be wiser always to use two. That way, you’re surer to see what the other one is missing on.
What Can Google Analytics Give You
These are the types of information that Google Analytics generate:
1. Visits -information about new and loyal or returning visitors
2. Absolute Unique Visitors -information about your first-time visitors
3. Page Views -information about what contents on your site are being visited
4. Time on Site -information about length of time your visitors spend on your site
5. Bounce Rate -tells you the percentage of visitors who just take a look at your site and then leave without exploring.
6. Direct Traffic -information about the the number of visitors which came by using your URL or site address into their web browsers
7. Referring Sites -this might be the most important information you could get. This is where you learn which of your links gives you the most traffic.
8. Search Engines -another important information where you can learn what keywords your visitors are using to find your site so you can concentrate on those keywords and promote it.
9. Landing Pages -pages or contents from which your visitors are visiting your site.
Now compare those with these features which I get from another commercial analytics tool:
~SEO online training
~smart keyword marketing
~automated link popularity building
~website optimization for SEs
~customizable and accurate Ranking and Backlink reports
~website error troubleshooting and usability testing
Now don’t think it’s that simple. The bigger your online business is, the more you should study all the details of the analytics information. Big companies hire employees or freelancers just to analyze analytics (no pun).
I suggest you concentrate on traffic sources because traffic is the bloodline of any website. It’s how and where your visitors and customers find out why they should visit your site.
There are so many free analytics programs you can use but just be careful – some have spyware installed in their code. I use WebCEO together with Google Analytics and so far, there are no problems.