If you are not already using website analytics software to track visits to your site, you are missing out on a whole lot of very valuable information. In fact, without referring to and using a website analytics package regularly, it is virtually impossible to adequately optimize your website for traffic and conversions.

My frequent readers already know that I am a big proponent of using Google Analytics. It is free, easy to use, and has a ton of extremely useful features.

One of the Google Analytics features that I really like is the Landing Page feature. Simply put, this metric allows you to know which pages on your site are used as “landing pages.” This simple refers to pages that serve as the first page or “point of entry” page when someone first comes to your site.

To understand why this is so important, you need to first understand how traffic gets to a website. Usually, the number one landing page for most websites is of course the home page itself. However, when a site features a lot of pages – each of which is highly-optimized for a different keyword or topic – it is often the case that these “interior pages” of the site will rank much higher on a search engine results page like Bing or Google than the home page (for a given keyword). In other words, they become the point of entry into the site for certain topics, rather than the home page. Similarly, these pages will often receive backlinks directly from other sites who want to inform their visitors about the given topic.

So, let’s say you have spent a lot of time optimizing a given interior page of your site for a particular keyword. Over time, you are going to be curious as to whether you are actually getting more visits to your site from people whose initial point of entry is that particular page. due to your excellent optimization skills. The Landing Page feature will tell you.

Once you have installed Google Analytics on your site, here’s how to access the Landing Page feature:

1. From the Google Analytics Home Page, under Dashboard (on the left), click on Content.
2. Then click on Top Landing Pages in the sub-menu under the Content section.

On the right, you will see listed in order of most-to-least visits those pages of your site are currently serving as landing pages for your visitors. Over time, if you have optimized each page properly and for the right keywords, those visits should increase.