Google Analytics is an indispensible tool for anyone running a website. It doesn’t matter if you’re a non-profit or an enterprise or a blogger, the information that Google Analytics shares with you is highly useful and actionable. Even a quick peek at the dashboard of your website’s Google analytics will tell you the number of visits to your website, the sources, the main keywords, regions, your top content and how the people interact with your website. Armed with this information, you can take corrective action to improve the quality and quantity of traffic to your website and to fix navigation and page issues on it.

The keyword report in Google Analytics shows which keywords were typed on search engines when the visitors landed on your website. The higher the ranking, the more is the traffic. Using advanced analysis techniques, you can determine the relative value of keywords to your business too.

However, Google has recently stopped sharing keyword data if the searcher is logged in to her Google Analytics account. Google made this announcement a week back on their blog.  This means that if the searcher who landed on your website typing a keyword on Google.com is using any of the Google services (like Gmail, Adwords, blogger, Google+, Adsense or any other service) and is logged into her Google account, all you see as the keyword referral is “Not Provided”.

Ranking is one of the most highly used, overused and abused SEO metrics. While most of the SEO experts are responsible for over-hyping this SEO performance measurement technique, the role of clients seeking higher results for every possible keyword, cannot be undermined. Clients or SEOs, everyone seems to be obsessed with higher rankings and we are yet to find a performance evaluation where rankings are not the first metrics to be reported.

Some result-oriented type SEO firms combine this with tools that predict SERP CTR rates. A SERP is a search engine results page and CTR refers to Click-Thru rate. While it is true that higher rankings bring more traffic, trying to predict accurate percentage traffic which corresponds to SERP position, usually leads to failure. Due to their relative positions on a SERP, rankings 1 to 5 get much more visibility as compared to the 6-10th ranking. Eye-tracking studies and leaked papers from AOL click-thru reports were used to predict ranking to traffic measurement numbers. Moreover, X or Y% increase was further translated and projected as future expected inquiries and sales for clients.

While everyone was looking happy with this so called perfect trajectory, a lighting of realization struck companies when the traffic figures didn’t match the predicted numbers. The reality to prediction numbers were so wild that there was nothing that businesses and their SEO’s could do apart from scratching their heads and tossing their prediction files into secret bins, so that they never have to see them again.

Most of the small and mid-size businesses in US still think of website as a peripheral entity to the day-to-day operations of their business. Most of them still do not realize the potential of their own website and the kind of pivotal role it is capable of playing when it comes to Integrated Marketing.

Your business website not just acts as your 24 hour active brand evangelist, but also has the potential of acting as a salesperson ready with all the arms and ammunition to fight a sales battle and convert visitors into prospects. You can even improve your customer relations and answer their questions, queries and handle their objections on your website, in a manner that increases your brand’s reputation online.

Is my SEO working? This is a question that most businesses ask themselves and find no clear way of tracking just how much SEO is really working for their business. Most of the organizations are trapped in a unilateral way of measuring SEO success – by monitoring their rankings. While rankings are the primary metrics which tell you about the effort that you or your SEO company is putting in, rankings cannot be taken as a true reflection of your online presence. Here is why:

• High ranking for keywords that no one searches for is like opening a shop in a remote location, far from the city where traffic is.

• Google personalizes search results through web history, geographic locations and bookmark history; hence you may see results which others are not seeing.

• High rankings have a bigger goal – a quality traffic stream. If high Google rankings do not send you inquiries, they probably do not matter a lot.

• SEO is like fishing – the wider your net, the better your catch. Too much obsession with limited keywords means your daily, weekly and monthly traffic number may still remain low.

SEO is much more than just high keyword ranking. The success of any SEO campaign is primarily tied with what the high rankings are doing for your business. If you really want to know the effectiveness of your search engine optimization campaign – try web analytics and the simplest tool is Google Analytics –clean, crisp, easy to understand and moreover – FREE.