Top 7 Reasons to use Google Analytics on your website.

Google AnalyticsIf you’re looking to track the effectiveness of your website, Google Analytics is a great, free online tool to use!

I use Google Analytics because it tells me where my traffic is coming from, how much traffic, when it comes, which posts generate the most traffic, if I’m hitting my goals/objectives, or if I need to make a change…in a nutshell, Google Analytics helps me to work smarter, not harder!

Here are my top seven reasons to use Google Analytics.

  1. Find out how visitors find your site and why.  Google Analytics provides you with your traffic sources. Google organic is the number one source of traffic to this blog.  “Google Organic” means that they found my site directly through the Google search engine.  And guess what, I don’t pay for these, they are 100% free! How do I do this? I use keywords in my blog posts that I KNOW my target audience is looking for.

Here’s my Traffic Source breakdown for the month of September, plus some interesting things to note:

Top 10 traffic sources for September 2013

-Sources #1, 4, 5 and 6 are ALL search engine driven. (You can read more about how I do this whole keyword + SEO thing here).

-My #2 source is all of YOU that come to my site directly – my on-going, dedicated, loving biz and creative friends!

-Pinterest is my #3 referrer – I spend about 10 minutes a week on Pinterest.  I typically will post an image from my latest blog post and will check out a few of my favorite pinners.

-Facebook is #7 – I spend about 5 minutes a week on my business page where I link my latest blog post(s).  Last week I started kicking this marketing strategy up a bit and so now it’s more like 15 minutes. (You can read more about this on my post ‘Rethinking Facebook Strategy’).

-I really need to shout out and THANK referral sources #8: The TomKat Studio and #10: Jasmine Star Blog. Here’s why…

In September, I saw a comment from a reader of the highly visited site The TomKat Studio who asked, “would you know how to do this (DIY) in Photoshop?”  I decided to help a girl out and wrote a post that gave her and my readers (+ anyone else who was interested) the Photoshop DIY tututorial.  I also left a comment following one of Jasmine Star’s posts.

Posting Comments

The key here is: Being a regular reader and commenter on other blogs in your niche is a great way to build your brand and bring some traffic over to your own blog!

  1. Find out where your visitors live. Knowing the geographic location of your users will help you better target your marketing and advertising campaigns. A shout out to my U.S., Canadian (#2) and UK (#3) friends – what a small world it is!
  2. Determine the days people visit. Monday – Thursday are my highest traffic days, weekends are low.  I use this information to tell me when my target audience is viewing my site and thus, when I should be posting.
  3. Customize your website for greater exposure. With the help of this tracking tool, you can make ongoing changes to your website by changing the content, improving pages and adding additional links to attract a greater number of visitors (and a longer duration on your site). I have a lot of visitors and customers interested in booth display help – so I recently added a weekly trade show inspiration post to the blog.
  4. Find out what parts of your site visitors like and don’t like. It’s important to identify specific pages and posts your visitors like (and don’t like) the most.  This will help you know which pages are popular and measure effectiveness of certain topics, products or services.
  5. Optimize goal conversion. This tool allows you to identify where in the online sales process your visitors are leaving – giving you a chance to optimize your conversion process.
  6. It is completely FREE. There is no monthly subscription or fees to use this product. All you need to sign up for Google Analytics is a Gmail account or an email hosted by Google. If you need help adding Google Analytics to your site, this post will walk you through the process!

So there you have it – the top 7 reasons to use Google Analytics on your website!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a message below or email: tana@yourmarketingbff.com

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