To create a successful advertising campaign and promote the site, professionals can not do without collecting data about users and details of visits. To this end, optimizers use a variety of analytics tools.
Why is it so important to analyze traffic?
Comprehensive site analytics will help to understand the audience better and tell:
- Where do guests come from most often (search engines, social networks, links from other sites);
- Which pages have become popular and which are still worth working on;
- Does the user spend enough time on the page that sells;
- What percentage of guests become buyers;
- Audiences of what gender and age visit the site more often.
Analytics tools collect all the data and plot it into graphs and charts so owners and optimizers do not have to collect and process information. Based on received reports, it is possible to conclude on whether the site is correctly promoted and whether the marketing plan is competently formed.
Traffic tracking tools
- Google Analytics will help you understand by which requests the users come to and which pages they read the most and will provide a lot of detailed information that can be used for marketing research.
- Piwik is a program that can be installed on a web server that collects data in real-time. Works similarly to the Google service, shows the same basic information.
- FireStats is a multifunctional and free service, although its interface is in English. It can work with popular CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.) and web platforms.
- Clicky combines simplified features of Google Analytics and other interesting features (such as collecting emails and logins of guests, mobile phones, and addresses).
- Woopra is a site analyzer that combines the collection of statistics and support for online chats with users.
Among others, we should pay attention to Google Webmasters Tools, a special addition to Analytics. SEO professionals use it, but the average user can learn the basic capabilities of the service.
Google Webmaster Tools Highlights:
- Number of site displays and clicks;
- Top high- and medium-frequency keywords that lead visitors to the web resource;
- The average positions of keywords and the pages promoted by them;
- Internal site links;
- External link mass;
- Pages with error and Googlebot block.
Top best sites and programs for analysts:
- Google Ads is an online tool that selects keys by region and country.
- KeyCollector is a desktop key collection program that, unlike Google tools, has more functionality and search options.
- AllPositions and SE Ranking are sites that track the resource position in search results by given keywords.
- LinkPad is an available free site analyzer that monitors the external number of links from your own and others’ resources. Its paid and more functional version is Ahrefs.
- SeoLib is a simple service with many free options for tracking keywords and the quality of link mass.
- SeoBudget tracks page positions and site updates and helps with keyword selection.
- Semonitor is software for position control. It is paid, and collecting information functions are provided in real-time.
- WeWeight is a desktop tool that calculates page weight and analyzes internal relinking.
- Xenu is software to control the internal optimization of the web resource, the number of properly configured pages and pages with errors. Its paid and expanded counterpart was Screaming Frog.
- Alexa is an online service that provides complete information about competitors, their traffic, positions, and errors.