Week #10 Google Analytics

 Analytics has been one of the best and most affective tools in a content developer's repertoire to measure their SEO performance. This week, Professor Kelsey shared with us a fantastic way for us to measure the performance of our own SEO. Beyond that, given the five benefits that come with it, it makes for the perfect start in using analytics to help boost our SEO.

Google first launched their analytics service in November of 2005, after acquiring Urchin and is currently in it's fourth version of the platform, labeled GA4. The first, and for me the best benefit of using Google analytics is that it's completely free. For college students putting all their money toward their education and essentials, this makes Google analytics an excellent option as a place to begin your foray into analytics, giving many students a leg up on understanding the ins and outs before even graduating.

Second benefit would be knowing how many people visit your site, as well as what keywords they use. The most important element of SEO is content, but running at a close second would easily be adaptability, and the better you know your site visitors, the easier it'll be to bend and mold your SEO to their liking and attract more visitors. Similar to the second benefit, the third benefit would be knowing which pages and links are most popular, further enhancing your understanding of the people who visit and interact with your site.

The fourth benefit is knowing the number of new visitors that your search engine optimization campaign brings you, once again, giving the content developer an idea of the effectiveness of his or her performance, letting them know whether or not the campaign is worth continuing or not, etc. Finally, the last benefit would be the ability to finetune your website. The moral of this week's lesson is that the more you know about the traffic your site is hosting, the more you can do for your site.