When I first dove into SEO and started trying to measure results from my internet marketing campaigns, I will admit that I found Google Analytics reports to be a bit hard to understand. As a numbers junky, I became fascinated with all that could be tracked in these reports, however, my first interaction with Google Analytics left me feeling a bit overwhelmed and challenged at finding the answers to my data questions.

If you have spent some time trying to read your reports in Google Analytics and have the same feelings, you might want to take a closer look at this article with tips on how to  “Overcome the Google Analytics Learning Curve in 20 Minutes” written by Danny Dover at seomoz.org. He does a great job of summarizing basic tips he learned from attending WebShare’s Google Analytics Seminar.

You might also want to take a closer look at HubSpot's Internet Marketing Software which provides very basic analytics reports that are easy for a novice to read and help you get started in measuring your internet marketing campaigns. HubSpot is a fantastic software that gives you training wheels on handling your SEO efforts yourself.

The other alternative is to hire an Internet marketing consultant to read, track and interpret your analytics for you. Once you get a taste for what can be measured, you will probably start asking more in-depth questions that might require more internet marketing analytics expertise from someone that uses these reports on a daily basis. As with any form of marketing data, looking at the numbers is not enough, you'll want to be able to draw conclusions from the data that will help you improve your marketing efforts.

There are many other tools available for tracking online marketing results, some that offer an easier way to ready your reports and cost a small fee, and others that get much more advanced and allow you to track many more forms of data that can be quite costly. For most, Google Analytics will provide enough information for you to make educated decisions about how to market smarter, and because it is free, it is usually a top choice tool. One thing to remember, choose one analytics platform to measure results and stick with it. Don't try to compare one report from one tool to a another report from another tool. That will only leave you confused, give you inconsistencies and leave you feeling as though all the reports may be inaccurate. Using only one tool will allow you to start to see trends and, whether entirely accurate or a bit off, it should still help you to get an overall understanding of what is happening month over month, week after week with your online marketing campaigns.