In my last blog post, I talked a bit about Google Analytics and how you can utilize it to learn more about the patterns and habits of the people who find their way onto your website. There is no doubt that Google Analytics is a great tool (and one you should be using), but what if you’ve had a website for a long time and your web designer never put Google Analytics on your website? Are you just flying blind? Completely out of luck?

Not so fast.

There is an amazing little tool called Alexa that can give you some much needed info about your website and the traffic to it. At absolutely no charge to you, you can see:

• How your site is ranked in comparison to other small businesses.
• You can see where in the world your visitors are
• Your bounce rate, daily page views per visitor, and the amount of time spent on your site
• How the search engines are working and how your keywords are impacting your site
• You can see where your visitors have gone before you and where they’ll head after
• Who is linking into your site
• And what your site’s demographics look like

All of this power comes just from entering  your web address into the box that Alexa provides on their website. Try this out and see if you don’t learn something.

Now, think just for a moment, about how great it would be to have this kind of information about your competitors. Wait. You actually CAN. Just type their web address into the search box. Now THAT can be valuable info!