Google Analytics
Google Analytics now provides reporting tools that allow you to view and analyze the effectiveness of your SEO program.
Among other things, you can see how your customers are finding your site, how long they visit you, and which of your website pages attracted visitors.
Sessions Graph
This report shows the trend of recent activity on your website in terms of Visitor Sessions over time. The default timeframe is one week, but this can easily be changed in the Date Range control area.
A 'Session' is defined as a series of clicks on your site by an individual visitor during a specific period of time.
A Session is initiated when the visitor arrives at your site, and it ends when the browser is closed or there is a period of inactivity.
Sessions quantities will vary to some degree based on what type of visitor tracking method is employed.
For the most accurate numbers, the Urchin Traffic Monitor (UTM) should be used.
Referrals
This report ranks referring URLs (external web pages) that brought traffic to your site. For Sessions without an external referral, which occurs when a Visitor goes directly to your site via a bookmark/favorite or by typing in the URL directly, the (no referral) entry is incremented. This allows you to compare the percentage of traffic from external links versus Visitors that already know about your site. Click any referring page to view it in a new browser window.
Each session is scanned for an external referral, which is determined using the domains list in the configuration for this site. If an external referral is found, then the base-URL of the referral is entered and incremented. The base-URL does not include query parameters (after the ? query token) which would cause extreme granularity. If no external referral is detected then '(no referral)' is incremented.
Search Terms
This report lists the actual keywords/phrases people typed into search engines to find your site. Entries are ranked by the number of Sessions each was responsible for. To list all phrases with a particular word, enter the word in the Filter at the top and press Enter. The Total at the bottom of the report will now represent the total number of search phrases that contain that word.
Each session is scanned for an external referral, which is determined using the domains list in the configuration for this site. If an external referral is found, then the query of the referral is scanned for search variables. If a search variable and term is found, then the term is entered and incremented. The list of search variables can be controlled in Urchin's configuration.
Search Engines
This report lists each Search Engine that referred traffic to your site using a keyword search. By clicking on the arrow next to each entry, you can see the actual Search Terms people typed in. Entries are ranked by the number of Sessions each Search Engine was responsible for.
Each session is scanned for an external referral, which is determined using the domains list in the configuration for this site. If an external referral is found, then the query of the referral is scanned for search variables. If a search variable and term is found, then the search domain and term are entered and incremented. The list of search variables can be controlled in Urchin's configuration.
|
|