Tracking your site using Google Analytics
If you are a woodworker with a website, a blog, a Facebook page, or a Twitter account, you are hopefully using these tools for a good reason; to get your name out there and publicize your work. To truly achieve this goal however, you will want to keep track of how effective your efforts are. You can easily find a few different methods for tracking metrics on Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts, but tracking your own website or blog may be a little trickier. This is where Google analytics just may be your new best friend!
Using Google analytics can be tricky at first, but once you have it set up, it’s a breeze. The first thing you’ll need to do is log into your Google account and associate it with analytics. If you don’t have a Google log in at all, all you need to do is set up a user account by clicking here, and clicking “Create an Account Now”. Fill in the appropriate information, read the terms of use, and click “I accept, create my account”. From here, just follow these steps:
1. Add your website to your Google analytics account by clicking “Create new account” on the upper right hand dropdown.
2. When the new account is added, click the “Edit” button to the right of that account to view its edit options.
3. Find the account status in the upper right hand corner of this screen, and click it to view your tracking code.
4. Copy and paste this code into the HTML body of each page you want to track on your website or blog.
Since every website has its own webhosting service and administrators, I can’t speak much to editing your HTML code without opening up a very large can of worms. However, if you aren’t editing your website yourself, simply contact your webmaster or whoever built your website and they will be able to enter this code in a matter of minutes. You should be able to see traffic results in your Google analytics dashboard within 24 hours, otherwise click here to troubleshoot the problem.
This information is an enormous insight into how your website is viewed, returned to, and used as a resource. With these metrics you can tailor your social networking and marketing endeavors to maximize the return on your efforts. How are you tracking your business? Let us know in the comments field!
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