Search Analytics

Every blog owner should know just how visitors find your site and where they are coming from. You should also know what search terms are used to find your site.

It is VERY important to make sure the right visitors are finding your site. You do not want to waste your marketing efforts on trying to get just anyone to visit your site when you have a specific niche you serve almost exclusively. But how do you find out who is visiting and if they are finding what your site is all about?

The answer is simple, but simultaneously complex: search analytics.

A lot of people do not understand just what search analytics are. Simply put, search analytics comprise the study of:

• what any given visitor does while they are on your website
• what search terms they use to get to your site
• and how they actually find your site (through searching, social media, or another site)

Every time someone finds your blog they may stay for a few seconds or they may stay on for an hour, depending on a variety of factors. Does your site offer great content? Or is it more like a classic “squeeze page,” with a little bit of ad copy and an entreaty to sign up for an e-mailing list? No two sites are precisely the same, and this leads to a great deal of different potential tweaks.

This is where search analytics companies come into play. There are several different companies, which offer a highly varied range of content. Most every type of software available (including that which is native to some web hosting providers) tells you the basic information. Three things that are very important to know are unique visitors, duration of visit, and user impressions.

Obviously, a unique visitor is just any person who clicks onto your site. A user impression is whether they clicked onto a particular page, where a particular ad might be displayed. And visit duration tells whether they stuck around long enough to really check out your offerings… or just gave it a once over, a shaken head, and a disappearing act.

Two of the best companies for identifying the more nitty gritty information on your site are Google Analytics and Omniture. However, they function in different ways.

Google’s software is just that – it can track “the numbers,” but it has no brain. If you have a marketing background, this might be enough for your purposes. However, Omniture stands out a bit because their professionals actually review the number their software puts up, and make specific recommendations based on their knowledge and your intended niche.

Knowing exactly how a visitor finds you is one of the best ways to start targeting what you write on your blog to help those visitors find you everytime they search for a keyword or keyword phrase.

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