When you manage a blog or website, it is important to use a reliable system to measure your statistics. The most reliable and best-known program for analyzing statistics is Google Analytics. It is a big advantage for all website owners that Google Analytics is a free software program. In today’s article, I will tell you why Google Analytics is such an important program for every blogger and website administrator.

This is the first article of the new blog series ‘The Google Guide’. A new series of blog posts that will come online regularly with new tips and information about the different applications of Google, which is useful to know as a blogger.

Analyze your visitor

Google Analytics tells a lot about the visitors that visit your website. Where they come from, which device they use, which medium they come from and much more. GA gives an expanded view on a daily, weekly or monthly level. You can easily analyze which days you have generated many visitors on your website. The visitor numbers can be found via the Google Analytics website under the tab ‘Target’.

Where does that visitor come from?

Visitors can arrive at your site in several ways. If you are active in sharing your content via social media, you can find this in Google Analytics. Analytics will count the visitors who visit your site based on four different references, namely: Social (social media), Direct (direct traffic), Organic Search (search engine traffic) and Referral (traffic from the links), all the other references that do not fit these four references are placed under ‘Other’. Where your visitors come from can be found under the tab ‘acquisition’ in Google Analytics.

Does my content affect?

Everything you post on your blog or website is your content. Whether you regularly write a blog or mainly post photos, everything you upload on your website is your content. You can analyze your content via Google Analytics. How many page views have your content received and which sections or topics are popular? The messages that many visitors have generated can be found under the ‘behavior’ tab.

Why Google Analytics?

But why is Google Analytics a real must-do for you as a blogger? Google Analytics gives you a clear overview of your visitors, but also about your content. This allows you to improve your content and optimize your website. How you can use this information to improve your website will be extensively discussed in the next section. If you regularly cooperate with companies or you would like to do this in the near future, then most companies ask for your Google Analytics data and your current statistics. That is another good reason to put ‘install Google Analytics’ on your To-Do list.

Attention! On May 25, 2018, the new GDPR (The General Data Protection Regulation) law (Europe) goes in, relating to the processing of personal data. When you use Google Analytics, you process personal data and you must have a privacy statement on your website.

Read More:

• The new privacy law | What does this mean for you
• Making a privacy policy. How do you do that? (Fast and Easy!)

My name is Tessa van Verk, Communication student at Hogeschool Rotterdam and (food) blogger at Daily Inception. In the next months, I will take you into the world of Google, in the Google Guide. Do you have a specific question or would you like to have explained something clearer about Google or one of the other topics that I discuss? Leave a comment below or send an email to contact@dailyinception.nl. Also, check out my portfolio.

What would you like to read in the Google Guide?