Utah SEO Marketing Blog

Six Web Analytics Metrics

Knowing what web metrics to monitor can be a daunting task sometimes.  There are some basic ones you should keep track of while you have SEO, PPC, or other online marketing strategies running.  If I had to choose six web metrics for you to track these would be what they are:

1. Conversions – I would track the conversion ratio of people filling out your online request or completing a website sale.  Although this excludes people viewing your contact page and calling you on the phone it does narrow down to a specific demographic of people taking a definitive action to learn more about your products or services. It  captures those people requesting more information.

2. Visitors – This metric is fairly obvious as to why it is important – to see how many people are coming to your website.  This will encompass overall marketing efforts (search engine optimization, pay-per-click, online marketing, tradeshows, events, offline marketing, etc.) and if they are bringing more eyes to your website or not.

3. Bounce Rate – This metric shows how many web visitors came to your website and immediately left.  This is a good analytic to monitor to see if the quality of traffic is good or not.  If web visitors are searching for a product/service you do not offer or if you do offer what they are looking for but your website does not do a good job of portraying that you offer that service/product users will immediately leave.  The lower this number becomes the better.

4. Time on Site – This is a good metric to watch as it shows the interest level of web visitors and if they are finding the information they are looking for.  If they are staying on your website for a long time they are most likely digesting useful information.  Although in some cases the opposite is true (users may be on the website for a long time because they are searching for information they can not find).  In general this is not the case as internet users have a very short attention span and generally leave a website if they can not find what they are looking for.

5. Top Web Content – This report is useful in determining characteristics of your target audience (at least the ones making it to your website). You can find out what information they are looking for the most, where they are spending the most time reading, what webpages are more likely to encourage someone to contact you in the end, etc.

6. Keywords – This report is more in-depth than the above reports but is useful because it will show you the top keywords people are finding your website on.  It will help you learn more about your web visitors by learning what keyword phrases they are using, what they are looking for, , and how they reference your products & services.  You can also filter out your company name from the keyword list to find a better list of terms of people who are looking for what you offer but do not necessarily know about you yet.  You can also filter between paid and non-paid keywords.

*I would always compare these to the last month so you can see the difference and how things are improving or becoming worse, what areas need help, etc.  There are tons of reports and metrics in Google Analytics which you could waste all day mulling over.   If you want a quick snapshot of what is going on, making positive strategic decisions based off of these, and learning more about your target audience every month these are the metrics I would focus on if I were you.  If you need help putting together your first month analysis I would be more than happy to help you understand what to look for and how to gain useful insight from it.  Contact me anytime if you want assistance.

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