4 Simple Ways to Integrate Analytics into Your Daily Internet Marketing Efforts

Have you ever been confused about how to use your website analytics and how to maximize the value you get from them? You're not alone, as many Internet marketers are often baffled about how to best utilize the data they glean from their analytics.

Sure, you're looking at traffic and hopefully seeing those numbers go up as much as possible. Still, I wanted to point out some other very practical things you can be doing with your analytics that don't take very much effort and can greatly benefit your inbound marketing strategy. 

1. Determine how you're getting found through organic search.

These analytics are incredibly helpful in terms of seeing how effective your SEO strategies have been. For the keywords that you're targeting for your site, measure and determine how your efforts are actually working. You can also use this data to make specific decisions on exactly which keywords to target to improve your rankings moving forward.

You should also add the keywords that are getting you found onto your keyword list and add some sort of relevance to them that works for you. If you want to improve on a particular keyword, create more content, optimize it around that keyword and try to get that content linked to.

2. Check out your landing page analytics and work on your conversion paths.

If Internet marketers were really honest with themselves, the one statistic that would always be on their mind is the conversion rates of their landing pages. If you're not measuring how effective your offers, calls to action and landing pages are at converting your website visitors into leads, then you're not giving yourself a knowledgeable way of improving.

Conversion rate analytics take into account two major stats: 1) landing page views, and 2) form submissions. Typically, the general rules of thumb around these stats have to do with monitoring your landing page views first. If you're not getting as many landing page views as you think you should be getting, then most likely your offers need to be revised or further developed. If it's your conversion rates that are down (below say 5%), then perhaps optimizing your landing pages is the route to take. Either way, these stats merit constant monitoring.

3. Monitor your brand in blogs and social media.

Whether you're involved in it or not, the conversation is happening out there in the social mediasphere. How attuned are you to what's being said not only about your company and brands, but about your industry in general? Ever wonder if you've missed a potential opportunity to generate a lead or even make a sale because you missed a tweet or LinkedIn group update? 

Get involved in social media by tracking buzz around your company, brands and industry in a manageable way. HubSpot has some great social media monitoring tools for this, or learn about how to use other social media monitoring tools such as Google Alerts (especially for blogs), HootSuite or TweetDeck.

4. Obsess over your inbound links and indexable pages count.

Two of the most important stats to monitor are your inbound links and indexable pages. If you don't have some sort of way to determine whether you are getting inbound links, you should get one ASAP. Celebrate your new inbound links and try your best to provide some sort of value to the good people who give you link love. Develop rapport with them, which will enable you to generate more links in the future.

In terms of your indexable page count, the idea is to increase this number as quickly and efficiently as possible in order to give yourself more of a chance to get ranked in search engines for your targeted keywords. How do you accomplish this, you ask? Simple: blog often.  One of the biggest advantages of business blogging is its SEO benefit.

There are certainly times when understanding Web analytics can seem overwhelming and confusing.  But like anything else in inbound marketing, remember to take it slow, one step at a time.  If you do, you'll find that your analytics will help lead you down the path to success.

@adrianmott

Comments

Posted by Adrian Mott on Mon, Feb 15, 2010 @ 01:28 PM