Why Are Website Analytics Important?
Not everyone is a tech geek, web content specialist or SEO expert with decades of experience in website analytics.
For many people who have a limited understanding of it, web analytics can be confusing.
Learning hundreds of new terms to get a better grasp on what exactly your website needs is cripplingly overwhelming, almost like learning a new language.
There are tons of different aspects that go into website analytics, whether you’re learning about different web analytics tools, analyzing traffic data, learning to analyze user behavior or anything related to search engine optimization.
It can take hundreds of hours to get a solid understanding of how to accurately analyze the important parts of a site.
Moreover, not knowing the right data to research can have detrimental effects on the growth of your website.
It is absolutely crucial to understand website analytics because it can directly affect your website rankings, website traffic and more importantly website revenue.
What Exactly Are Website Analytics?
“Website analytics” is a general term.
As TechTarget explains, “Web analytics is the process of analyzing the behavior of visitors to a website. This involves tracking, reviewing and reporting data to measure web activity, including the use of a website and its components, such as webpages, images and videos.”
For most companies, the main goal of understanding this is to know how to increase site traffic, which will increase the revenue your site generates if acted on correctly.
An analytics platform measures how many users visit, how long they stay on your site, which different pages they visit, and whether they find your site by clicking a link or not.
Different companies can use web analytics platforms to accurately benchmark their site data or performance, and to study some key indications that drive their website growth, such as their purchase conversion rate.
By knowing these things, one can understand how likely a customer is to purchase something, how likely they are to click on your link, and how to target a certain type of customer who is more likely to be interested.
Different Types Of Website Analytics
There are hundreds of web analytics tools available across the internet.
The most commonly used one is Google Analytics, although there are many others that offer different kinds of technology and/or more advanced features like heat mapping and real-time activity.
Some of the most popular analytics tools are:
- Google Analytics
- Adobe Analytics
- Matomo
- Mixpanel
- Semrush
- Woopra
- StatCounter
Different Ways To Grow Your Website
Every business in the world has a similar goal in mind — growth.
The opportunities that come with growing a website are massive, but so is the competition.
Websites that don’t improve in the areas that matter can cripple their revenue potential.
On the other hand, constantly improving a site can cause its growth to skyrocket.
It’s crucial to:
- understand trends in your market
- gain visibility to your site
- reach out to partners or companies who could potentially generate traffic
- establish a good brand identity
- create linkable content
- understand SEO strategies and keyword research
- understand website analytics and more.
To truly capitalize on these opportunities, businesses need to be adaptable, forward-thinking, and responsive to changing market dynamics.
Any business that fails, past present, or future, has to some degree neglected these key rules.
This multifaceted approach to website growth is an ongoing process that requires a keen eye for innovation and an instilled sense of commitment to providing value to your audience…
After all, value is what every customer looks for.
SEO Ranking Factors: How Do You Rank?
- Search Intent: Accurately answering the question that is being searched. This ensures that the topic behind what they are searching matches the search results.
- Content Quality: Google makes sure the site that is creating the content is relevant, trustworthy, has authority, and expertise.
- Usability: How slow/fast the site pages load, and whether or not the site is usable on a mobile device.
- Context: Google considers the user’s search history and location to provide the most relevant articles to them specifically.
SEO Makes The World Go Round
SEO is the reason you can whip out your smartphone, type in virtually any question on Google, and have it answered within seconds.
It is the reason that only the most informative and relevant articles that exist pop up whenever you decide to search “homemade pizza recipes” on a hungry Saturday night with your family.
The second you type in some keywords and click the search button, millions of websites are scanned instantly for useful information relating to your search.
Google is arguably the most useful digital tool on the face of the planet, and it has a whopping 4.3 billion users worldwide.
To put that into scale, there are roughly 7.9 people on the planet as of 2024.
If my back-of-the-napkin math is correct, that means that over half of the entire world population uses the famous Google search engine.
That is absurd… Especially considering that a significant portion of those 7.9 billion people don’t even have internet access.
This puts into perspective how useful Google truly is.
The concept of Google alone would’ve been nearly impossible to imagine 30 short years ago.
Try telling someone in the 1980s or 1990s that you could show them 1 million photos of anything they can think of in a matter of seconds…
They’d think you’re crazy.
Matt is an SEO specialist, blogger, and the founder of Matt’s World 101.