SEO Basics: What Your Website’s Statistics Can Tell You

One of the first items on the “to do” list when a new website is rolled out is to set up statistical tracking. While there are many programs, both paid and free available, one of the most popular ones that is used are called Google Analytics.

If you already have a Google email account for your business, you need only visit http://www.google.com/analytics/ to begin setting up this helpful tool. Once set up, you will be provided with analytics code that you are then able to add to your pages. This analytics code will record activity on those pages and put that activity into the form of a report for you.

One of the nice things about this set up, is that you do not need a separate account or login to track multiple websites. One account does it all.

Keep this in mind if you are choosing between multiple Gmail accounts for the one to use with Analytics. The account that you choose will also be used for the handling of other Google tools related to your business, such as Adwords and Webmaster Tools. In case you are wondering, you do not have to be running an Adwords campaign to use this statistical tool.

Google Analytics gives you the ability to analyze several SEO factors such as:

• The amount of traffic your site receives from both unique and returning visitors
• Keywords and keyword phrases that attracted visitors to your website
• Referring sources for traffic (Where did the visitor arrive from)
• Marketing effectiveness (which ads are producing visitors)
• Conversion rates (How many people arrived on a page and then clicked on your ad)

The above is just a sample of the possible areas you might track using a program such as Google Analytics. There is an extensive database of how to information available to help you get the most out of this program.

Another tracking software you might want to consider is called Tracking202. Tracking202 is available in both a free and paid version. The free version is hosted on your own server, which is turn, helps keep your tracking data private.

The Pro or paid version is a bit pricey in my books for someone just starting out, but none-the-less, provides many tools established online marketers recommend. Here are some links to help you find out more:

Tracking202 Gateway – Choose Free or Paid Versions
Product Comparison Page – Compare features of the products this company has available

Making Changes

In a way, tracking website activity is a bit like having a crystal ball that helps you diagnose what is right and what is wrong on your site. But you do need a bit of patience on your side as it takes time for them to be gathered sufficiently to give you predictable trends. Even with taking this lag time into consideration, this type of tool will still provide some information that you are able to make use of fairly quickly.

One of those bits of information made available by tracking website activity is what keywords or phrases are drawing in visitors. Like everything else, learning the best keywords to optimize for your website may take a bit of time. Using the statistics provided for page views and visitors will keep you informed on which of the keywords you have chosen to use are in fact attracting visitors.

The results may be surprising at times and you may even come across keywords and phrases that you hadn’t thought to optimize for. Insight into those that are not performing well gives you the opportunity to remove them and insert higher quality replacements.

Your website’s statistics can also give you a heads up on which of your content pages is working the hardest for you. A low number of page views may indicate that the content is not optimized enough to be given priority by the search engines. Take a closer look at the pages with lower visitor rates and ensure that those pages have been properly optimized to attract the attention of the search engine bots.

Who knew that SEO basics could be so easy? Finding out what you website’s statistics can tell you will give you an edge over others who never bother to optimize. They provide information that is useful from the time the website is rolled out and continue to show trends as they develop along the way.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com