Google Analytics 101 – Why Your Practice Needs It

Google Analytics (GA) is a free tool used to help track end user traffic and activity. 

Why is tracking what the end-user does so important? Well, it helps to know what aspects of your website are performing well in relation to attracting and keeping visitors and which ones are not. Knowing what end-users want is key to your website’s success.

Tracking happens when code is implemented into the back end of your web pages. After adding Google’s tracking code to your website, end user information will start showing up in your GA dashboard. The standard information is general such as what time they visited, how long they stayed, how many pages they visited, what pages they visited, how they reached the site, and so on. No personal information like name and birthdate will be collected. Learning how to read and sort the data collected is painless and free.

Learning Google Analytics is beneficial for anyone that owns a website or plans on starting one. You don’t need to pay for any courses on how to use Google Analytics because Google will teach you for free! Here’s a link to their training portal.

Along with the walk-through courses provided by Google; a help center that is packed with information about different aspects of Google Analytics is at your fingertips. Here’s a link. You can become an analyst with the only cost being the time you use to learn.

There is also a large supportive community of users of Google Analytics. There may already be an answer to your questions in the forums, which you can access here.

Google Analytics is a necessary tool for any business/website owner. You will be able to discover which parts of your website are seeing the most or least amount of activity. You can then use this information to better market your practice. All the tracking happens right under the noses of your end users without getting in the way of their browsing.

Most important, the use and education of the application come at just the right price: free!

—John Nguyen, SEO Specialist, Sesame Communications