Google Analytics is a great free statistics
tool that provides comprehensive statistics on your site, and those
statistics can be used to help you boost your traffic. It is pretty
simple to install by simply inserting a snippet of code on your site.
Try to use something like a header or some piece of code that is on
every page, or in Blogger simply insert it into the html.
Considering how expensive some stat programs are, or the fact that
some of the free ones require an icon or image linking back to their
site, this is extremely valuable. In particular, this is great for
bloggers who might lack money to spend hundreds on a decent stats
package.
Once it’s loaded, you can simply visit the Google Analytics page for
detailed statistics. While the usefulness of this information might not
be obvious, there are many ways you can mine this information to help
you drive more traffic and better optimize your site for search engines.
Google Analytics Dashboard
This is the main page of the Google Analytics site. Even right here,
you can gather some useful information. You can see the number of
visits, percentage of new visitors, and average time on site over an
extended period. A key statistic here is the bounce rate option in the
top right pulldown menu. Look for trends here, and also find out if you
have a lot of visitors who hit your site and immediately bounce out.
Then you can play with your site to see if you can improve those
numbers. Add more internal links, for instance, in blog posts to
encourage internal clicking. Change your color scheme or tinker with
your design, and wait to watch your bounce rate to see if it’s impacted.
Google Referral Tracking
One of the best tools of the Google Analytics is the ability to
analyze your Google (and other search engine) traffic. You can look at
trends to see how many referrals you are getting from various search
engines, pay-per-click ads or external links. From the dashboard, just
click on “traffic sources.”
This
is a gold mine of information. If you click on a particular source,
like Google, you can see a graphic of referrals over a period of time.
This will tell you, for instance, if Google referrals have dropped off,
which should be a concern. It’s also nice when you get a bunch of
traffic from a social bookmarking site. That will show a whole bunch of
page-views, but can mask a drop-off in search engine referrals.
Better yet, examine the keywords. You can use this information to
expand on phrases where you are ranking well, or to revise pages that
currently drive traffic for totally irrelevant to your site. You can
also click on keywords, and then click “bounce rate” at the top right.
That will show you which keywords bring bad traffic that doesn’t stay
on site.
Google Analytics Map
Another
great feature is the Google Analytics map. If you’re running a general
interest site, it could be easy to overlook this cool feature. But you
can even use it just to see, for example, that you get a decent amount
of traffic from a specific country. That can help you cater your
content to that audience.
You can even narrow your statistics down to the city and state
level, which could be useful if you find you have a large audience in a
particular city.
Content Statistics
Use the content statistics to determine which pages are the most
popular, or which have high bounce rates and might need to be improved.
You can view your top content by title or by URL. You can also see
which content is keeping people on the page for the longest time, or
serve often as exit pages.
Google Analytics Downsides
Anything free can’t be perfect, right? There are a few downsides to
using it. For one thing, you are giving Google access to detailed
statistics on your site. There is also a lag in reporting, so the
statistics are not real-time. In the post, Three Reasons Google Analytics Fails for Seo, Eric Lander writes:
If you are serious about search engine optimization,
Google Analytics is NOT for you. I know it’s tough to look past the
(non-existent) price tag, ease of use and conversion tools — but trust
me when I say that Google Analytics is a flawed program for your needs.
So it’s important to know there are downsides. For many sites and
blogs, these aren’t crucial and probably aren’t reason enough to avoid
using this great free program. It also shouldn’t be your only source of
statistics, and you can use resources like Google Webmaster tools and
your hosting provider’s log tracking.
In the end, though, it is a great tool (certainly for the money) and
is especially important if you are not currently using detailed
statistics. This post just covers some of the basics, but there are
many uses for these statistics. If you currently use Google Analytics,
what’s your favorite use?
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