No, you don't have to be a website analytical geek to enjoy website analytics. You don't even have to enjoy them, but you should be keeping up with them for your website. I'll be talking here about Google Analytics, the very comprehensive toolset that reports on the traffic to your website.
What Are We Measuring?
There are a number of metrics that we want to track for our websites. Here are three of the main categories broken out in the left navigation structure of Google Analytics:
The line items with arrows on their left also break down farther. These aren't all of the things Google Analytics tracks, but they're the ones I look at the most. We'll not talk about all of these items, but let's go over some of the ones that I like to keep track of.
Visitors
New vs. Returning
This data shows my visitors for one month split out by new visitors versus those returning to the site. As you can see, I get a lot of new visitor traffic in relation to returning people. This is due to my content, which is all over the board. I don't just write about real estate. I write about the local area, nature, tourism, the arts, local business and government, etc. So, there are a lot of people who end up at my site from searches on everything from an artist's name to a government meeting announcement. I'll show you some of the search phrases later.
Traffic Sources
All Traffic Sources
Here's where I see how people are getting to my site. Notice that "google/organic" is the top source. These are the "free" search results. "Google/cpc" shows me the people coming from my Adwords PPC marketing. Remember that I get a lot of traffic on non-real estate searches, and this shows in these results, especially when you look at the pages/visit. People who come on my Adwords ad for "taos real estate" spend more time on the site and visit more pages. The feedburner/feed number is for those who visit from my RSS feed.
Keywords
These are the keywords bringing people to my site. The (not set) number is for direct visits, where they've typed in or bookmarked the site and returned, mostly to my IDX search page. Notice that "taos real estate" is next, and is mostly my PPC Adwords ad, however I do occupy position five in the free results for that phrase, so some traffic comes from there as well. Notice that the time on site is longer for (not set), which verifies that it's mostly people returning to search listings.
Content
Content by Title
Here I can see the actual pages they're visiting. The way my IDX programmer set me up, I see the number of results pages displayed in searches, then the number of page views of the main IDX page where they initiate their searches. Then we see that my Home Page is next, and it goes down from there. There is so much more information in Google Analytics, but that's enough for now so that I don't push your geek button.
Why bother?
The more you know about your site visitors, where they're coming from, and what they're doing on your site, the better you can make your site and the more traffic and leads you'll get. Knowing that certain pages seem to get found in searches, and/or they keep visitors there longer is good information. You can create similar content and improve your traffic.
Knowing what keywords are bringing visitors to your site, you may be able to add content to optimize for those keywords or phrases even better. The more you know about your site visitors and what they're viewing, the better you can tailor your content to draw more focused visits and generate more pageviews. You don't have to spend a lot of time, as I probably only look at my analytics once a week or so for less than a half hour. However, I've learned things from my numbers that have helped me to improve my site and page views over time.
How hard is it to set up?
Ask your site provider, but if you're using RealtySoft, you're in good shape. There's a button in your site management area that takes you to where you enter your Google analytics information and code, and instructions to walk you through it. It won't take long, and soon you'll be able to keep track of your visitors, where they're coming from, and what they're doing on your website.
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