There are 10 Google Analytics categories you should be reviewing to judge how effectively your website or blog is performing against your marketing objectives.  Google Analytics generates detailed statistics about your website’s traffic and details on visitors that you can use to see what is working on your site and, more importantly, what’s not.  Plus, it’s free!

There are 10 categories within Google Analytics that you should be reviewing at least monthly:

Audience location – your target market has a geographical definition; this will tell you if you are reaching them.

Audience engagement – measures how much time each visitor to your site spends on a particular page or pages.  You use this to ensure you are keeping their attention.

Bounce rates – tells you what pages visitors are abandoning immediately so you can re-evaluate the content of that page.

Events – this user engagement metric shows activity from visitors as they scroll through a page on your site, and can provide insight into the best placement on your pages for calls-to-action.

Funnel visualization – are visitors to your site following the path you want them to take?  This metric will tell you either yes or no.

Mobile traffic – knowing how many visitors are trying to access your site from a mobile device is important to gauge their experience, especially if your site is not optimized for mobile.

Site content trends – measures the performance of each of your site pages over time, so you can tell what is resonating with your audience.

Site search – if you have a search function on your site, this metric tells you the terms people are searching for on your site.  If they aren’t finding what they’re looking for, you need to add it.

Social media traffic – provides more in-depth reporting on traffic that comes to you directly from your social media efforts so you can see what’s working or not.

Traffic sources – this tells you how people are finding your site, so you can measure the effectiveness of other online methods you are using to drive traffic to your site, like social media or email marketing.