Monday, January 24, 2011

Is Your Website Marketing Stuck in a Rut?

The beginning of a new year is a natural time to give your online marketing efforts a thorough checkup. What might you add to your marketing arsenal? What current activities need tweaking for better performance? And are there activities that should be cut out altogether?

What Gets Measured, Gets Managed

Peter Drucker once said, “What gets measured, gets managed.” This is especially true in terms of your website and Internet marketing efforts. The only way to really know which efforts produce results - which exact efforts should be repeated - is through tracking, then analyzing your results.

We can talk about revving up your online promotion through search engine optimization, content marketing, pay per click advertising or banner ads, but without a really good tracking mechanism in place, you'll never know exactly which efforts pay off. How can you improve what you cannot measure?

Google Analytics is our tool of choice for tracking. We install it on every WordPress site using the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin by Yoast. With this tool, we can quickly see which blog posts draw the most visitors, where in the world these visitors are located, what keywords drew them in, how long they stayed on site, how many pages they visited and the path they took through our site, and so much more.

So, step one for today: If you already have Google Analytics or another statistical tracking tool installed on your site, give it a thorough review. If you're not currently tracking, don't delay even one more day. Sign up for your free Google Analytics account today.

Related Article:
Is Your Website Invisible?

1 comment:

Susan Hamilton said...

SO true. Everything has to be measured, and online that is so much more than many small businesses realize. Why waste valuable time playing guessing games when you can clearly learn what's working, and what isn't?

Here's to moving forward with good information!