Part 1 of 3 — It’s Time to Get Analytical!
When you have developed the content and tuned your site to the best of your ability…It’s time to get Analytical!
In this ‘Understanding Website Analytics’ tutorial series ,we will discuss how to use Google Analytics, interpret the data, and implement your new knowledge to make your site more powerful, easier for clients to find, and improve your conversion rates (sales, donations, or whatever “actions” you want your visitors to perform.
For the next week we will devote our time together to building a firm understanding about:
- Google Analytics
- Search Queries
- Keywords page lists
- Internal Links page
- Subscriber Stats
- Trouble shooting tools
- Google’s Webmaster Technical Guidelines
- Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines
Then putting it all together to optimize our WordPress sites.
Optimizing Your WordPress Website is not a ‘set it and forget it’ tool or technique
Optimizing your WordPress website is an iterative process. You need to measure what’s happening on your site in order to know if your ‘Sane Approach to SEO’ efforts are successful. To do that effectively, you will need to understand website analytics.
Web analytics is the collection, analysis and reporting of data for purposes of understanding how visitors use your WordPress site and to report how effective the information structure of the site is in relation to search engine optimization. Web analytics provides information about the number of visitors to a website and the number of page views. Analytics helps the site owner or manager measure site visitor usage patterns and popularity of site information. Additionally it helps gage the effectiveness of print or media promotional campaigns. Website analytics offer the site owner a series of metrics, by which they can make sound financial decisions based on data, rather than emotion or wishful thinking. There are two types of web analytics, onsite and offsite. This tutorial series will discuss onsite web analytics. In particular we will focus on Google Analytics, the most widely used on-site web analytics service. New tools, like heat maps and session replay that provide additional layers of information will be reviewed in future posts.
Google Analytics is the “Check” part of the ‘Plan/Do/Check/Act’ quality improvement cycle.
- Plan/Do/Check/Act
Using Google Analytics, you can interpret the data, and implement your new knowledge to make your site more powerful, easier for clients to find, and improve your conversion rates (sales, donations, or whatever “actions” you want your visitors to perform).
The Google Analytics tools are free and easy to set up.
In addition to free access to the Google Analytics tool set, Google provides many educational resources for those new to analytics. Google offers numerous free videos on a dedicated You Tube Channel to help you get the most out of their Analytics tool set. Even experienced users should revisit the many resources Google makes available to help you get the most out of your Google Analytics campaign.
Google Analytics helps you understand what is, and isn’t, working, and gives you the resources to analyze what is happening and gives you a path forward to tweak the site to meet your performance goals.
It’s Time to Get Analytical! is part one of a three-part Hands On WordPress Series, How to use Google Analytics on your Website
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