It's 2014, and we are at a point where the vast majority of real estate businesses have a website. While having a web presence is a given, tracking your performance will help you make better decisions, create a better user experience, drive more leads and best represent your brand.

One of the best free ways to track the performance of your website is with Google Analytics. It takes a little bit of work to set up, but the data it provides you is completely worth it. It's one of those things where the more you use it, the more you wonder how you survived without it. In part one of this series, we will discuss the steps involved in setting up Google Analytics for your website.

Sign Up

If you don't already have a Google account, you will need to sign up for one. Having a Google account gives you access to a lot of the great tools that Google provides to internet users for free. Once you have created a Google account, head over to http://www.google.com/analytics/ and sign up. You will need to create a name for your website, provide your URL, select your industry, time zone and decide what website analytics information you wish to share with Google.

Embed Tracking ID

One you have signed up, Google will provide you with unique JavaScript that you or your web designer will need to add before the tag in your HTML code. Be sure not to make any changes to this code. In most cases, if you're using a template to dynamically generate pages on your website, you will only have to add it to one page and your whole website will automatically be tracked.

Log In and Explore

After your site is connected to Google Analytics you can log in, explore and set up your dashboard. The dashboard is handy because it will provide you with a snapshot of the statistics that reflect the performance of your website. A few of the notable reports include: Sessions, Users, Pageviews, Pages Per Session, Average Session Duration, Bounce Rate and New vs Returning Visitors.

In part two of this series, I will go over in detail each of the reports in Google Analytics and provide which ones are most important on a real estate website.

To view the original article, vsit the Lone Wolf blog.