Google Analytics for Beginners

Google Analytics is the most widely used web based analytics around.  Setting it up on your website is an easy (and FREE) way to keep tabs on your site statistics.  If you’re on a Wordpress blog, there is a plugin that you can use to put the code into your site.  Because of its ease of use, it has become an essential tool for serious (or curious) bloggers and marketers.

Why bother?

By tracking your stats, you can get a visual interpretation of your data.  You can discover trends, patterns, keywords, etc…  You can also see which posts are most popular and you can measure the effectiveness of one social media platform over another for driving leads to your site.  It makes you smarter!  For example, because I track my analytics I know that my free skirt pattern is the most searched for and most popular post on my site.  You can bet that I’ve been adding more free patterns to my site to capitalize on that search sector.

I’ve also noticed through my analytics that my searches are very holiday and weather related.  Big snowstorm?  My snow ice cream recipe gets a ton of hits.  Having this information helps me plan my site content to get the most bang for the buck.

What does all this mean?

So, you’re ready to set up your analytics but you have no idea what all of those stats mean.  Google provides some informative how-to videos that will give you the basics on how to read your data.

If you’re going to put all that time into your blog, you might as well know what people like to read. At Toolulu, we use analytics to help set up targeted marketing campaigns for companies using various social media outlets. I’m sure even my hero, Martha, would agree. It’s a good thing.