When optimizing your site for traffic, you will need some means to see where you are, track your progress (or your lack there of), and help identify mistakes.

Here are the core elements I recommend:

1. Sign-up for a Google Analytics (GA) account, it’s free and it some if the best information you can get about visitor activity and how they got to your pages. If you do PPC marketing on AdWords and don’t have Google Analytics installed you can add it under the Analytics tab in AdWords. If you already have Google Analytics and your GA and AdWords accounts aren’t linked, be sure to select “link to existing” in your AdWords account so your Google CPC traffic will be properly tracked. If you made a mistake here and wound up with two GA accounts you can get Google to unwind the mistake, but it can take several carefully worded emails to get it fixed. (more…)