Do you know how many people visit your website? The tools are free and easy to implement through Google Analytics.
You need:
Once you have a Google Analytics account, you can add your website to the account and it will generate a bit of code that you place on every page of your website that you want to track.
After Google starts tracking your site, you can view statistics on visits, page views, average time on your site, pages per visit and bounce rate. Most of the statistics are self-explanatory except for bounce rate which is the percentage of visits where the person left your site from the landing page (often the home page). This number is supposed to be a gauge of the relevance of your page however, it can be a little deceiving. If someone finds your page, locates the phone number or other piece of information on the home page and leaves, this would be a bounce. However, the user has found what they were looking for and it is relevant.
Once you have data for your website, check out the traffic sources tab. Direct traffic is where someone types in your web address in the browser (not in the search box). Referring sites are sites that link to your site which are a great source of traffic (and important to your ranking). Lastly, search engines direct traffic through keywords which are words and phrases that people are using to search and find you. Google tracks all this very handy information!
Analytics are a great tool to evaluate the effectiveness of your website and get information on how your site is being found and used. Have your web person install it today!
