As I mentioned in a previous article, one of the most powerful tools you can have is Google Analytics. Analytics allows you to track user data for your website. Specifically, you can see where the visitor came from, how long they stayed on your site, what pages they read, and where they went after they left your site.
Google Analytics is very straightforward to use. After signing up for an account, you are given a block of computer code that contains the tracking information. All you have to do is copy this data into the code of your website and save the changes. Depending on you site, this could take you a few seconds to a few minutes at most. Once you save this updated page, the code will begin tracking visitors. It is a very good idea to filter traffic from your internal computers. By doing this, you will only see information on outside visitors and not on your employees. This can be done by excluding certain IP, or Internet Protocol, addresses. If you have a small organization, you can do this one computer at a time. If you have a large organization, you can use a range of IP addresses to filter visitors.
Once data is being collected you can see what attracted visitors to your site. If you know what they are searching for and what keeps them on your pages, you can ensure that this information is easy to access, which will increase the usability of your site.
It is also essential that you have this feature installed before you start using Google AdWords because it will help you determine were your traffic is coming from and what keywords and campaigns are most useful.
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