Web analytics for dummies

Both marketers and investors will want to know what results their SEO tactics are yielding and which areas need to be further improved.

Web analytics are software tools that will capture data relating to the use of your website. You will be able to see how visitors interact with your website, which pages are visited for how long, which products get the most attention, which search engines refer the most people to your site and even which search engine your customers or clients that are spending money are coming from.

Analysing website trends is highly recommended if you want to have a successful internet presence. Web analytics is a great tool for measuring this success but it also plays an integral part in deciding which areas are in need of improvement. Realising that SEO optimization is not a once off project, but a continued process of development, is your first step to understanding web analytics. For a website to sustain a positive growth trend and with that continued revenue increases it would need to be constantly monitored, analised and updated. Much like in the personal eye-to-eye business world, if a sales person does not stay updated with the latest information and product related news, your customer would not stay loyal to you.

In business, customer or client loyalty will only get you as far as the benefits that you offer your client. That includes great product knowledge, the latest news and developments and fantastic customer service. It is much the same on the web.

The two major ways of using web analytics to collect data from a website is web server logging and page tagging with JavaScript. Web server logging is very effective but can add extra costs to the process. Page tagging with JavaScript is probably the most used as it can be hosted and eliminates the software development and shipping costs.

Page tagging uses the web browser of the visitors to a website to collect information and is cost effective. If you wish to use this method, you sign up for the service, pay up-front installation and set-up fees as well as your monthly fees. These are based on traffic volume and website transactions.

Page tagging will have a JavaScript picture on each of a website’s pages, and when a visitor is visiting the page, his browser will send that picture back to the website’s vendor. The vendor will then collect the data from all visits to the site, which can either be viewed in online reports or it can be sent back in reports according to the specific request of the website owner or developer. This data can then be used to do your web analytics and in turn to improve your SEO strategy.

Web analytics with specific reference to search engine optimisation will give you the ability to segment your visitors and define how they find your website and which search engines were the most effective in creating more revenue. You will also be able to track visitor movement on your website and see which process of the purchase might deter them from completing the transaction.

Related posts:

1. Offsite Web Analytics
2. Chart your course with web analytics
3. From SEO to web analytics
4. New features added to Google Analytics
5. How Google Analytics can help you optimise your website

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 4:42 pm and is filed under SEO Basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.