Website Analytics

Make Your Website Work Harder For You

Ever wonder why you get ads for something you looked for on the internet? You think Facebook is magic (or just a little creepy)? Does Google seem to know you as well as you do? It’s because they possess huge amounts of data, and you need to tap into it.

Your website can be a wealth of information for your business. It can tell you all kinds of data about the users. Knowing how your website is performing, who is visiting it, and how they are getting there is vital information for any business that wants their website to be a useful part of their business strategy.

But you need to use tools that are available to you to monitor and collect this information.

If you have things set up. Correctly it will allow you to collect all kinds of demographic information on the visitors such as location, what

There are several tools they you need to be taking advantage of, starting right now. These are:

• Google Analytics

• Google My Business

• Google Search Console

• Facebook Pixel

*NOTE* You will need a Google account the use these tools. If you do not have one, it is really easy to sign up at https://www.google.com/account/about/.

Google Analytics:

Google Analytics is a very powerful tool that will give you valuable details about the visitors to your website. Simply, it gives information about your site’s performance, and it collects insights about visitors that, if used properly, can be quite valuable.

You can see information such as where your visitors are coming from and how they are getting there (paid ads, organic search, social, etc). It will give you locations, devices used to view your website, affinity categories (like those used in Google ads to define target audiences), and many other data points. 

Some people, mostly those trying to sell you anther service other than Google’s, which is free, that Google gives too much information. They try to sell the idea that it is too overwhelming, especially for small business owners. I see that as an insult. Everything can be overwhelming the first time you try to use it. But here is how I see it. You don’t have to use all the info provided. In fact, you probably won’t. However, you and your business will grow, and you will learn more about your clients. What you want to know, and how you would use certain information will change. If you have Google Analytics installed, you will already have that information and be able to leverage it for your business success.

Google My Business:

Google My Business is vital to your business and your website and should be fully set up. The more information that you fill out in this, the more Google will “like” your business card. 

It allows you to enter the basics, of course. Note that however you enter your address here is how it should be displayed on your website and any other locations on the internet such as all your social media accounts, pages, bios, etc. If you do not want to show or do not have a street address to show, there is an option to choose for not having a store. 

There are many other fields that you need. Accurate hours should be added as well as photos, pricing (if you want), reviews (get these if you are not), services, and a few others. In general, if you are using anything Google where you can enter information about your business, do it.

A Google My Business account really is a must. Not only does it give Google lots of information about your business, but it is also where Google draws the information for the “cards” you see on the right hand of the search page when you look up a business. The My Business account allows you to control that information.

Google Search Console:

Search Console is useful in several ways. It allows you to monitor and fix issues with your website in terms of how it appears in Google search results. You can check indexing and visibility of your website. 

From Google, this is what search console can do: 

• Confirm that Google can find and crawl your site.

• Fix indexing problems and request re-indexing of new or updated content.

• View Google Search traffic data for your site: how often your site appears in Google Search, which search queries show your site, how often searchers click through for those queries, and more.

• Receive alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam, or other issues on your site.

• Show you which sites link to your website.

• Troubleshoot issues for AMP, mobile usability, and other Search features.

Having this information is vital to making sure that your website is in good standing with Google. There is information about your mobile usability, which is a report of any issues your website has on mobile devices. Since Google Uses your mobile site for a lot of its indexing, it is important to have it working optimally.

Facebook Pixel:

The Facebook Pixel is key if you ever want to do any Facebook Advertising, this is a necessity to have on your website. Even if you are not advertising with Facebook, it still gathers information for you that you can use when setting up and targeting Facebook Ads.

The pixel does much the same thing as the code for Google Analytics. Facebook uses it to see who is looking, clicking on, or otherwise interacting with your website. Facebook is, as much as they try to downplay it, a giant data gathering center. They can use the info they gather from your website to help you target the people that have been to your website, your Facebook Page, and people that are demographically like those visitors.

Conclusion:

You have a website so that it can work for you. It is there to feed information to prospecting customers, gather contact information for you, and to sell products and services. A website is an important, if not vital, part of your digital presence in the world.

But your website can do so much more than that if you implement the tools that are available to you. By the way, all the tools mentioned here are free to use, so there is really no reason not to start with them. Even if you don’t think you need them now, there will probably come a time in your business where you will want them. You will be grateful for the information they will have gathered when that time comes.