After a period of hard work, online marketers need to stop a while to see whether results have been achieved. But how to trace and measure traffic results? What are the easy-to-use and free analytical tools?

Google analytics is the free and the most popular web-based analytical tool, helping you find who view your website, how they find it and the duration of visitation etc. The tool can also measure effectiveness of paid ads, offline ads and email campaigns. For sophisticated users, advanced features and added-on functions are also readily available to use.

Understanding what the tool can offer is the first step, while marketers should understand how to interpret data and result for campaign evaluation and improvement. Here are several tips we can provide:

-              Halt spending on paid keywords that have high bounce rates

-              Identify unpaid keywords with high bounce rates

-              Identify top 3-5 landing pages that calls for stronger actions with a high bounce rate

-              Adjust keywords when they are not found to be effective at the campaign period

-              Link Google adwords & adsense accounts to Google analytics

To better optimize traffic, we recommend marketers to clearly set up their website goals (i.e. completing contact form, subscribing newsletter or buying products) and create various strategies to achieve these goals. Another important reminder is to feature content for which visitors most often search, and most importantly, include site searches in order to maximize users’ visitation time.