This is a guide to web analytics, which is a reference to the analysis and reporting of web data for the purpose of determining optimization or advertising needs.
Simply speaking, web analytics is a means of collecting and reviewing what is happening with your website, and may include such information as to where your visitors are coming from, what brought them to your site, and which pages of your site they visit.
Through web analytics, you may also be able to make comparisons between your site and those of your competitors, including such matters as who is linking to your site versus those of the competing sites.
Five key analytics that are commonly tracked include overall traffic, bounce rate, traffic sources, desktop versus mobile visits, and new and returning visitors.
Overall traffic refers to the number of visits that your site receives in a given time period, such as a day or month. This can be used to track the efficiency of a search engine optimization or advertising campaign. When all is well, your traffic should get larger over time. If it diminishes, this may indicate a problem that needs to be corrected.
When someone visits your site, but leaves without visiting a second page, that is referred to as a bounce, and it may indicate a problem with your landing page. In determining the reason for a high bounce rate, consider long loading times. People are impatient, so if it takes a long time for your site to be visible to them, they are apt to look elsewhere. Another possibility is a confusing navigation scheme. Most web visitors are unwilling to spend a great deal of time trying to figure out how to find what they are looking for, so if it's not immediately clear to them, they may leave. Unattractive or unprofessional web design might lose visitors, as well. However, an aggressive marketing campaign can lead to a high bounce rate if it isn't targeted to your site content. High traffic is a powerful ego booster, but if your website isn't offering what the new visitors are looking for, they will bounce.
Web analytics can also tell you what brought your visitors to your site. New visitors probably won't come to your site by typing in the URL. In most cases, they will find your site by clicking on a link from a search engine, from a web directory, or from a link on another site, through social media, or through an email campaign. Most new visitors come to your site through a search engine, which is why most marketing campaigns concentrate on search engine optimization. However, site owners should try to build up all of these sources of traffic. Web analytics tools can tell you where your visitors are coming from, even to the point of telling you what they typed into the search field in order to find your site. This will help you build up your keyword strategy, and it may also be of assistance in link building efforts.
In recent years, a lot of web traffic is coming from people on mobile telephones or tablets, such as iPhones, iPads, or Kindles. Mobile traffic overtook desktop traffic a few years ago. Using web analytics tools, you can track the percentage of your users who are coming from desktop computers or from mobile browsers.
It's nice to have new visitors to your site but, ideally, you want people to keep coming back. People who return to your site are known as return visitors, and they are your core audience. If your recurring traffic is below 20%, this might mean that your site isn't as engaging as it should be. This information, as well, can be tracked by web analytics tools.
Most web hosts will provide you with raw data, and perhaps some simple analytics tools. This may be enough for you. However, other web analytics tools or services can not only collect the data that you need but process this data into usable information, generally turning counts into ratios. They may also develop key performance indicators from this information, which focuses on converting the ratios and counts into business strategies. Web analysis companies may also be able to assist you in formulating an online strategy from this information, helping to form online goals, objectives, and standards, generally designed to use business websites to earn a profit, reduce costs, or increase market share. Depending on the nature of the website, the goal may be to increase memberships or registrations.
The focus of this category is on web analytics. Appropriate topics for this category are sites offering web analytics tools, as well as companies offering analytics services as their primary business. Most SEO companies analytics as a starting point for their search engine optimization services, but the websites for these companies should be listed in the category that represents the company's primary service.
Recommended Resources
Formed in 2009, and originally known as My SEO Tool, the name was changed in 2015 to better reflect what they have to offer, the web analytics tool may be used by website owners directly, but it is aimed at SEO agencies, providing automated SEO reports for clients, including backlinks, keyword rankings, website analytics, and competitor analyses. Reports may be scheduled daily, weekly, or monthly, and may be personalized for clients with comments.
https://agencyanalytics.com/
Offering a free plan, three premium plans, and a custom analytics program, Clicky offers a variety of website information, dependent upon the plan chosen, which may include uptime monitoring, traffic sources, bounce rates, the amount of time spent on the site, path analysis, outbound links, visitor information, campaign data, video and audio analysis, and more. A white label program is available for those who want to resell the data and brand it as their own product.
https://clicky.com/
Offered by Google, Google Analytics is a service that tracks and reports website traffic and includes an SDK that allows for the gathering of data from IOS and Android applications, known as Google Analytics for Mobile Apps. Free to users, Analytics is used to track the website activity of users, including session duration, pages per session, bounce rate, and so on. It can also be integrated with Google Ads, allowing users to review online campaigns by tracking a number of variables.
https://analytics.google.com/
The California-based service offers a long-tail keyword tool that generates keyword suggestions by analyzing existing web traffic, providing the specific long-tail keywords that are relevant to the audience, while working in the background, giving new keyword ideas while allowing the site owner to concentrate on other matters. Three premium plans are available, and the per-month prices and features are listed for each. An introduction is provided, with information about setup and configuration.
https://www.hittail.com/
Known as Majestic SEO from 2008 to 2014, Majestic surveys and maps the Internet, creating a huge commercial link intelligence database that is used by SEO professionals, new media specialists, affiliate managers, and other online marketing specialists for link building, reputation management, web traffic development, competitor analysis, and news monitoring services. A free plan offering limited data is available, along with two premium plans and a full API, at monthly rates.
https://majestic.com/
Created as Piwik in 2007, Matomo is a premium web analytics platform that includes a variety of conversion optimization features, such as heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, goals, form analytics, and A/B testing. The tool is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and includes white label options for custom reports, and integrates with several technologies, such as forums, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and more than a hundred others.
https://matomo.org/
Neil Patel is an author and online marketer. His site features a field that appears to offer a free site analysis but it appears to simply be a dangled carrot used to collect contact information. The site does offer a sample report that may represent what the viewer might receive if that information is given, along with an overview of his services, some client testimonials, and an invitation to request a consultation. Other resources include a blog, a newsletter, and some free SEO tools.
https://neilpatel.com/
With three premium plans available, with monthly and annual billing options, as well as a custom premium plan, SEMRush can provide a complete workflow for SEO professionals, including technical SEO audits, semantic core collection, position tracking, ideas for gaining more organic traffic, competitive intelligence, backlinks audits and analytics, and other solutions. Its features and pricing are published to the site. An SEMRush content marketing course is available.
https://www.semrush.com/
The full-featured website promotion tool offers search engine optimization tools for research, web page optimization, link analysis, link building, keyword analysis, and ranking checks, SEO audits, website analytics and monitoring, mobile SEO, and others, which are discussed here. A limited free trial account is available upon request, and multi-user accounts are available. Besides its free trial account, there are three premium user accounts. Pricing is posted on the site.
https://www.seoprofiler.com/
Originally known as GoogSpy, SpyFu is a search analytics company that allows website owners or search engine specialists to download a list of the most profitable keywords and ads for paid and organic search used by competing sites, including research data on competitor’s PPC keywords, SEO keywords, and every keyword they have ever bought on Google, and every ad test they have ever run. Also included are step-by-step guides on the use of SpyFu and other tools.
https://www.spyfu.com/
For a monthly fee, the website lead generation tool provides information about anonymous web visitors beyond a location and an IP address. The company promises to provide actionable data like names, businesses, email addresses, and company statistics, as well as whether they came to the site from a search, a social media link, email, newsletter, or directly. A 14-day free trial is available. Pricing and available add-ons are featured, and a blog is included.
https://www.visualvisitor.com/
