Dear Stephanie,

Google analytics are pretty simple to use.  You sign up through http://www.google.com/analytics and then set up a profile for your site (it will take you through the process).  Once you have your profile set up, you can get a code to add to your website.  Go into the HTML view of your site and drop the entire code script into your page using the cut and paste function.  Drop it in right before the "/body" tag which is usually right before the end of the page.  (There may be some footer info after it, but it's close.)  Then you wait.

You'll need a few months of data to establish a baseline of traffic - perhaps more since you're starting a new site,  If you still have access to your old site, don't forget to put 401 redirects from your old pages to your new ones so that you don't lose the benefit of your old SEO.  And if your new site comes with a new URL, don't forget to register your URL with DMOZ.com and link to your site from all of your public profiles.  This will cause your site to get indexed faster and get you traffic faster. 

Once your google analytics are up, you'll want to start looking at the numbers.  Check to see what blog posts yielded what kind of traffic (you'll have to compare by dates and those clicking through from Active Rain).  Google will tell you what the "referring sites" are, so that you know where people are coming from.  Basically, you're shooting for more of what makes people come to you.

You can also set up "conversion goals" which registers how many times people actually do what you want them to do when they are on your site.  (I.E. do you want them to fill out a "contact us" form or order a white paper, etc.)  And, you can use analytics to test different pages to see which ones convert better.  This is what marketers call A/B Testing.

Whew - I've got so much more to tell you about this.  There's no way I can get it all in here.  Clearly, I need to do a podcast on this topic.  I'll let you know when I do.  Best of luck with your new site!