Today I wanted to talk about Google Analytics. If you any of you are NOT using Google Analytics, please stop now and create a account. It’s free and extremely easy to add to your sites and the information you can get from this is amazing! You can learn more here:

http://services.google.com/analytics/tour/index_en-US.html

One of the big features I like to go over is the “Traffic Sources Overview” report. Viewing this report will give you Keywords analytics. What did users type to reach my sites. Generally, it shouldn’t be a surprise. If you have a site about widgets, you might expect to see “Widget” as a keyword. But, if you adjust the report to view a larger span of time, you might find some interesting keywords. For example you might find specific or long tail keywords like “xyz widget 123”, or more generalized terms like “automotive widgets”.

I like to view these keywords for possible niche opportunities. “Automotive widgets” could be a productive niche site. I also then like to plug that keyword into Google to see how my site ranked for that keyword. If it ranks high with many searches, it could be a opportunity to create a new site and then link to it from your existing site. I ran several reports last night and found four new niche opportunities. Today, I’m planning on doing additional research to see if those would be worth developing into sites. It’s important to test the waters. After doing research and determining it’s worth development, create and launch the site, the results might lead you into new directions with niches you would have not thought about in the past.

I want to point out that I’m identifying only one small report in Google Analytics, there is tons of useful data there. Take advantage of it!