Article printed from SEO-News: http://www.seo-news.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.seo-news.com/archives.html

Five Simple but Powerful Ways to Use Google Analytics
By Anna Williams (c) 2009

If you haven't started using Google Analytics on your
website(s) or blogs, I highly highly recommend it. If
you've set up an account but rarely look at it - I
recommend you start looking.

First of all - what is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free analysis tool which gives you
information on where your website visitors are coming from,
which pages they visit, how long they stay, and a lot more.
There are plenty of paid stat counters available which
present data in different ways, but Google Analytics is one
of the best, and it's free.

One can over-analyze or under-analyze any website. Some
people spend too much time checking stats, analyzing, and
planning, and don't spend enough time writing good content
and getting new readers to their blogs.

On the other side of the pendulum, you could go on week
after week, blindly publishing content and flailing along
with offsite promotion, without seeing what results your
campaigns are getting, which type of content is the most
popular for your visitors, and which traffic-generation
techniques are getting the best results.

The first is like tuning your car's engine every day
without ever turning on the ignition, the second is like
driving in the dark.

In between, we have a happy balance.

I find that the best times to check stats are when I don't
have a lot of time to do a more intense project, or when I
am a bit too tired to do anything more "heavy." Sometimes
just before I go to bed at night is a good time to check
into what has been happening between my visitors and my
websites' pages. I can browse and poke around in my
Analytics account and learn quite a lot - even with minimal
energy.

Here are five simple and powerful ways to use Google
Analytics:

1. Find out which of your website's pages are getting the
most traffic, and optimize those pages.

If you are running ads on the pages, make sure they are
properly placed and updated. If you are linking to
affiliate products, make sure your links are up-to-date and
that you aren't missing any links, or new products which
should be there. If you are using that page for some other
purpose, such as to generate subscriptions or whatever the
case may be, make sure that the page is laid out as well as
possible. This can be helpful if you have a large website
which has a long "to do" list and many things to optimize
or tweak. By just starting with the most heavily-trafficked
pages, you will get the maximum results from your efforts
and also know where to start.

2. Find out which referrers are generating the most
traffic, and continue any actions you have been taking to
generate traffic from those referrers. For example, if you
see that Twitter is generating a large amount of targeted
traffic, you can increase your activity on Twitter. If you
see that your article submissions are getting new visitors
from article directories, you can make a note not to drop
those out - or possibly increase them. Conversely, if you
see that you have been spending time/money on a
traffic-generation method which is not getting very far,
you can stop wasting your time on it (presuming you have
given it time to take effect).

3. Find out which keywords you are ranking the best for,
and see which ones you can "push to the top."

If you had a website on dogs, for example, and found that
you were ranking at #30-#40 on Google for many keywords,
but ranking #11 for, lets say, "dog chew toys," you might
want to work on increasing your rankings on dog chew toys
and focus more of your SEO efforts on this term (of course
there are other factors you would consider as well, such as
the searches and competition for this term). Climbing from
position #31 to #20 will generally not get you a huge
increase of traffic. But climbing from position #11 to
position #3 almost certainly will. Focus first on keywords
or key phrases that have the best chance of ranking high in
the near future, and then move on to the others.

4. Find out which pages keep your visitors' attention for
the longest.

If the average visitor on Page A stays for 5 seconds, while
the average visitor to Page B stays for 150 seconds, the
likelihood is that your visitors find Page B's content more
interesting than Page A's.

5. Look at the graph of your bounce rate.

This tells you how many people left your site without
visiting a second page. Depending on the website and the
page, this may be a good or bad thing. But if you have a
blog or a content site, it is usually a good sign when
people stick around to view more of your posts and content
before they leave. If your bounce rate increased or
decreased after you made a certain change, you can opt to
revert that change (if bounce rate increased) or keep it
(if bounce rate decreased). For example, if I changed the
theme of my Wordpress blog and then noticed a
date-co-incident increase in my bounce rate, I might
consider changing it back  :) This statistic can be used
in many ways - it will depend on the nature of your blog.

There are many, many other ways to use Google Analytics.
The above are great ways to start, if you aren't familiar
with or used to using this tracking system. Google
Analytics can give you a far greater understanding of
what's happening on your site and can guide you to continue
on successful actions and drop the unsuccessful.
===========================================================
For more information on how to use Google Analytics,
including video tutorials, and links to free information
including a free eBook download on this subject, visit
Anna's blog, at http://buildingfromnothing.com/
understanding-google-analytics-how-to-use-it/
===========================================================

Copyright © 2009 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SEO-News is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.