HOW TO USE GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Google Analytics is a free service

that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website

first thing to do is sign up to Google Analytics

go to www.google.com/analytics or click this link

click Sign Up Now

click Sign up

fill-out the form according to your preferences

enter Account Name here

enter your websites URL here

say yes to terms and conditions

click Create Account

the Tracking Code Configuration

stay on the Standard tab

select the type of domain youre tracking here

paste this code

to webpage you want to track, ie. WordPress

click save

click sign out

after few days, sign in again to your Analytics account

it may take few days before data are populated

under Account Home, click on your webpage on the list

see how your webpage is doing

The Basics

when you sign in, youll be right on this page

on the overview page

click on View report

The Dashboard:

Visits counts the times someone has interacted with your website

Bounce Rate is the percentage of those visits

in which a person instantly left your site

Pageviews is how many pages were viewed during those visits

Avg. Time on Site

shows how long people stayed on your site

'Pages/Visit' shows the average pages viewed during each visit

'% New Visits' shows the percentage of first time visits

comparing monthly statistics

on Dashboard page, click here

put a check on Compare to Past

then click Apply

see the comparison between present and previous month

if you go back to the blog metrics

changes from previous month to present will be displayed

youll have an idea about whats happening to your site

Traffic Sources: see how people arrived at your site

Direct Traffic shows percentage of people

who got into your site

by typing in or clicking your sites URL directly

Referring Sites are pages which refer your sites links

Search Engines are people directed from pages like Google

Other could be from emails and special links you setup

if you click Direct Traffic link for example

youll see more specific information on another page about it

same as with Referring Sites

and Search Engines

for example, you can click a link on the list here

to see the keyword/s used to get to your site

then click a link on the list again

to get further info about it

Keywords: scroll down this page

Keywords tells what visitors expect to see on your site

Keywords with high Bounce Rate

show where you fail to meet that expectation

click on Content

then click on Top Landing Pages

see how many people visit each page of your site

even more info as you scroll down

setting up goals

a goal is a webpage which a visitor reaches

once they made a purchase

or completed another desired action

click on Goals

read Goals Overview to learn more about it

click on Analytics Settings to define your goals

then click on Edit

then click Edit on selected Goal Name

type in your goal page here

then type in your Goal name which will appear on your reports

putting a Goal value here is optional

click Save Changes

Thats how you do the basics!

for advance tips, you can click this link: http://www.google.com/support /googleanalytics/bin/static.py? hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=1 9779&from=19779&rd=1