SEO for Beginners
What is Google Analytics

Knowing your visitors is vitally important if you want to run a successful business, whether it's online or off. If you have a business on the High Street, you watch who comes in, what they look at, what they buy. Online, you use visitor tracking. And this is where we come to Google Analytics.

So, what is Google Analytics?

At the heart of Google Analytics is the most comprehensive visitor tracking tool available. Larger hosting companies offer their own visitor tracking tools, but I would still recommend that you install Google Analytics, since it allows you to look at your visitor data from many different angles.

What Google Analytics Tells You

The information Google Analytics brings back is incredibly detailed. You can find out:

  • Exactly where (and I mean down to town level) your visitors are coming from
  • Which search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.) or social network (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc.) brings the most visitors to your site
  • What keyword phrase brought them to your site
  • Which pages they looked at
  • For how long they were on your site and on each page
  • Which part of the page they clicked on
  • How they moved through your site

You can learn what screen resolution visitors use, if they're on a mobile device like a tablet or phone and even if they're new visitors to your site or returning. Google Analytics is excellent for measuring the performance of your landing pages or advertising campaigns. For Adsense publishers, Google Analytics also seamlessly integrates with your Adsense account, showing you page views, clicks, and earnings.

So, what is Google Analytics? Any way you look at it, it's a treasure trove of visitor information for your business. One you certainly shouldn't miss out on.

Installing Google Analytics

Installing Google Analytics on your site is easy. Sign up for a Google Analytics account , then copy the bit of code Google provides and copy it into the HEAD section of your site. Before you can do this, Google may ask you to verify that you're the owner of the site you're applying for. Google provides detailed instructions of how to verify your site and also on how to place the analytics code. If you don't have access to the template of your site, send the code snippets Google gives you to your web development company and they'll add them for you.

Give it a day or so, and then look at the reports. Did you know where your visitors came from? Did you know what they would be looking for? Did you plan for them when you set up special offers and deals?

Now that you know what Google Analytics is and does, you can find out

Next:
How search engines work - and how they turn billions of pages into orderly search results.

And if you'd like a hand with setting up Google Analytics, or implementing your site's SEO, you can contact me here.