Google Analytics

(Best Syndication News) Google is constantly trying to figure out how to maximize profits for themselves and their advertisers. Although Analytics was originally designed for advertisers, it is also a valuable tool for publishers. Website publishers actually produce content that can promote your business.

If you are selling products Analytics is invaluable and like so many other products developed by Google, it is free. After signing up with Google Analytics you will be provided a segment of code (script) to add to the pages you want analyzed. You might as well add the code to every page on your site so you can see your performance.

Page Views and Unique Page Views

Google Analytics will tell you simple things like how many visits you received on each page. But the information goes much deeper. You will also learn how many “unique page views” you received for each page on your website. Remember, Analytics is free!

Time on Page

Each visitor will be logged and you will be able to see the average length of time they stayed on your pages. An average is given for each page and you can sort to see which pages people stayed the longest on.

Bounce Rate

You may want to find out how many people visited another page on your site within a specified time compared to the number that left your site. By definition, the bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who hit a page and didn’t visit any other pages on your site. If they only visited one page and left, they bounced.

If a person visited more than one page he will not be considered a “bounce”. The more people who bounce from a page the higher the bounce rate. We believe the timeout period to be 30 minutes because we have never seen a visitor stay longer than 29.59 minutes.

Exit Percentage

Many people get confused between Exit Rate and Bounce Rate. The exit rate for a page is determined by how many people leave your site from that page, compared to the total number of people who visited that page. Those who visit another page on you site will NOT be counted as an “exit” from that page.

If a person visits your webpage and then clicks on your “About Us” link, they did not bounce and they did not exit that original page. This will lower your bounce and exit percentage for those pages. Lower percentages are better.

If he leaves your “About Us” page for another site, then he counts as an exit against your “About Us” page.

$ Index

This index can give you information on which page is the conversion page. For instance, if you have several pages that people land on, how do you know which page is paying off for you? If they fill out the information on a page and continue on, this will be considered a conversion. If you are not using Adwords this information is useless because there will be no conversions or sales. This information may be better monitored with the e-commerce software that came with your site.

By Dan Wilson
Best Syndication News Writer