Google Analytics sounds a lot more complicated than it really is. It’s probably the word “analytics” that trips people up. It brings to mind college courses like probability and statistics that me and many of my pre-law friends avoided.
In reality, Google Analytics doesn’t have to be all that complicated. People can make them very detailed, but in its basic form, it gives a nice summary about website visits that you can use to adjust your content as needed.
What Exactly Is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics (GA for short) is a free Google tool that you give permission to access your website and gather information about visits and visitors. It works with pretty much all websites, even free ones like Weebly.
GA displays information on a dashboard, meaning it’s at-a-glance. Just like your car dash shows your speed, what gear you’re in, mileage, RPM, and so on, the GA dashboard shows the basics:
- Number of site hits, called sessions
- Number of unique users who visited your site
- Number of page views and pages viewed per session
- Bounce rate, which is the percentage of single-page sessions
- Percent of new sessions, which you compare to return visits
- Demographic data like the countries visitors are from
- Search engines used to find the site
- Keywords used to find the site; this no longer includes Google keywords
Data displays in a nice linear chart that lets you switch to hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly readouts. A pie chart shows new versus return visitors.
All this can be used to look at what things are working well and what might need some work. Think of it as a report card without complaints about how you talk too much in class.
How Does Google Analytics Help Me Find Ways To Improve My Website?
In response to privacy lawsuits, Google no longer displays keywords used by people who came to your site through Google search. It does, however, continue to show keywords from other search engines. Keywords are clues about what people are thinking about when they need your services. You can adjust your content to meet the needs of searchers.
Look at things like the bounce rate and new session rates. High ones mean people are only looking at one page. This isn’t necessarily bad if you have a lot of return visitors, or you're wanting them to read a single blog post; look at the page people return to and try to determine what’s so appealing. Perhaps it’s the tone, good links, or heavy use of statistics that keep them coming back. Maybe it's the image or video you used. See if you can duplicate the formula on other pages.
If you’re Google-centric, add a search box to your site, which you can monitor for keyword clues. I also suggest you open a Google AdWords account. This will give you access to keyword search tools. Contact me if this is something that interests you.
How Does Google Analytics Get To A Site?
You have to have a Google account to use Analytics, which means getting a Gmail account if you don’t already have one. Go to www.gmail.com to get started.
As you go through Gmail setup, Google will ask if you have a website; be sure to add it. If you have a Gmail account but never told Google about it, set up a GA account at www.google.com/analytics and follow the instructions. Google will create an HTML tracking code unique to your site. Copy and paste it into the HTML for each page you want to track—not the view-friendly page you probably use to create new pages or edit old ones. Google will also walk you through a verification test to make sure everything is in order. Give it 24 hours to activate.
If you have a WordPress site, you can download a GA plugin; Drupal also offers a GA module. YouTube, which is owned by Google, has lots of videos showing exactly how to set up GA for different website software packages.
Whether it's GA or another analytics tool, we feel it's very important to be tracking your website's activity and reacting to the data you receive. Making data-driven decisions about your inbound and social media marketing is going to make you more successful in whatever it is you're doing.
