The world of business websites is a fast moving business and it is one with which I enjoy keeping up. However, it must be a minefield for those business owners out there whose skills lie in other areas.
There are so many people out there offering your free advice, some of it good, some of it irrelevant and some of it just plain wrong. Therefore I intend to write a series of articles to debink some of the myths for businesses wanting to make the most of their websites.
Google Analytics is a script based system that allows Google limited access to your website in order that it can measure what your visitors are doing on your website. It offers graphical statistics so you can see what visitors your website is sgetting and what trends they are following.
Knowing this information about visitors to your website is absolutely essential. If you have a website from Net Quality Web Design in Nottingham and I host your website, you already have this information as my server collates it automatically.
However, Google Analytics is still a good thing to get if you want more detailed analysis of the figures.
Simple answer:- NOTHING! It is a one minute job to paste in the code that is provided by Google. So your web designer should not be charging you to add Google Analytics to your website because there is virtually no work to do!
The information provided by Google Analytics can help you when planning your overall strategy to SEO but it does not in itself help in any way towards improving your website's rankings in search engine results.
So in short, I say install Google Analytics on your website if visitor habits are of interest to you (and they should be). And make sure you don't pay for the privilege!