What Are Web Analytics?
Web Analytics are software tools that webmasters and web developers use to measure metrics, like:
- The amount of traffic a site receive (how many visitors it gets)
- Where these visitors are coming from
- Whether they're visiting the site for the first time or if they're a repeat visitor
- What content they interacted with on the site
- How long they spent on the site
- And other, useful, key information.
Basically, analytics are used to see who's coming to your site, what they're coming to your site for, when they're coming, and where they're going, which is important for several reasons.
For example, say you just published a new blog on your site. You could use analytics tools to see when it got the most traffic, if the link you posted to social media pulled in a lot of traffic, if people were finding it through Google, if it attracted a lot of new visitors, if a lot of people stayed on the page reading it or if they clicked out or not, and where they went next.
Using analytics, you could not only determine the return on investment (ROI) of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign, but also fix it if it's not working and capitalize on the tactics that are.