google analytics

When you start a website, you really should be tracking things.  Google Analytics is the perfect tool to do just that.  It is powerful and very customizable and has great looking reports.  Plus you can track a ton of things once you know what you are doing with it.  And best of all it’s Free.

But some still ask why use it?  If you have a website you are trying to make a profit from, Google analytics can help.  You can see things and how visitors actually use your website.  You can see things like which keywords are performing the best and which content is the most popular.  Plus you can see other data like bounce rates which help you understand why people stay or leave your website.

If you are using pay per click then you can track how well your campaigns are performing and how much money you are actually spending.  This is very important for pay per click because you can lose your shirt if you don’t track how much you spend and where the money goes.

Analytics uses Asynchronous JavaScript code which is better than traditional code which is loaded in the head of the document and not near the body tag.  This reduces latency and data accuracy concerns.

You can also setup accounts for an administrator and regular users if you have a team of people who need to work with analytics.

In Google analytics you can set up three types of conversion tracking.  These are: Adwords conversion tracking, ecommerce tracking and Goal tracking.  Each one of these is important depending on the type of website you have.

The best way to learn how to use Analytics is, setup and account and then use the program.  After familiarizing yourself with it bit you can also try some of the Analytics training.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/education.html

You can also learn a lot about analytics from their blogger blog.

http://analytics.blogspot.com

Taking the time to learn Google Analytics can be very beneficial for your website and internet marketing career.  Once you start to use analytics you can see exactly what you need to do to get more visitors and produce more income.

Website optimization is not just for Google.  Sure Google wants fast websites in it’s index.  However, a quicker website and mean a better user experience and more clicks and sales.  The web is evolving and speed is now a concern for websites.  Google has recently just added speed into its algorithm.

Just think about how many times you were surfing the web and you came across a website you though it looked good and then you had to wait and wait for the page and all it’s images to load.  It’s more than likely  you clicked back and went to another website.

All the major websites have spent millions on optimization and now include speed into the equation.  Amazon.com alone has spent literately millions of dollars on website optimization.  Bing has also spent a considerable amount on website optimization.  And, when it comes to speed they have found user are more responsive and tend to purchase more.

Google Analytics now includes page speed, where you can see how fast your pages are loading.  There is also webpagetest.org.  These websites will help grade your pages when it comes to speed.

If you are using a CMS (content management system) like WordPress, then you can always load a page cache plugin or use a CDN (content delivery network) for page optimization.  If you are using other programs to make web pages, then you will want to make sure you code is clean and up to date.  This is one of the benefits of using a CMS for content.

Also, try and lighten up on code like Java, or other code language which can add a lot to your website and slow it down.

Plus, don’t forget every change you make can have effects on your users experience.  The users should always come first.