The Importance of Web & Social Analytics

Analytics/Insights are a technology that you can use to collect, report, measure and analyze what people are doing on your website (or social profile), how they found you, etc. Analytics are used to study the performance of a site and to guide efforts to make improvements. Analytics have become more and more robust over time, so it can be pretty overwhelming to figure out what metrics are important from a marketing standpoint.

Website Analytics every marketer should be keeping an eye on:

Website traffic: This is a great place to look for evidence if your website is stagnating, growing or declining. For example, if you encounter a huge traffic spike after printing a guest post on a top blog, this is a sign that you should be doing more of the same.

Keyword Searches: Within analytics you can see what keywords people are searching for when they discover your site. It is one of the best ways to find out what people were looking for when they discovered your site and if your site met that need (since you can see how long they visited the page that showed up for that keyword search) Typically, the top 3-4 keywords will be branded searches (like your company name) and the rest will give you a good indication of what products/service people are looking for.

Conversion rates: Conversion rates can have a remarkable impact on your site's profitability. If you can increase your conversion rates, your marketing will be more effective.

Referral Sources: This shows you where the visits to your site came from. You can see if they came from Google, Facebook, Instagram, third-party websites, or simply typed your domain into their browser.

Bounce Rates: Analytics also provided you with a bounce rate, how many individuals go to your site and leave without interacting with your site in any way. This can be an indication of whether or not the page was relevant to them. So the higher your bounce rate on a given page, the more likely that page needs to be redone.

Social Insights every marketer should be keeping an eye on:

Follower Growth: Your aggregate count of followers, fans, and page likes speak to the number of individuals who appreciate your business. This implies the quality of the content that you're sharing, and in theory, if you have a big following more people will want to see what you’re posting.

Likes and Shares: This can be used to determine how your audience responds to the content you post. Sharing is particularly important to keep an eye on. This critical feedback metric encourages you to decide if your audience interested in what you're currently posting, and should inform the kind of content you share in the future.

Audience Demographics: As you grow you're following, monitoring your audience demographics can inform your strategy and help you modify posts and future promotions.

Website Traffic from Social Media: This lets you see what kind of activity you're getting from social to your site and how that traffic performs once it arrives. You can use this data to tweak your social media strategy in attempts to get your desired website behavior.

The essential thing to remember about analytics is not to neglect them. Make sure it is correctly set up and monitor them regularly so you can continue to improve.

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