As a V7N Networks Webmaster Forums Mentor, it never ceases to amaze me the sheer number of people oblivious to the real benefits of website analytics. I encounter so many questions, through the forums, and even my own email, concerning how to make money online. You'd be surprised at how many never thought to use website analytics at all.
Over the years, I've come up with a standard formula for questioning people to determine what their issues are. Do they understand the value of search driven terminology relating to content development and the SEO applications? Do they know their visitors and add value in their website to help visitors with their problems? Do they have affiliate programs offering visitors solutions to their problems? And inevitably, I'll ask them, do you use website analytics to track your progress?
Failing to Plan Through Using Website Analytics means Planning to Fail
Even if they do answer yes to most of the questions, I normally find that last question hangs them up. They're taking a hit or miss, trial and error, shotgun approach to website monetization without anything to track their progress, identify their visitors, or even know what search terminology visitors hit their website about.
If there's one thing I've learned over almost 20 years online, it's the simple fact that failure using website analytics, for tracking results, is a sure-fire way to keep us guessing, and potentially never finding what honestly works. Failure to track leads to blindly attempting things until something starts working. Website analytics is the answer to knowing the results of our efforts, and honestly, it's fun, or it can be.
Yeah, I know, crunching numbers, for most, is abysmally boring. At this point, I probably sound like some acne-plagued nerd, complete with birth control, thick lenses, taped glasses, sitting in my mom's basement eating beans and weenies. Actually, mom is quite nice; she allows me my own room upstairs. But seriously, we can choose to make all things website, and business, related a game.
We Can Honestly Profit From Website Analytics Applied Properly
Take for instance my assertion that website analytics are fun. Here's what makes it fun, and profitable for me. Maybe it's just the profitable that makes it the most fun, but either way, I look forward to reviewing my analytics. It never ceases to amaze me some of the things the search engines send me. With some of it, I just scratch my head and laugh wondering how in the world they determined my page was about such things.
I'm sure you're wondering how in the world analytics are profitable. Here's an example. I have a new baby site, just barely out of Google's sandbox. I still use website analytics on it, but I'm not interested in the traffic volumes at this point. I'm interested in what the visitor driven search terminology is for the site. That's valuable and profitable information. Not only does it give insight to my visitors, it lets me know things I rank for as well.
Why is visitor insight so important? It's important because the more we know about our visitors, the more educated guesses we make about their wants and needs. That's profitable when we offer them affiliate links solving those wants and needs. Of course, we can use things like direct email questionnaires, and the online website equivalents, but that takes extra work. Why not use website analytics to cut down the extra work?
To give you an example, take that new baby website for example. One of the recent search engine clicks, which I found in my favorite website analytics program, came from the search term "write something new daily". When I looked at the page, it has nothing to do with write something daily, it's a blog post about learning something new everyday, a month-long contest, running at V7N. Out of millions of results, I comfortably sit on page one at number 4.
The Actual Profit in Website Analytics
Knowing this nice tidbit of information, I can capitalize on the rankings if I choose to. However, like a smart website owner, I do a bit more research before deciding how to capitalize on it. Preliminary results show not many search for the term, but I do find related terms. Wait, I have nothing on the website to address some of the higher searched terminology, so it looks like time to create some additional content and my website analytics just lead me in the right direction.
In the meantime, I can still choose adding affiliate programs related to helping people write something new every day, and linking them on the page in the event, search driven terminology, for the phrase, increases. On new content pages, targeting higher search driven terminology, for the same topic, I can place a link to the previous page with affiliate programs as well, to boost that page's authority. Not only did I gain potential monetization advantage, I gained new content ideas better targeted for things people might drop by my website to find, and I'd never known any of it without website analytics.
So yes, website analytics can be fun. They give a wealth of information about our visitors, provide insight for lacking content development areas, and allow us to leverage monetization through a better understanding of what our visitors want.
About the Author:
James Sanders is the owner of How to Make Money Online dot Org, and other websites, his first website started back in 1997. Do you want to learn more about website analytics and all things on how to make money online? Visit his site to learn those things and more.
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