How to Monitor Your Website Traffic Using Google Analytics
http://www.drostdesigns.com/how-to-monitor-website-traffic/
This free tool offered by Google gives you even more comprehensive statistics than Awstats. To use it you just need to sign up for a Google Analytics account then copy and paste the code provided into each html page. It’s even easier if your website is built on WordPress because you can install and activate a Google Analytics plugin.
The main stat categories and sub categories include:
Audience
Overview
Demographics
Behaviour
Technology
Mobile
Custom
Visitors Flow
Advertising (only applicable to AdWords)
Traffic Sources
Overview
Sources
Search Engine Optimization
Social
Content
Overview
Site Content
Site Speed
Site Search
Events
Adsense
In-Page Analytics
Conversions
Goals
Ecommerce
Multi-Channel Functions.
I won’t bore you with the explanations for each category and sub category but will stress the importance of monitoring where most of your traffic is coming from ie organic or paid search, social (e.g. Facebook, Google+, Twitter) and the keywords used to find your website.
If your traffic is mainly coming from one source (ie Google) it would be worthwhile to diversify your marketing strategies so you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. For example include social media to expand your audience.
Monitoring the keywords visitors are using to find your site will enable you to create new content based on these keywords. This will allow the search engines to find and rank the new content resulting in more visitors and sales.
Other important stats to monitor
Demographics-Location
Know which countries most of your traffic is coming from. For example if you receive lots of Spanish visitors it would be worth offering a Spanish version of your website to attract and retain Spanish speaking visiors.
Demographics-Behaviour-New vs Returning
A high rate of returning visitors would indicate your content is valuable enough for visitors to keep coming back for more.
Demographics-Behaviour-Engagement
This displays how long a visitor remains on your web pages (bounce rate). Google takes this into account when ranking websites. A high bounce rate means visitors don’t like or can’t find the information they want and leave almost immediately.
Demographics-Behaviour-Mobile
If many visitors are accessing your website with a mobile device make sure you have a mobile verison to redirect visitors to otherwise you’ll lose them resulting in less sales.
http://www.drostdesigns.com/how-to-monitor-website-traffic/
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