A lot of beginning web marketers will launch websites without any tracking on them. This is all right in the very beginning stages of launching a website, but the moment you decide that the website is more than a hobby and is something you actually want to make money from, you should install tracking right away.
Determining How Your Website is Performing
If you don’t track even the fundamental things, such as how much traffic your website is getting, how many people are coming back to your website after leaving, and other basic metrics, you will have no idea how your website is doing.
If your website is starting to get serious traffic, that means an opportunity to make money. If you don’t have tracking installed, you won’t know when that occurs. In addition to the basics, there are a lot of other benefits of tracking some of the more advanced metrics.
Ranking Well in Search Engines Using Metrics
With the Panda update, Google has publicly stated that they are using visitor metrics much more heavily now in their ranking algorithms.
That means that pages where visitors stay longer will tend to rank higher. Pages where users click and then never come back to Google also rank higher, as that probably means they found the answer to their question on your website. Pages which users don’t bounce from and instead go to other pages on your site will also rank higher.
These are just a fraction of the metrics Google is now considering in their ranking algorithm. If you want your website to rank, you need to be consistently monitoring things such as return rate, bounce rate and exit rate to improve them over time.
Tracking Performance to Improve Cash Flow
Some metrics may not immediately improve your bottom line; however, improvements in other metrics can immediately improve your cash flow. For example, determine what your current visitor to email sign-up rate and your email to conversion rate. By tracking these two metrics, you can immediately add more cash to your bottom line. More importantly, any improvements you make to these metrics will last over time, paying off for months and years.
Improving the Non-Tangibles of Your Business
How useful are people finding your website, how many people feel as though your site is resourceful enough that they return, and how many people post items from your site to their Facebook status are all metrics that won’t necessarily add to your bottom line right away. However, they will result in more links, more visitors and more community goodwill which, in the long run, will turn into more visitors and more cash.
These are some of the many reasons you should be tracking the performance of your website. Without good tracking, you are essentially visionless. By tracking and measuring your metrics, you will be able to refine and improve your website over time.
