When it comes to managing websites, one of the things some companies look for is content management expertise, SEO knowledge, and even coding skills. Some companies however include the ability to analyze data gained from these sites as something a candidate for a website management post should have. This now begs the question, is Google Analytics something you should learn or is it optional?

If you are to base it on what Google Analytics can do for a site, then the answer to this question is a resounding yes. This is because information that you get from this analytic tool will help you improve a site to make it more effective at what it was made to do. If you are to manage a website, how else are you supposed to improve it if you do not have the information needed to understand where things are going right and where things are going wrong?

Why Learn Google Analytics

Becoming a web analyst requires more than just applying the codes needed for analytics to run on these pages. You need to be able to read the reports this tool generates and to analyze from these the next move and course of action to take for the site you are handling. There are many reasons why this is a valuable skill to have when it comes to your resume, and here are some of the more important ones:

You can make educated decisions on what a site needs to improve – guesswork can go either north or south when it comes to trying to fix a site to do better. With analytics and the skill to read the reports that are generated, you get to make decisions on what to do with the help of the site’s traffic. You will find out what type of content engages the visitor, which landing pages are ineffective, which PPC ads gets the most clicks, and other important info.

You understand how specific markets and demographics react to your pages – this will allow you to tailor-fit websites to attract and cater to the market that your site is aiming to get. This will also help you understand when they browse, what they look for, and what makes them become conversions for your site. This skill is invaluable and can help sites earn more.

You show that you are a problem solver – analytics shows you where the problem areas are when it comes to websites. Knowing how to analyze pages with the help of this tool and being able to exact positive changes by solving these problems will show that you show critical thinking skills and problem solving chops, both of which companies hold in very high regard.

You show your resourcefulness in creating solutions for the site – when you know how to analyze the reports that you are given by the Google Analytics tool, you will be able to formulate plans on tackling the issues that plague your site. Being able to understand where the issues come from may sometimes require creative thinking to come up with a viable solution. This is where your resourcefulness and creativity comes in.

Predicting outcomes and directions now becomes easy for you – knowing how to use analytics to predict how people will react to your site will help you plan future pages and sites effectively. Predicting how a site will come across to specific markets will come with the skill for analyzing data, which is what you get when you learn Google Analytics. The longer you use this skill, the more you begin to see and understand what makes a website tick for certain demographics, which in turn makes it easier for you to create successful sites from scratch and to tweak existing ones into success.

You become an expert at setting and achieving goals – when you begin to see what makes a site fail and plan to reverse this failure into a success, you are becoming an expert at setting goals for these sites and figuring out how to achieve these. You will also find that this habit of yours will extend into other aspects of your life, with you using information and data to analyze flaws in systems and routines around you, and to fix such flaws.

You add another skill to your already impressive resume – having this skill on your resume, particularly if you get certified, will only add to the already impressive list of things that you can do. This can only help you bag the jobs that you aim for, with the fact that analytic skills, reporting, and troubleshooting being part of what you can do when you have this skill on your resume.

So, to answer your question as to whether it is a good idea to invest time and money in learning how to do Google Analytics (and to get certified for it as well), yes it is. You learn an invaluable skill that is not only useful in getting you better paying jobs in the SEO industry, but also helps you hone your mind to become more analytic and become a critical thinker with problem solving mettle.