Google analytics for better search engine marketing


by Farhad Divecha - Date: 2007-02-12 - Word Count: 620 Share This!

Google Analytics for SEM

Urchin visitor tracking is now renamed 'Google Analytics' and is available to everyone for free! For those of you lucky enough to have signed up in the early stages, Google Analytics will open up a world of information you probably never knew about visitors on your site. For those not so lucky, you'll have to wait till Google gets their act together and reopens the doors for new sign-ups to the analytics system.

Why you need Google Analytics website visitor tracking

Google Analytics provides free information about the way visitors to your site interact with it. It is an invaluable tool that all webmasters should use if they don't already have some form of visitor tracking solution in place. Here's 10 reasons why you need Google Analytics on your site:

It is free. And it offers just as much if not more functionality than most expensive visitor tracking solutions!You need Analytics to understand how visitors use your siteYou can identify where visitors leave your check-out or sign-up process and modify it to prevent losing leadsYou can identify which pages and links visitors click on most and spend most time on, and position these pages and links appropriatelyAnalytics also tells you which sites users came to your site fromYou can find out the most popular keywords (http://www.accuracast.com/resources/seo/seo-keywords.php) users type into a search engine to find your site, thereby helping your search engine optimisation efforts Visitor segmentation by new vs returning users, geography and referral source will offer invaluable insight when planning future businessAnalytics integrates seamlessly with Google AdWords (http://www.accuracast.com/services/ppc-management/google-adwords/) so that you can have almost end-to-end visibility in your search advertising resultsAnalytics allows tracking of other non-search-engine marketing mediaAnalytics will save you money and help you gain more customers

Pros and cons of Google Analytics

The benefits of using the Google Analytics solution are numerous. The fact that it's free is mere icing on the cake.

The setup is very straightforward and takes hardly any timeIt is a great solution providing a wide range of reports with a lot of flexibilityMultiple sites to be tracked under one loginTracking campaigns from a wide variety of media is possibleA/B ad testing is easyIt integrates with all marketing media and can be used as a single portal to track multiple campaignsIn depth reports on site navigation and use are invaluableEcommerce tracking is included

Whilst the Google Analytics package provides a vast number of useful bits of information, it lacks two major features which most search engine marketers need - the ability to track individual user activity or trace activity back to an individual user level and the ability to track activity akin to click fraud (http://www.accuracast.com/resources/glossary/#C). The eCommerce tracking features are not very straightforward to use.

Most irritatingly, though, just like any other Google product offering, the customer service associated with Google Analytics is abysmal, if not completely non-existant!

How Google Analytics might change search engine optimisation

By offering a free web site analytics solution, Google have made a very sneaky and superbly calculated move in the war for search engine supremacy. Now that they have visibility not only into how Google users search for your site and whether they convert into sales on it, but also into how all visitors, even from Yahoo and MSN reach your site, how they use your site and whether they leave your site without making a purchase. Armed with that sort of usability information, Google could not only undermine all your search engine optimisation http://www.accuracast.com/services/search-engine-optimisation/) efforts, but also use the data they collect about MSN and Yahoo! search results with respect to your site and use it to strengthen their stronghold on the search landscape.

Other articles to read:

Link development & Spam mass (http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/spam-mass.php Google algorithm update Jagger (http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/jagger.php )

SEO Weekly (http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/)



Farhad Divecha
Before founding AccuraCast, Farhad worked for and provided consulting services to a number of large and medium sized enterprises in the UK and USA including 3Com, Proctor & Gamble and Household (HFC, HSBC). He has over 7 years of experience marketing products and services online and offline.

If you need any further help or guidance please contact us (http://www.accuracast.com/contact/).

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