Google Analytics (GA) is a free web software programme that generates detailed metrics about how visitors find and interact with a website.

It’s as easy as going to Google Analytics, signing up for a free account, entering your website details, copying the code they supply and pasting it in to the correct place on every page you want to track user activity. I put the code on all my pages, but it’s up to you. GA will track what you want it to. And, it’s free! Big bonus.

Also known as web stats, Google Analytics at a basic level provides information on number of site visits, unique visitors, geographic origin, keywords used by visitors accessing your site via search engine, bounce rates etc. At a more sophisticated level, it provides the ability for you to view some user activity visually with Site Overlay and allows you to setup Goals so that you can track visitor progression and cnversion rate though a task you define.

Google Analytics is easy to implement, it’s flexible, and yes I already mentioned it’s free. If you can dedicate the time it provides some valuable intelligence about your visitors, how they found your site and what they do when they visit. All this data is invaluable for effective SEO.

I’ll be talking about applying this intelligence to improve your website in latter posts.