Google Analytics gives you invaluable information about your website, including:

• How many people are visiting and when
• What they searched to get to your site
• How far down visitors are scrolling
• The most popular pages

With this data, you can create an efficient and effective marketing plan based on reality, rather than just a guess. It will also show you which pages are getting more or less traffic than you’d prefer so they can be fine-tuned to get the results you’re after.

Every single website should have Google Analytics installed! While there continues to be an incremental increase, the number of practices utilizing this vital—and FREE—tool is still well below what it should be. Without GA, your marketing plan will lack focus and precision.

There are two ways to check to see if you have Google Analytics on your website.

Option 1: Visit the Google Analytics webpage and log into your Google account. You’ll see the domains for which you control Google Analytics—unless your website was built by a third party. In that case, they will have the access.

Option 2: While on your website, the keyboard shortcut is Command + U (or CTRL + U on PC). For Chrome, navigate to “View” and then click on “Developer” and then “View Source.” While reviewing the code, search for “UA” on the page. If you see something along the lines of “UA-45947023-1” then you’re set. If nothing comes up, you’re probably not tracking website visitors.

Option 2: Google provides a step-by-step guide here.