Google Analytics is a free service that can give you a plethora of data on how folks are finding and using your website. I highly recommend you have it installed on your website. This is done by embedding some tracking code in your website. It’s important to note that this code should be placed on EVERY PAGE of your website. Ask your web master to do this for you.
Why do I need Analytics?
I won’t go into every feature of Analytics at this point. But, among the data points you can distill from Analytics are:
- Number of visitors.
- Where the visitors are coming from (geographically).
- How the visitors are finding your site (referrals / links, search engines, direct, etc.)
- How many pages have been viewed in a given time period.
- How many pages (on average) are being viewed by each visitor.
- How long visitors spend on your website.
- Which pages of your site are being viewed (and how often).
- Which search terms are being used in the search engines.
- What kind of devices are being used by visitors (mobile vs. computers).
- Percentage of new visitors vs. returning visitors.
- And more!!
You can plot these against any time frame you want. All of this can help you fine tune your website to perform even better.
And, now in Real Time.
A new feature (still in “beta” form) is “Real Time.” Instead of seeing data on who has already BEEN on your site, you can see who’s on your site RIGHT NOW. Very cool! This feature is still a bit wonky. Some features work some of the time… mostly the map seems to come and go. But, it’s still neat to be able to watch how visitors are interacting with your site in real time.
Real Time Analytics for my practice website.
Real Time Analytics for The Dental Warrior blog.
Right now….
Just tonight I was snooping on the Real Time Analytics of my dental practice website and found something a bit funny. The visitor on my site used the search terms “walk in dentist West Palm Beach” but at the time was on the Appointment Request page!
Visitor was looking for a walk-in dentist, but was on the “make an appointment” page.
Give Google Analytics a try, if you haven’t already. Even if you get a similar monthly “report” from your webmaster, it’s nice to be able to run the reports and graphs any time you want. Check out the Real Time feature, too!
That’s all for now, Dental Warriors! Two posts in one day! Phew!
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Quick question on Google Analytical. I know you have multiple websites. Are these websites all registered with different google analytical accounts? Or do you have all your websites on one gmail/google analytical account?
That’s a great question! The answer is you can have multiple websites under one account. The different websites are called “properties” in Google Analytics. Each website will have its own tracking code. But, you can keep them all under one account, which is much more convenient and easy, of course.
The reason I asked was because I was reading a SEO book and it talked about having multiple smaller sites having links point back to your main site. It talked about some people having mulitple google accounts so google would not know that one person owned all the sites.
Hmmm… I have not heard anything like that. I’ve had about a dozen websites on the same Google Analytics account for several years. No problems. No Google slaps. I suspect whatever you read was referring to websites that exist SOLELY as “link farms,” so to speak. My microsites all have unique copy as the primary content. They do have links back to my primary site. But, that’s not their main purpose. So, I’m not worried about that, honestly.
Good to hear. I need to get my webmaster to get all my microsites installed google tracking. Right now I just have two websites with google tracking. I have lots of microsites each with orginal content all pointing to my main website.
I learned to stay away from link farms and how microsites can help me from this really good book that can be purchased at http://www.revupmymarketing.com As a bonus the book talks all about websites and is written by a dentist FOR dentists. A no brainer book for dentist. 🙂