We asked a Winston-Salem dentist last month how many people visited his website each month. He guessed "a few hundred." The actual number was 41. He had been paying for SEO services for two years with no measurement, no goals, and no idea whether anything was working. Within 20 minutes we had Google Analytics installed and the truth was visible.
What Google Analytics Is and Why It Is Free
Google Analytics is a free web analytics platform that tracks every visit to your website: where the visitor came from, what pages they viewed, how long they stayed, and what they did before leaving. Google offers it free because the more business owners understand their web traffic, the more they invest in advertising on Google. The trade is fair.
The Installation
- →Create a free account at google.com/analytics. Use the same Google account that owns your AdWords or Google Local Business Center.
- →Add a property for your website. Google generates a small JavaScript snippet, often called the tracking code.
- →Paste the tracking code on every page of your website, just before the closing </head> tag. On most WordPress and template-based sites the code only needs to be added to one footer or header file to appear on every page.
- →Verify the code is firing. Visit your own website, then check the real-time report in Analytics. You should see one current visitor.
The Only Four Reports That Matter for a Triad Service Business
- →Audience > Overview. Total visitors, new vs. returning, and trend over time. The single most useful number for understanding whether your marketing is working.
- →Traffic Sources > Sources > All Traffic. Shows whether visitors are arriving from Google, Yahoo, Bing, direct typing, referring sites, or paid ads. Tells you where to invest more budget and where to cut.
- →Traffic Sources > Search > Organic. Shows the actual keywords people typed into Google before landing on your site. The fastest way to discover keyword opportunities you did not know you had.
- →Content > Site Content > All Pages. Shows which pages get the most traffic. Often the answer is a single blog post you wrote two years ago, which tells you exactly what topics to write more of.
What to Ignore in the First 90 Days
Bounce rate, average time on site, and most of the dozens of other reports inside Analytics matter less than the four above for a small service business getting started. Master those four first. Once they make sense, the rest of the platform unlocks naturally.
Read the companion pieces on setting up goal conversions and tracking phone calls from your website, or have our digital marketing agency install Analytics, configure goals, and build you a monthly dashboard.