Google Analytics

Wow, I was going to write up a nice overview of what Google Analytics is and how amazing and useful it is but Wikipedia has a great Google Analytics article that really introduces it better than I can:

Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that the product is aimed at marketers. GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.

Integrated with AdWords, users can review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals). Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. These can also be monetized. By using GA, marketers can determine which ads are performing, and which are not, providing the information to optimise campaigns.

GA's approach is to show high level dashboard-type data for the casual user, and more in-depth data further into the report set. Through the use of GA analysis, poor performing pages can be identified using techniques such as funnel visualization, where visitors came from (referrers), how long they stayed and their geographical position. It also provides more advanced features, including custom visitor segmentation.

Getting Started With Google Analytics

Sign Up!

Just go to the Google Analytics site and click on the 'Sign Up Now' link right under the 'Access Analytics' button. Enter in your Google account information and you're ready to go.

Create A New Account:

1. On the right-hand drop-down box, select 'Create New Account...'. Click on the 'Sign Up' button on the next page.
2. Enter your website's URL and account name, change the time zone, and then click on Continue.
3. Enter your contact information and click on Continue.
4. Agree to the terms & conditions, and click on the Create New Account button.

Add the Tracking Code to Your Site

1. The next page will have some javascript code. Copy this code and paste it into every page of your site, right before or after the closing body tag.
2. After you've added the code and have uploaded all the pages to your live site, click on the 'Continue' button.
3. On the next page, you'll see your site listed and will probably see a warning for your status. It usually takes a day for your tracking code to be verified.

This is the very basic set up for Google Analytics. There are a ton of extra goodies in Google Analytics. I highly suggest exploring the other features and using them to get a more in-depth of what's working and what's not working on your site.

Next step: Submitting Your Website to the Free Search Engines