Morty posted a great question to yesterday's post: "Can you give us numbers-challenged wordsmiths an introduction on how to actually read the data from Google Analytics?"

One reason I recommend Google Analytics is because it's so easy to use and read. Before they changed the interface, its analytics application was very clumsy -- I used to spend hours trying to figure out how to find the data I needed. Now it's quite elegant.

The other reason I recommend Google Analytics is because the application distinguishes between traffic from Google Adword campaigns and those coming from organic searches. The freebie programs that come with hosting packages don't do this.

What follows is the basic information you can learn from any analytics program:

1. Number of visitors -- This data should be expressed as "unique visitors," not "hits." The term "hits" is a misnomer. A "hit" is anytime someone views a page or downloads a file -- a file being any object on the page.

So look for unique visitors. I like to look at data for each month and three, six, and 12 months. Some programs will tell you the number of returning visitors versus the number of new visitors.

Is your traffic going up? Going down? Remaining flat? Do you even have traffic?

2. Traffic sources -- If you're using Google Analytics, click on the tab that reads "traffic sources." This will open a new section where you can find a wealth of information about where your traffic comes from.

Direct traffic includes those searchers who came directly to your site, usually by typing your URL into your browser.

Referred traffic refers to those searchers who found your site via a link from another site. NOTE! Google and other search engines love to see sites linking to each other. Inbound links -- or links from other sites -- are very important to SEO, so do note where you traffic is coming from.

Search engine traffic refers to the traffic that comes from search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.

For my site, for example, 42% of my traffic in the last month came directly to the site, 20% came from referring sites, and 36.5% came from search engines -- with the bulk coming from Google. 

Some sites I analyze have little search engine traffic -- usually because the site isn't optimized. Others have little direct traffic because they don't do any marketing -- but lots of search engine traffic because they are well optimized and/or use PPC. A few have no referring sites at all -- which is not good.

3. Keywords -- The fun stuff! What keywords are people using to find your site? If all they use is your company name, then that could be an indication your site isn't optimized -- or optimized for the wrong keywords.

My site is optimized for specific keywords, so I use this data to ensure people are finding the site via the keywords for which it's optimized.

I also use it to see if I've missed some really good keywords or to determine if I need to develop additional content. For example, a fair number of people find my site using various forms of the phrase "differences between B2C and B2B." That would make a good white paper, newsletter article -- or maybe even a teleclass!

I'm always amazed at what people use for search phrases. For my site, people used over 315 keyword phrases to find my site including: b2b direct marketing, b2b marketing communications, b2b marketing articles, b2b seo, b2b marcom consultants, b2b case study, b2b direct mail, and b2b marketing and copywriting.

4. Top Content -- Again, if you're using Google Analytics, click on the "Content" tab. In this section you can learn the top "entrance" pages, the top "exit pages," and the top pages people viewed.

For our purposes, just look at the Top Pages. What were the top ten pages? How long did people view them? What are the bottom ten pages? How long did people view those?

From this data you can tell if you should beef up a section on your site. For example, a year or two ago I noticed lots of people were visiting the "Before and After" section of my client's site (she is a cosmetic dentist). In fact, it was the top viewed page after her home page. We've been adding content to that section ever since.

This should be enough basic information to get you started on viewing your Web analytics data. I know it sounds very technical and tedious -- and it was for me when I first started out, because like many of you, I'm a writer, too -- but it's also vitally important. 

Get used to viewing your data. It's fun and you'll learn quite a bit about your prospects and what they're looking for.

You'll also set a baseline -- which then lets you do the next step in writing people friendly, optimized copy. Tomorrow we'll talk about keywords -- I promise!