Using Google Analytics with Your Site

 


What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a little chunk of code that resides, behind the scenes on every page of your site, capturing every piece of information about your visitors that it possibly can. It captures this information, charts it and presents it to you for viewing and analysis. The data it captures includes, but is not limited to:

  • Number of visitors your site has receivedgoogle-analytics-menu-options
  • Location of your visitors
  • Pages accessed by users
  • Time on the site
  • Direct vs. Referral vs. Search Engine Traffic
  • User’s Platform (mobile, desktop, mac, pc, firefox, internet explorer, etc.)
  • Referring Websites
  • And much, MUCH more.

How Much Does It Cost?

With the majority of our website installs, there is a cost built into your initial setup to install and configure Google Analytics for you. The software itself is free, all you pay for is a one-time setup fee on our end. From there, it’s yours to use as often as you want.

 


Seeing Your Results

google-analytics-dashboard-plugin

There are two means for viewing your site’s analytics. The first is by us setting you up as an administrator on the Google Analytics account we created for you. The second, is a nifty little WordPress plugin we install for you that sits on your dashboard everytime you login.

It appears as the image to the right and gives you a rundown of site visitors, page views, time on the site, top pages, top searches, top referers and more. Additionally, you’ll find more details on listing pages, within the system, showing you exactly how many hits a particular post or page received.


What It All Means

On a short-term scale, it doesn’t provide much more than an ego boost. On a larger, grander scale, in combination with SEO efforts, it serves as a vital cornerstone to maximizing your site’s rankings. The data generated proves itself invaluable when determining why people are coming to your site, what they’re looking for and determining more efficient ways of presenting them with that content quickly.

One client combined his services with our SEO Analyst to place markers on “Buy Tickets” links throughout his site. These markers are able to track exactly which link on the page is accessed. In his case, there are 3. One at the top of the page, mid-page and the bottom of the page. Tracking these markers, we can now determine which link will be the most important when we go to redesign the site.


Get Started

Chances are pretty good that we’ve already installed the software on your site and it’s been running in the background since the day you launched. For access to your Google Analytics, or more information feel free to contact us, at info@thisistg.com, and ask a project manager for details on your account.