The secret for any successful website lies in knowing what parts of the site are working, and which parts are letting it down.
The best way of finding this information is by using an analytics programme that will give businesses real-time information about their websites. Google Analytics real-time is one of the latest analysis programmes. It has opened up all sorts of exciting internet marketing and SEO techniques to help businesses and marketing professionals create more flexible and responsive SEO, content, advertisements and marketing campaigns. In an instant any business can have access to information about the number of active visitors, page view history for the last 30 m minutes, the top referrals, top active pages, top keywords and top locations.
So why is this type of information so important?
Well, any website that can monitor traffic patterns, content hits, visitor data and referrals will be able to build a much clearer picture of how long content and advertising takes to spread through the internet: let alone know if it has an impact, how long it takes to make that impact or whether the impact just fails to happen. Businesses will then be in a position to decide whether they are spending their time and resources wisely and effectively.
What sort of information will Analytics real-time give businesses?
Twitter marketing:
Businesses will be able to measure the impact of any given tweet. What’s more, if they repeat the process at different times of the day, they’ll be able to build up a clearer picture of the type of tweets that drive the most traffic and the ideal time to post tweets for maximum business impact.
Real-time responsive advertising:
Imagine being able to see if traffic is particularly high in one location or amongst one demographic at any given time. Now imagine if you could see this information as it happened, and were able to change your advertising to match. How useful could that be?
Real-time responsive social media engagement:
When you can monitor the real-time impact of social media engagement, you can take steps to make sure you’re engaging with the right audience at the right time. If you notice lots of traffic coming to your site from Facebook or LinkedIn, then if time allows go over there and engage. Strike while the iron’s hot and help to stimulate debate. All it will do is drive more traffic to your site and increase the visibility and awareness of your site or blog.
General social media sharing:
Post a tweet and watch for any increase in traffic; share a blog post on Facebook and analyse the resulting traffic. Share articles and news on Reddit, StumbleUpon, or LinkedIn to find out which times have higher engagement levels, then tailor your social media sharing accordingly.
Google ads analysis:
If you’re lucky enough to be able to afford to fork out on a new Google advertisement, then look out for the real time data coming through and watch how visitors are responding. Are they converting, so obviously liking what they see, or are they simply browsing aimlessly or, worse still, bouncing away?
PPC campaign analysis:
If your business has launched a new advertisement campaign, then use real-time analytics to ensure that everything is working properly. Check the analytics to make sure the PPC advertisements are driving traffic to the right place.
New content:
Keep an eye on real-time to see how long it takes for your newly-published article to get picked up, shared and start driving traffic. Find out which visitors are ‘early adopters’ and regularly share new content from your site. If your business understands your content’s early stage sharing patterns you’ll be in a position to improve on it.
