What is Google Analytics? 10 Features to Master

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What is Google Analytics? 10 Features to Master.

As you may already know Google analytics is a free tool provided by Google company that webmasters can use to track and analyze traffic to their blogs or websites. With Google Analytics you can be able to among other things; be able to:

• Know who is and has been visiting your blog/website and on which pages…

• Know how they were able to get to your site, where they came from…

• What activities or what pages they visited, the links they clicked on, and how they left…

And some other extra data that you may wish to track and analyze, especially if you are a business oriented internet entrepreneur.

• Quick background information about Google Analytics:

Urchin Software Corporation was acquired by Google in May 2005. During that time Urchin Software Corporation was a web based company that was providing “Urchin on Demand” service to its clients. That is history now, as we all know after the acquisition by Google, it was soon renamed Google Analytics and since then it has been transformed to become one of the best free online tracking services used by most website owners to track their traffic statistics.

You can read and stay tuned with latest information at the Google Analytics blog

• Setting up your free Google Analytics account.

It’s quick, simple and easy really; you will need to sign up with Google Analytics here and then follow the set up wizard that will lead you thorough the process of setting your own free account.

• How to insert Google Analytics JavaScript:

In order for Google Analytics to work on your site or blog, you will need to install the Google Analytics JavaScript code. Remember also that Google will only collect data from only those pages that you insert that JavaScript on.

For most websites all you need to do is to locate and find the end body tag on the page that you want to analyze and then paste the Google JavaScript code right above that tag. If you site contains the:

utmLinkPost() or urchinTracker(), utmLinker(), utmSetTrans(),

Then you must paste your Google JavaScript code right above this lines. If you have a Wordpress code and would rather not prefer to mess with any codes, you can use Wordpress Google Analytics blog plugin to install the codes for you.

Understanding Google Analytics.

Once you have installed Google Analytics, it will take a few hours before you can be able to log in and view your reports. Bear in mind that it only collects data related to your site or sites only and on specific pages that the Google JavaScript code has been inserted.

You will not be able to view results of other websites that you don’t own or manage, unless of course the site owner grants you the permission. Neither will you have data on pages on your own site that do not have the code inserted. Alright, here is a brief explanation of some of the data you will be able to view.

1.) Geography. Under this report you are going to be able to see the geographical location of where your visitors are coming from. This is a powerful information that can enable you to better target those visitors either locally, regional or internationally.

2.) Visitors. Here you are able to track visitors to your site on an hourly basis, daily, weekly or monthly. You are also able to see the number of repeat and first time visitors. You know how powerful that is.

3.) Incoming Links. With Google Analytics, you will now be able to know which campaign is yielding results by watching the incoming links, a factor that you can use as a determinant on where to concentrate more time or allocate more resources to yield better results.

4.) Pages. This will enable you to measure and know what pages are attracting more traffic and the movement of traffic within those pages. You can use this to improve upon pages with a high bounce rate by duplicating the results from lower bounce rate pages or those pages that are able to make visitors spend more time on them.

5.) Keywords. Know exactly which keywords brought visitors to you page. This is also a good area to discover other keywords to use in either setting up new pages on your site or on running campaigns. You can also track your popular or most searched keywords to see if those keywords resonate with your site visitors.

6.) Entrance Rates. Use this to understand and measure the exact pages that visitors use to arrive on your site, this can be your homepage, your product pages, your review pages, blog pages, content pages or any other type of pages that you have. You can use this to know what kind of pages are working for your particular niche.

7.) Bounce Rate. Bounce rates will help and reveal to you, what particular pages on your site that visitors are leaving most from. Of course if that page is a sign up page or check out page, then a high bounce rate won’t be a bad sign, but if that page happens to be you your long sales letter, then you will definitely want a low bounce rate.

Clearly the bounce rate will vary from one page to another depending on that particular page and its purpose. You can use this report though to improve on your overall site bounce rate by providing alternatives or interactive activities like serving a thank you page with a list of the most popular articles on your site after the a visitor signs up to your email list.

8.) Time. With this feature, Google Analytics measures the exact time that your visitors stayed on your site. You can use the incoming links and the time feature for instance to understand which pages visitors stay most on your site and where they come from and vice versa.

9.) Adwords. Google Analytics works in perfect harmony with Google Analytics and you can be able to synchronize both together. Google Adwords warrants its own post all together, why not read more about the power of Google Adwords here.

10) Goals. Use the goals feature to track and measure specific task accomplishment on your site. For example if your campaign on a particular page was to get your site visitors to sign up for your free eBook, then copy the path – URL into your goal feature in Google Analytics. By so doing you will then be able to measure your conversion levels.

Conclusion.

Of course there are other alternatives to Google Analytics for someone who would like more complicated statistics, but clearly for most of us – I personally don’t see the need for another paid service alternative to Google Analytics as things stand right now. Of course there are those of us who would go ahead and add their own Google Analytics add-on to fine tune their statistics.

If you are an affiliate marketer serious with affiliate marketing business then you really need to sign up for your free account and start analyzing your site traffic activities.