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Why Should Web Analytics Be Important To My Business?

You do not need to be an expert SEO professional in order to utilize and benefit from website and traffic analytics tools. The ability to measure traffic, links, incoming search query referrals and bounce rate data are valuable ( if not essential ) vital stats for your online business. Business and website owners should make the review of website analytics a weekly, if not daily practice in order to understand both the effect and visibility of a website and its content.

Analytics: Simple to install and inexpensive

The financial investment can be very minimal. Google has an excellent product called "Google Analytics" - google.com/analytics - which is free to any visitor with a valid email address. Google Analytics can be simple to install on your site. Simply insert the Google Analytics tracking code just above the </body> tag on each web page or once on a template web page. Google provides very simple and clear instructions onine for the installation and FAQs for its Analytics program. The image below shows a screen view of the Google Analytics interface: Dashboard page.

Above: Google Analytics Interface: screen view

Above: Tracking visitors by location

Web Analytics Helps Me Count Visits To My Site.....But What Else?

Analytics tool help a business or website owner understand where their visitors come from, how they reached the website, which pages they viewed, how long the visitor stayed on a page or on the site and which page they exited from. Some analytics tools allow you to view a heat map screen over your website interface that shows the hotest and coldest links and areas of a particular page. Other tools will give you the ability to see how many clicks each internal link has generated, along with a percentage of usage for that link. Such information will allow business and website owners to make better informed decisions about content, site performance and give them a guide for future growth.

Analytics and Measurement Tools

Here are a few suggestions for website measurement tools and analytics:

Google Analytics: google.com/analytics

Core Metrics: www.coremetrics.com

Stat Counter: www.statcounter.com

Visitat: visistat.com

Omniture: www.omniture.com/en/

Note:
Web servers normally already produce logfiles ( traffic log ), which is a record of activity on your site visitors in raw data form. Analytics tools help by re-presenting that data (or by collecting their own) so the business or website owner can conceptualize the data and information.