So you’re continuously producing compelling content and have an effective distribution plan in place. You must now understand how that material is performing, who is visiting your website, and how you may entice your audience to return. The catch is that you don’t want to spend half your money on such a service.
There are choices for any content marketer concerned about engagement statistics, many of them are free. Analytics tools are critical to today’s marketing success, and of all the options available, five stand out as particularly beneficial for content strategists. Let us investigate.
Google Analytics is the go-to tool for many marketers, owing to the fact that it is completely free, packed with capabilities, and backed by the Google brand.
After you insert the Google Analytics code into the HTML of your website, the service will track certain goals for you, such as which pages a visitor clicks on, how long they stay, and what actions they do. The technology, for example, may inform you whether a visitor is sharing the article on social media or clicking on an advertisement. When you complete a target, Google records the conversion in your analytics report.
According to Kissmetrics, one of Google Analytics’ finest tools, particularly for retail sites and marketers monitoring sales, is the Goal Funnel, which allows you to create a string of URLs that a consumer clicks through while purchasing an item. You may learn not only how many individuals are in the process of making a purchase, but also how many abandon it at a specific point. This information will help marketers to adapt their strategy and make the consumer’s shopping experience smoother.
Google will also reveal the keywords that users use to find your site, as well as the browsers and devices they are using—not to mention where they are being referred from. I often analyze our site’s activities to see which items are drawing the most traffic and where that traffic is coming from.
When it comes to data customization, you may track particular campaigns that drive visitors to your site, generate bespoke reports with hand-picked metrics, and set up custom alerts to get your insights at certain times.
analytics of a website
The most prevalent criticism regarding Google Analytics is that the information is crowded and the UI is tough to browse. However, Google is striving to address these concerns with new tools such as Data Studio, which allows users to transform data into shareable, aesthetically appealing reports. While the platform is still not the most user-friendly, after approximately a month, you should be more acquainted with the settings and, as a result, get the most out of Google’s free service.
2. Bitly
Bitly is primarily known as a free link shortener, but its functions offer much more than that. After you’ve shortened links and potentially added a vanity URL shortener, Bitly provides tools to easily distribute and monitor the success of those links.
Bitly, for example, reports down to the hour how many clicks each link produced and when individuals clicked. The report will also list which platforms individuals used to share the link, so you can see if the majority of your traffic is coming from Twitter, LinkedIn, or another channel. An example of Bitly’s map showing your link’s geographic distribution of clicks is shown below, which can be useful for optimizing and targeting future content.
Bitly collects statistics from all of your links on the stats page so you can see how your content has done over the last hour, day, week, and month.
Bitly may not give as much precise information as Google Analytics, but if you’re already using their free link shortener and tidy UI, you might as well take advantage of the additional benefits.
3.Piwik
Piwik’s free software comes with a catch: you must download it and host it on your own server. Piwik has features comparable to other popular analytics packages, such as event monitoring, visitor maps, and keyword search, but what distinguishes it from the competition is its mobile app and limitless data storage.
The Piwik dashboard is somewhat complex, which may be a plus or a disadvantage depending on how much time you want to invest. The setup also necessitates some patience as well as the ability to apply the required tags on your website. However, if you’re familiar with Piwik, you may tweak it to your desire, as the dashboard is full with widgets that can be organized to meet most analytical purposes.
The “row evolution” function, which allows you to hover your cursor over any link or event, click on the graph icon, and examine a comprehensive history of that data point, is one of the most notable features. You may also sort and compare rows to see how they fared on other platforms, such as browsers and mobile devices.
Piwik also allows you to set up automatic email reports so you can remain up to date on the performance of your content and adjust accordingly.
4.Open Web Analytics
Open Web Analytics (OWA), like Piwik, is an open-source web analytics platform. Similarly, there are no restrictions on the quantity of data that can be stored or the number of websites that may be measured using the application.
Views, unique visitors, referral sites, and visitor location are examples of information provided by OWA, which is similar to that provided by its rivals’ platforms. Furthermore, OWA can track each visitor’s click-stream, identifying exactly where they click on your website.
According to Divi Fernando on the Woorank blog, OWA has three distinguishing capabilities that many analytics tools, such as Google’s, do not. The first is heat maps, which track where your site’s visitors click. The second feature is the ability to record mouse movements so you can observe how people traverse your sites and convert. Third, the application has DOM click tracking, which employs code snippets to record when visitors click on certain links, buttons, and pictures.
5.Clicky
More bloggers are declaring their love for Clicky, an analytics platform that takes pleasure in providing real-time statistics. As a result, I believe it is vital to include Clicky on this list, despite the fact that it will not be free for the majority of people. If you only have one website with fewer than 3,000 visits per day, you won’t have to pay for Clicky’s service, but after that, cost can range from $9.99 to $79.99 each month.
At first sight, Clicky appears to provide something extremely appealing: similar in-depth data to Google Analytics, but with a much cleaner interface. After all, what use is mining data from your website’s performance if you can’t comprehend and evaluate it?
Every visitor is clearly listed by Clicky, including when they came, where they are located, where they were referred from, how long they were on your website, and what actions they made. Clicky also delivers real-time heat maps, not only for a group of visitors, but for each person. This is a feature usually reserved for analytics systems that specialize on heat map data, such as Crazy Egg, and it distinguishes Clicky from its main competitors.
Clicky also has a Twitter integration that allows you to easily monitor Twitter mentions of your account, website, or any URL or phrase. Twitter’s built-in search only goes back roughly a week, according to Clicky’s website, but Clicky can give an almost endless history of tweets, including summary summaries of activity by user, hashtags, links, and sentiment.
6.Similarweb
Do you want to keep tabs on your competitors? (Don’t worry, it’s completely legal.) SimilarWeb allows you to plug in any website or mobile app, acquire traffic and ranking insights, and compare the data to other sites.
You may check the website’s worldwide rank, nation rank, category rank (such as Books and Literature, Shopping, and Marketing and Advertising), and traffic by country after inputting a URL. You’ll also see a breakdown of total desktop and mobile visitors over the last six months, split out by time on site, pages per visit, and bounce rate.
For example, consider the following results for google.com:
SimilarWeb provides more valuable data reports as you scroll down, such as top referral sites, organic search traffic vs. sponsored search traffic, a breakdown of traffic from social platforms, the most popular subdomains, a rating of similar sites, and categories that interest your audience (e.g., News and Media, Business and Industry).
“I utilize SimilarWeb to assist me understand where I should focus my time, i.e., which channels and techniques I need to study more,” writes marketer Jeff Bullas.
If you want to examine how your traffic compares to that of a rival, just click Add Competitors at the top of the screen and choose from the drop-down list or provide your own idea. You’ll be able to compare your ranking, traffic overview, and referrals side by side.
Users may upgrade to a commercial version of SimilarWeb, which starts at $199 per month, to compare more than two sites at once and obtain additional in-depth information.
7.SEMrush
SEMrush may also assist you in staying ahead of the competition by examining keywords in display advertisements, organic and paid search, and link building. Simply input a domain, term, or URL into the search field to obtain access to a variety of information. Consider the following eBay.com search:
Users may view the traffic breakdown for a website or keyword by organic search, sponsored search, backlinks, and display advertisements. You can get current updates of top organic keywords and organic competitors, paid keywords and paid competitors, and example advertisements underneath that data. There are also backlink and indexed page listings to peruse.
Users can view an expanded report by clicking on any of these graphs or lists. Here’s one for eBay’s main organic rivals:
Users may view the traffic breakdown for a website or keyword by organic search, sponsored search, backlinks, and display advertisements. You can get current updates of top organic keywords and organic competitors, paid keywords and paid competitors, and example advertisements underneath that data. There are also backlink and indexed page listings to peruse.
Users can get an enlarged report by clicking on any of these graphs or lists. Here’s one for eBay’s main organic rivals:
This report displays the number of organic keywords that attract people to each website as well as the number of users that are projected to visit the website in the next month (assuming average monthly traffic stays the same). There is also a competitor breakdown based on characteristics such as competition level, frequent keywords, traffic, and the anticipated price of organic keywords in Google AdWords.
Users can make up to ten requests every day for free (e.g., searching a term or viewing a full report). A pro subscription costs $69.95 per month and gives you full access to the site as well as API access.
8.Moz Keyword Explorer
While SEMrush is frequently mentioned as a good keyword search engine, there may be a new sheriff in town, since SEO software giant Moz introduced its own service in May. It’s more extensive than most keyword search alternatives, and it’s designed to eliminate human effort from keyword research. The program “guides you all the way through the keyword research process—from discovering keyword ideas to gathering metrics to generating a list, filtering the phrases on it, and selecting which ones to target based on the data that matter,” explains founder Rand Fishkin.
When you search for a phrase, you’ll obtain an overview of the analysis. For example, consider Fishkin’s search for “Striped Shirts”:
You’ll notice five metrics at the top of the page that might help you decide how beneficial the phrase is for your content efforts. You may also perform a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) analysis, which displays the real Google search result for that phrase, including any pictures or AdWords advertising that appear.
If you want to include this keyword in your article, Moz provides up to 1,000 similar phrases rated by relevancy and volume. If you want new ideas, you can filter those suggestions to show keywords from a variety of sources, keywords that only include the terms you searched for, or keywords that don’t include the terms you searched for.
Simply add your keywords to a list to save your time. You’ll be able to compare, sort, and rank them based on their relevance from there.
While the service is provided for free, there is a consumption restriction. Everyone gets two free keyword searches every day, and community members get an extra five. You may purchase a standalone service starting at $600 per year or become a Moz PRO member for more extensive access to the product.
9.Cyfe
Cyfe is a dashboard that allows you to monitor data from many sites and apps, including Google AdWords, Salesforce, PayPal, MailChimp, and WordPress.
You can not only access all of this data in one location, but you can also personalize your dashboard with over 40 widgets from various sources and platforms. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in Cyfe’s widget pool, you can make your own. You only need to upload external data from your source, such as a CSV or Google Sheet. You could want a donut graph with certain results in orange, blue, and green, for example.
10.Google Search Console
Google’s search insights tool, formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, has been redesigned to include “everyone who cares about Search,” including “hobbyists, small company owners, SEO specialists, marketers, programmers, designers, and app developers.”
The platform essentially assists you in ensuring that your website or Android app is Google-friendly and appears in relevant search results.
Google Search Console assists website owners in optimizing their pages by providing three key resources:
- Reports on search analytics that indicate how frequently your site appears in Google search results, how many clicks and impressions came from those results, and which searches generated those results. You can also compare statistics to see how your search results perform across mobile and desktop users, visitors from the United States and the United Kingdom, and so on.
- Error or problem notifications If you visit a URL that Google cannot crawl or that produces an HTTP error code, Google will notify you so that you may resolve the issue.
- Tests to determine if Google can “understand” your material. You may test whether the Googlebot can reach a page on your site using a tool called Fetch as Google. If there are problems, you may even detect if the bot is blocking resources like pictures. This way, if necessary, you may go back in and troubleshoot your site.
Connect your Google Analytics and Search Console pages for the most smooth experience with Google data. This will provide you with a more detailed perspective of your site’s performance. As SERPs points out, Google Search Console can collect data from web users who have deactivated Javascript, whereas Google Analytics cannot.
You may utilize a mix of these platforms for your analytics, or you could start with free trials and subsequently upgrade to your preferred tools. Just keep in mind that no matter which analytics platform you choose, you can measure important engagement metrics without breaking the bank.