Web Analytics Tools

Overview: These free and paid tools allow you to track what keywords are sending you traffic, what keywords are profitable, and what keywords lose money. As soon as you start tracking results your campaigns get more efficient because you start focusing on the results.

Tracking where you already rank does not alert you to potential areas of opportunity that you have not yet focused on, but if you track conversions you know what those keywords are worth, and it is easier to rank for keywords related to words you already rank well for than it is to rank for a whole new basket of keywords.

At the bottom of this page is a free video about using web analytics tools.

Free Analytics Tools

These tend to be limited in feature set and give themselves sitewide links on your site, or require you to trust giving a major search engine like Google virtually all your marketing data.

• Google Analytics - powerful full featured analytics tool. Google AdWords also has internal split testing and conversion tracking software & offers data integration with Google AdSense that you can't get with any other web analytics tool, though keyword (not provided) has made it harder to close the loop on the keyword-level even if you still have great page-level data. You can access a free demo account here.
  • Keyword Hero - paid tool which replaces keyword (not provided) with AI-driven estimations of the actual keyword data.
• Google Website Optimizer - allows you to A/B split test landing pages and track how well Google AdWords traffic converts.
• Piwik - realtime open source web analytics program
• Open Web Analytics - similar to Piwik, but more lightweight. Also comes with the ability to record the browser screen on user's sessions so you can see if people are getting stuck on a particular part of the page.
• Site Meter - starts off as free, but charges for advanced features
• Stat Counter - starts off as free, but charges for advanced features and bandwith usage.
• Webalizer - default log analyzer on many servers.
• Analog - default log analyzer on many servers.
• Awstats - another popular default log analyzer on many servers.
• Prosper 202 - free self-hosted analytics tool for affiliates & direct marketers leveraging pay per click advertising. They also have a paid "PRO" self-hosted tier and a monthly hosted subscription service.
• Logz.io - freemium web server log file analysis tool which scales up to enteprise level demands.
• GoAccess - open source visual real-time log file analyzer.

Cheap Paid Analytics Tools

• Clicky - cheap web based tool similar to Google Analytics. A few less features, but you get realtime data and are not giving all your data to Google either. Also offers a cheap white label analytics package convenient for SEO firms looking to add another revenue stream to their businesses. They provide user IP address features and allow you to have dozens of sites in a single account for a quite reasonable rate.
• Mint - affordable downloadable analytics program that you set up on your own server. Unlike most other paid analytics programs in Mint does not track conversions. This software hasn't been updated in years though.
• WordTracker's Strategizer - helps bucket data from Google Analytics into groups to help you spot opportunities to grow your organic search footprint
• Adblock Analytics - see what percent of your visitors are using an ad blocker.
• Screaming Frog - while most of the above tools are web-based interfaces, this is desktop software for analyzing server log files.

Affordable Business Analytics Tools

• Weblog Expert - Downloadable log analyzer. Starts at $75.
• Clicktale - specializes in customer heat maps
• Crazy Egg - somewhat similar to Clicktale in providing analytics visualization
• Visual Website Optimizer - affordable A/B split testing software
• Supermetrics - business analytics software maker which creates custom tools to integrate data from Google Analytics & other data sources into Google Sheets & Microsoft Excel

SEO Update Tracking

• Not Provided Count - tracks the growth of keyword (not provided)
• Chart Intelligence - Google analytics overlay listing published Google updates.
• Panguin Tool - similar to Chart Intelligence, but isn't a browser plugin
• Sistrix Google Updates - works similarly to the above 2 tools to highlight site-specific ranking shifts, but uses their own SERP crawl database instead of plugging into Google Analytics
• Algo update history

General Search Marketshare Stats

• StatCounter
• Clicky
• Experian / Hitwise
• NetMarketshare
• comScore & Compete.com also offer periodic search marketshare stats

Usability Feedback

• User Testing
• Feedback Army
• Silverback
• Users Think
• UX Project Checklist
• more options

Expensive / Enterprise Premium Tools

• Google Analytics Premium
• Adobe Marketing Cloud
• WebTrends
• comScore's Digital Analytix Suite
• IBM's Coremetrics

Background Information on Web Analytics

If you need more background on analytics try the free 44 minute video by Avinash Kaushik.

Related Categories

• ppc tools - tools to help you track and refine your PPC campaigns
• competitive research tools - these tools will show you keywords sending traffic to competing websites

Know Any Other Tools Worth Suggesting?

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