Chapter 9

Data Analysis: Maintain & Improve the Space

Even well-built houses will see a few cracks or chipped paint after a while. If you don’t measure how your website is performing, you won’t be able to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. It’s important to utilize and understand all of the data and metrics available to you so you can make educated decisions about strategies for promoting your website.

Google Analytics

The wealth of data available in Google Analytics can seem overwhelming, but once you break it down you will find several pieces of information that can help you clearly understand your website’s organic health and daily traffic. Google offers plenty of instructional videos on many areas of Google Analytics, but the Volusion Marketing Services department has useful webinars and articles that discuss how you can easily use Google Analytics to your advantage.

Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools)

A companion tool to Google Analytics, Google Search Console looks more closely at how your site performs from a technical standpoint. If you have any 404 errors on your site or need to take a closer look at websites that are linking to you, Search Console can help you process that information easily. It's also a good way to see if there are any areas of your site that need to be revised for duplicate Meta tag issues, or if your site has received manual ranking penalties from Google that need to be addressed.

Additional tools

The previous section on Networking/Link Earning discussed various third party tools you can use to learn more about your website’s linking profile. Moz’s Open Site Explorer, SEMrush and Majestic are all great tools for seeing your website’s performance from a variety of angles.