Earlier today I responded to an email to a co-worker who has a side blog (LDD Blog) about how companies really need to research the searching function of the internet. It got me thinking a little more.

I’ve written about knowing your companies keywords – what is it that you are offering and build your site/content around that. Yet, we need to go a little bit deeper into that. By using Google Analytic’s – Google Webmaster – Google Local Business Center and your cPanel statistics you should know just about everything about your clients.

Google Analytics

I could write a book about the various things you can do with this to see where / how / when people are coming to your website.

- Did you tweet a specific url for a special on a product?

- Did you write a guest post at another site or were you mentioned on a different site?

- Did you Digg / Stumble! / Sphinn / etc?

How long are these people staying and how far in depth are they going. Breaking down each of these statistics only benefits you.

Google Webmaster

Another excellent tool that shouldn’t be held lightly. This will let you know the popular search terms people were finding your site and the position you were ranked in it. If you have a site about “needle nose pliers” and you’re 4th on the search for “nose pliers” – it’ll allow you look over your competition and how they’ve made 1-2-3rd place above you.

In doing all that though you need to double check a few items such as:

- How is your sitemap?

- Is your site verified?

- Does it navigate well or do you have several hundred categories and just as many sub-categories yet not that much content?

- Do you have any ‘warnings’ – 404′s // 301′s // etc?

Knowing this type of information will let you know what is working and specifically what isn’t on your site. It’s great so you don’t have to check each page – each link. That can be tedious if you’re content grows.

Google Local Business Center

Something new Google has offered is reports which can be extremely useful if you have a brick and mortar business or if people just want to know “more information” about your company. While before this they just showed basic statistics (impressions / actions) and offered “coupon” options.

Now, with reports you can find out all sorts of great items:

- Are people looking for reviews on your business?

- Are people interested in your business hours / types of payments?

- Are people looking for directions to your business?

Just a few items and once again it shows the top queries on how users came to it. I will be keeping a close on this particular feature in the coming weeks just to see how effective it can be.

cPanel Information

What does your control panel say statistically? Are users just going to one item on your site to get information or coming by accident? Is your db (database) running slow when people are doing simple search’s WITHIN your site: what ARE they searching for?

Answer these questions along with the previous data and you know now how exactly your clients are.

- How they’re coming to your site -

- What they are looking for -

- How long they are staying -

- What specially they are looking for -

Without Speaking To Them!

What say you? You’re thoughts on the subject?