Learn a New Skill: Data, Knowledge, Google Analytics, and You

There is something every web-based business, blog, and website is learning to live by: Google Analytics. If you don’t already know why you need web analytics, what Google Adwords offers, or have access to the information Google Analytics offers, you are already behind. Not having access to these tools is a little bit like shooting in the dark— every once in a while getting a flash of insight to whether or not you were hitting the target. Web Analytics turns on the floodlights.

With a monthly cost of exactly $0, automatic reports, and Adwords there is no good reason to not be utilizing the awesome power of Google Analytics. Whether you are an executive, marketing professional, or content developer you can benefit from this extensive tool.

If you put aside an hour to learn your way around Google Analytics, you are likely to discover information including how many people have visited your website, the average duration of their visit, the bounce rate, conversion rate, traffic type, countries of visit, keywords, how they discovered your website, and so much more. These insights into your business can be the difference between success and failure and might just help you define where your success/failure comes from.

Here are just three of the awesome tools and capabilities offered by Google Analytics:

Tracking multiple websites

Google Analytics can track multiple websites, blogs, social media accounts, and landing pages. You aren’t paying per website (you aren’t paying at all)! Plug-ins or Widgets (which can be found through Google) can enable using Analytics on pages where source code cannot be edited.

Custom reports and real-time reporting

Using Google Analytic tools custom reports can be built in minutes and are aggregated and easy to share. These reports can be aggregate of all of your sites or landing pages or web-site specific. Another option is real-time reporting, which allows you to see how many people are on your site at any point in the day, where they are, and what they view.

Adwords

Google Adwords is a lifesaver. Struggling with SEO? Desperately trying to improve blog traffic? Google Adwords provides the tools you need. You can either use the Adwords keyword planner to search for keyword ideas to integrate into your blog posts or pay a small initial investment to create an account and bid on the best keywords. Since you only pay-per-click, you’re only spending money if you’re successful. Adwords allows you to define an easy budget, better target traffic, test marketing campaigns, and usually results in instantaneous traffic.

There are dozens of other tools offered by Google Analytics. Check them out and find out for yourself what you can do!

So how do you learn Google Analytics? Easy. You try, fail, succeed, fail, and try again. Google Analytics is an easy tool to use and even easier to download and set up. Spend some time exploring the homepage, reporting page, customization, and admin pages. Once you’ve taken a look at what Google Analytics offers you should take a moment to figure out what you need to know. The abundance of information offered by Google Analytics can be overwhelming so it is important to zone in on what you are sure you need to know.

Looking to learn a new skill this year? Google Analytics is a valuable tool for you and your company. It’s pretty fun too!