It’s Analytics Time… (basic principles, but important)

I have taken lately to writing about the BASIC Principles of website management and search engine marketing that seem to be getting overlooked. Today’s subject: How often do you track the traffic that comes to your site? How tightly do you analyze it?

One of the lost arts of online marketing lately seems to be simply looking at analytics and asking the “W” questions:

Who’s been visiting my site?

What time did they come to my site and does that play into any of the above?

The answers to these questions need to be reviewed OFTEN to see the trends “magically” appear. We did this with a group of real estate bloggers the other day and the results were easily seen (using Google Analytics).

Who: Very easy to get down to geographics and see (maybe not the names) most of the usable marketing information about who’s visiting your site.

Where did they come from: If you have not done it lately, look at your TRAFFIC SOURCES and REFERRALS. You can not only see which site they came from, but what keywords they were searching for.

Why did they come? You can find much insight into that by the Keywords they were using. You can also see if you are hitting the target by the BOUNCE RATES that come from each phrase. Did they get what they were looking for? Is there a way to GIVE them what they want or at least offer it to them for a piece of information if not a price?

In some industries, even factors such as what time of day they came to your site matters.

So if you haven’t spent some time digging through your analytics lately, IMO, now’s a really good time.

Best;

Eric