Analytic Reference
Terms:
Visits - a sequence of requests from a uniquely identified client that expired after a certain amount of inactivity, usually 30 minutes.
Absolute Unique Visitors – how many visitors (people) came to your site, counting each person only once for the entire time period being reviewed.
Example: Now, let’s say that I discover your site on Monday, January 5, 2009, and visit every weekday that week (once a day, always from the same computer, always from the same browser.) If I set my calendar to include the full week, GA sees five visits, one new visit, and one Absolute Unique Visitor. (The good part is coming.)
However, the web analyst could set his calendar to worry about only Wednesday, January 7 and Thursday, January 8. For those two days, we will see: two visits (one each day, right?), one unique visitor and NO new visits.
Why not? Remember that I discovered the website on Monday. When I visited on Monday, I was new. GA puts a cookie on my browser at that point, and every time I come back, I am considered a returning visitor.
Unique Views – Unique Views are the equivalent of “Visits” to a single page. For example, if 1 person viewed a single page 100 times during the same visit, that page would show 100 pageviews, but only 1 “unique view”Pageviews – a request made to the web server for a page
Average Pageviews – The total number of page views divided by the total number of visits during the same timeframe.
Algorithm: Page Views / Visits = Average Page Views per Visit
Bounce Rate – When someone is at your site and bounces away to a different website
Example: I land on your website, glance at the information on the page then I decide to go to a different website. However, if I had landed on your website, glanced at the information then clicked a link/tab on your website – then there is no bounce rate.
New Visits – people visiting the site for the first time ever!
Benchmark – Compares your website to other similar sites. Either by size of website or by category.
Direct Traffic – does include bookmark traffic and typed URLs, but these days (unless you are very strict about your campaign tracking parameters) it can and does include all kinds of other stuff. All it really means is that the session started without a referrer being passed by the user’s browser
Referring Sites – when a customer is on www.a.com and clicks on a link on www.a.com that links to your website. The link could be text, an image (banner ad) etc.
Search Engines – Google Analytics has a list of common search engines that it checks for. Visitors that find grainglogix.com on yahoo.com for example will be put in the Search Engine section not referring sites.
Landing pages – The first page that a visitor sees. This isn’t always the homepage.
Exit pages – The last page a visitor viewed before leaving your website.
Section Features:
Intelligence (Beta) – Currently not being used. This section allows you to setup Google Analytics to email an alert when certain metrics are met.
Example: Email me (and others) when visitor traffic from Minneapolis is greater than 60 visitors per day.
Visitors – where information about each visitor is collected. This section will tell you important information such as:
1)bounce rate (are people sticking around?)
2)visits (how many people are coming to our site?)
3)time on site (how long are people sticking around?)
4)browser capabilities (what are people using to visit our site?)
5)map overlay (where in the world are the visitors?)
6)benchmarking (how does our site measure up?)
Traffic Sources – gives details on how visitors found your website. Some people will directly type in your URL (grainlogix.com), others will perform a search on google with a keyword.
Adwords, Ad Versions, and Campaigns are currently not setup for your site. These are different features that could be enabled but require additional setup and sometimes a fee. For example, Adwords is feature that Google offers where you can create paid ads on google.com
Content – collects data on where visitors are entering and exiting your site, and the most popular pages. This section will help tell you where you may need to adjust the content. For example if a product page is a top exit page, then we should review the page and visitor information to see why that page is a top exit page. However, some pages in a website are considered exit pages. Some exit pages might be, locations (Dealer/Rep locator) page, contact page, terms and conditions page.
This section also has In-Page Analytics. This feature will bring up a page of your website and display how often each link is clicked. This section can help with the layout and content of a site.
Site Search and Event Tracking are not being used at this time. Current sites that have Analytics do not have internal search engines. Event Tracking might be a feature we include to track how many times an informational PDF is downloaded from the site.
Goals – Generally this section would be used on an e-commerce site to track visitors through the check out process. However, we can use this tool on non e-commerce sites. Using this features means there is a “path” you want visitors to follow. Without analytics, this couldn’t be done, but goals actually track the “path” and show you how many visitors completed path, how many didn’t complete the path and where did they go instead?
I have setup a sample of a Goal on this website. I would like to see a better Goal setup that would, for example, track how many visitors on the GL10 Truck Auger continue to the GL10 Accessories to the Dealer/Rep Locator (as there is a direct link on the GL10 Accessories to the Locator). A Goal that is tracking a path only needs to have two pages but can have more.
Goals can also track Pages/Visit and Time On Site.
Tags: Google Analytics, seo
SEO | Jessica | 
January 16, 2012 5:09 pm | 
Comments (0)
1. Robots.txt is a simple text file that helps manage search engine crawlers indexing your site and what to crawl or not to crawl. Search engine spiders are programmed to look for this file. The suggested location for the robots.txt in the same directory as your index file; generally the root directory.
2. Sitemap.xml is a file that allows crawlers to index your site on a more advanced level. This XML file “draws a map” of your site enabling search engine spiders to help accurately rank sites and perform more accurate searches. Creating a sitemap.xml file can be done multiple ways. There are free sitemap.xml generators for smaller sites and Google Webmaster Tools can generate maps for larger sites. Once the file is created it is recommended to make an entry in the robots.txt file that informs spiders where the sitemap.xml file is located.
3. Google Analytics is a free tool that has multiple uses. One feature is seeing which keywords are actually creating user traffic. This will allow you (or your marketing team) to improve keyword optimization. The better keywords you have the more web traffic you’ll have, which in the retail world can lead to more sales. Another feature is viewing which pages are getting the most traffic, which pages are creating high revenue, and which pages have a high bounce rate. Knowing page traffic will tell you where you should place important information and which pages need to be reworked. The last feature I’ll be talking about is who are your website visitors? Google Analytics will track new and returning visitors, geography location and referral sources. Understanding the geography of your visitors allows you to make smarter web decisions. For example, you wouldn’t sell snowmobile parts if your biggest audience is located in the Southern United States.
4. Google Webmaster Tools is a free tool that ties all the previous information together. From submitting your sitemap.xml, analyzing the robot.txt file, and improving your Inbound Linking Quality Score; why wouldn’t you want this tool in your toolbox of tricks? Instead of waiting for a Google to find your site, you can submit information to Google. Submitting information also gives you feed back of any errors and status updates with sitemap.xml and robots.txt files.
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