I can’t stress enough how tracking is important in Internet Marketing. It’s one of those Internet marketing tools that you just can’t get around without. And yet it’s surprising how many marketers don’t track their efforts thus shooting themselves in the leg. Without tracking optimization is impossible and without optimization money is simply wasted.
I notice that especially among the beginners there’s a notion that as long as you get tons of traffic you’re cool. It can’t be further from truth. How you direct the traffic is what makes the difference and it’s impossible if you don’t track what you’re doing.
A state of art example is PPC. I can’t even imagine how someone would not track their keywords and conversions, yet there are those marketers who spend the money just like that and they have no idea what return on investment they get. They can be losing money for what it’s worth, but they wouldn’t know that unless they track.
But make no mistake thinking that only paid advertising should be tracked. Any kind of advertising should be tracked, even if it’s free. Even if you don’t specifically drive that traffic, you should know where it comes from, how it behaves and act accordingly. Just a few tweaks can mean greater profits.
So, do yourself a favor and track everything you do. Use Google Analytics, or other stats software, use tracking ids, and most importantly act upon the results. Test different paths on your website, try to maximize the conversion that your traffic results in.