Search Engine Optimisation
A guide to SEO for the small business owner
This site is maintained by Seggy T Segaran, author of the book “The battle to get traffic to your website”.
Google Analytics - How many are visiting your website?
Google Analytics can provide web site owners with a detailed analysis of traffic
to their site. Using the information that Analytics can provide it is possible to
fine tune a web site to continuously improve traffic and conversion to sales.
The initial information for a site provided on the dashboard is the graphical representation of the traffic to the site. This includes all the traffic to the site. The site usage statistics for this period are also displayed.
This shows visits to the web site, the number of pages that the average visitor looked at, he average visitor looked at and the amount of time they spent on the site. The Google Analytics also figures tell us how many of the visitors were new ones compared to repeat visitors. The bounce rate is a measure of how many users only look at one page before going away compared to users who look at multiple pages. The lower you can get the bounce rate the more relevant the web site content is to users.
Google Analytics also tells you where your traffic is coming from in a graphical form giving percentages for search engines, organic traffic and through the use of Adwords. It shows the % of users that are entering the URL of the site directly into their browsers to find it as well as those finding it via a hyperlink from another web site. This information is valuable in fine tuning the campaign to build more traffic to your site.
There is also a report from Google Analytics on which pages are most popular with visitors to the site.
While all this information is very useful, in my view the most useful information in optimising page content is to understand what keywords are being used by your visitors to find you. Google Analytics is able to provide you with this powerful information.
This information will be very useful in working out whether the visitors are finding you using the keywords for which you have optimised the site. If so you can be happy that your work has been successful. If not then this information will be useful in fine tuning your content. The time that people are spending on your landing page and the bounce rate will give you an idea of how successful you have been.
Summary: Google Analytics
Statistics on visitors to a web site is critical to the success of any campaign to increase traffic. The clear displays and the ease of set up makes Google Analytics one of the easiest tools for this purpose.