Goggle Analytics

Google™ provides some very interesting information about internet traffic coming to your web site. This information is especially helpful if you plan on using the Google AdWords campaign, but doesn't require you use that service. The Google Analytics is a free Google Service and only requires that you have a Google Account.

With Google Analytics you can:

Make informed site & content decisions
Increase conversions
Measure keyword and ad performance
Track a variety of metrics

How Google Analytics Works

After an account is created with Google, a profile is created for your web site. Part of that profile involves generating a piece of code that is placed on each page of your site. Those pages are then uploaded to the hosting server.

Whenever someone arrives on a page of your web site, the code activates and sends tiny amounts of data back to the Google servers about the page the person landed on, how that person got to the page, how long they were on the page, where they went after leaving the page.

Google Analytics Diagram

Once the data is collected for that particular visitor, a report is created and stored. When you log into your Google Account, all of the invidual reports are assembled and an overall report is created for a defined span of time.

Site Search Terms Report

If you have your site search tracking in Google Analytics (which you should) you have access to all the terms that your visitors typed into your search box. Not only is this great for site usability, but if you do have content related to those search terms, you may need to do a better job of optimizing those pages or making those pages accessible.

Custom Reports

Organic Keyword by Landing Page

I know this report sounds a little complicated to set up, but 1. it's not and 2. it's worth it. Using the custom report feature we're going to pull key metrics for our top landing pages, and most importantly, what organic keywords are ranking and driving traffic to that landing page.

Using Google Analytics to Boost Your Adwords Performance

Any Adwords advertiser can setup a really quick way to see how clicks are being converted into visits. It is a matter of simply setting up a Google Analytics account. And, best of all, Adwords and analytics data can be viewed with one simple login.

Let me walk you through the process of setting up analytics inside Adwords:

First of all, make sure you already have a Google Analytics account and admin access.
That account must have the same login as your Adwords account in order for both to be linked.
Important note: if you are tracking more than one domain, make sure you create a profile for each one so that Adwords can distinguish them when it comes to landing pages and such.
Also, make sure your Google analytics code is on every page of your site(s).
Go to your Adwords account. Click on the tab "Analytics".
Choose "I already have an account..."
Select your account.
And you are done. You now have analytics for your Adwords account.

What you can see

If you went with automatic tagging, Adwords tags every URL and therefore analytics recognizes each visitor that comes from your Adwords campaign. This is crucial - without tagging, all visitors would look the same and there would be no way to identify them in your analytics data (I'm lying, actually there are ways, but they're far more difficult and would require expert knowledge of Google analytics, filtering, and such hard things).

When your campaign starts to run, you can start to check your analytics.

Choose "view reports" from your analytics tab in Adwords, then "origins of traffic," and then "Adwords." Depending on your analytics needs, you can see details for each campaign, which ad performs best, or even which keywords are getting through. And you can now analyse how those people that clicked your ads move around in your site.