“If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it”
This is so true in marketing whether offline or online. Web analytics plays a major role in determining the success of any search engine marketing campaign.
Measuring the effectiveness of your search marketing helps you improve on your current performance and also helps to identify the online marketing activities that aren’t working so you can discontinue that campaign.
Many web hosting provides already include basic web analytics which provides some simple data on what users are doing to arrive on your site and what they are doing once they arrive there. If you run PPC campaigns, Google, Yahoo, and MSN provide statistics that can aid in your process of refining search marketing results.
Many webmasters, however, do not use it or use it incorrectly. Part of the reason stems from a lack of understanding and what to look for – especially if they invested in web analytics packages like Urchin, Clicktracks or WebTrends. These packages come with many bells and whistles and an experienced webmaster can be easily overwhelmed with the amount of data that can be collected.
To understand what you should be looking for, think key performance indicators. Every web business is different. And if you’re using free web analytical tools, it’s likely you’ll need to invest in professional tracking programs to get the data you want. To establish what those are specifically for you, consider these questions:
With web analytics, you can profile user behaviors that can enable you to also offer complementary products that would go well with their current selections. Amazon.com is an example shopping engine that does well at this.
Of course, if you’d prefer not look at the numbers, you can always have a search engine marketing expert take care of it for you. Success is measured differently for people. Your important metrics should be discussed along with your search marketing expert so you know that it is exactly the right metrics you want.