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Do you know how to choose keywords for your website that your visitors are actually searching for? All too often website owners choose keywords that either have so much competition that they are unlikely to reach page 10 of Google, let alone page 1 or they choose keywords that nobody is searching for and end up using valuable time and energy trying to get in the search engines with these terms.

Google Analytics is a free tool from Google that you can install easily to your website code by either installing a Google Analytics plugin or extension for your website platform such as Joomla or Wordpress or by copying and pasting the unique code that you get from your Google Analytics account and placing into your websites html code in the footer.

After you have installed Google Analytics you will start to receive data relating to your search engine marketing efforts, as well as other reports. The report relating to keywords can be found in the “traffic sources” section of your Google Analytics account. While you may think that your search engine marketing is working well, your Google Analytics report will give you the facts of whether this is true or not.

Many website owners use keywords that have lots of competition such as coaching, marketing, work from home or free report in the hope of attracting visitors from the search engines interested in their products and/or services. Chances are, that after you have been receiving keyword results in your Google Analytics reports, you will see that the keywords that you are using in your metatags are not what visitors coming via the search engines have entered to find you. If it is, then well done!

If you find that visitors are finding your website using a keyword phrase that you have not optimized your website to pick up then it is always a good idea to create one. If you are already receiving visitors using this keyword phrase then once you optimize a page on your website for it, then you will probably end up receiving even more traffic from this. After all search engine traffic is free traffic and we all love free traffic!

One thing to look out for when you check your keyword report is whether or not you have a high bounce rate on that particular keyword phrase. A high bounce rate means that people are landing on your webpage and are either using their back button to leave your website or are closing their browser without taking a look around your site. It’s all well and good getting free website traffic but if they are not sticking around to see what your website has to offer then you need to do something about it.

Google Analytics can really help you perfect your search engine marketing strategy by showing you what is working and what’s not and where to improve your website performance. If you haven’t already installed Google Analytics to your website then you are missing out on a highly valuable tool.

Lesley Johnston teaches business owners, through her website Internet Growth Systems, how to use Google Analytics to improve their website’s performance and increase online profits. She offers a free Google Analytics report at her website: http://www.InternetGrowthSystems.com.