5) Analytics

Use Google analytics to track your visitors and monitor their behaviour when they arrive.  Google Analytics is an extremely powerful resource and it’s free to anyone who has a Google account.  By pasting a tracking code into your html or php you will very quickly see the entry points and exit points and everything in between.

The power of tracking is always completley under estimated and under used, possibly one of the most powerful elements of Google Analytics is the facility to discover which keywords your visitors are typing into which search engine in order to find your site.  Once they are there you can see how long they stay and this is a representation they have tagged as Bounce Rate.  The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that enter your site and for whatever reason they leave almost immediatley, the bounce is a metric that is important in Google determining if your pages are relevant to the search terms and keywords used to enter your site.

Geographical information is also available through Google Analytics so to recap the value in tracking is knowing who is coming to your website, from where they came using which search engine, via which keyword, which page did they land on, how long dod they stay and which page did they exit from!  Powerful stuff eh!  This allows us to change the direction of our writing to better suit the metrics of our visitors.