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The Google Analytics website highlights a few ways to ensure you have optimized, assessed, and targeted what you can for your sites. School's in session, and Google wants you to step up your game.

Using Google To Improve Site Conversions
How have Google's resources helped your conversion rates? Convert us with your tales at WebProWorld.

Follow the tips they offer for building up your conversions, and you'll have the crowd screaming "Layup!" when you pull up to launch a 30-foot jumper that's destined for the bottom of the net.

The companion site to Google Analytics offers "courses" on tactics a site publisher can use to boost the all-important conversion rate. It's a long-held view that turning a new customer into a returning customer benefits a business over the long haul but you have to convert visitors into new customers first.

Getting visitors to a site means making it a place they can discover with their searches. Google suggested using its Sitemaps to help with search engine optimization.

They list five ways Sitemaps can help here:

•  Submit all of your pages to the Google index - for free.
•  Find out how you rank on the top search queries.
•  Find out how Google sees your site.
•  Unblock your site (in case your robots.txt file is in Googlebot's way).
•  Get re-included (oops, best review those webmaster guidelines again

Learning about the quality of one's site can be as important as the quantitative looks at conversion rates, average visit values, and return on investment. Yes, really. Reports in Analytics can display the range of visitor behavior, which includes a look at visitor loyalty.

Remember, businesses generally spend more to gain new customers than to retain existing ones, and repeat customers contribute much more to the long-term health of a company.

That look at quality can include a review of each campaign your site conducts. Filtering technology in the reports allows this to be performed easily.

Sites that create landing pages for offline campaigns like commercials or print advertising can track those as well. Once a profile for the landing page has been created in Analytics and the code placed on the page, visitors to it can be tracked and viewed in the reports.

AdWords clients who use geographic targeting can track the ROI from those markets. "Separating your geographic markets into AdWords Campaigns makes it easy to track each region's ROI in Google Analytics," writes Google's Alden DeSoto.

Doing this tracking requires that your Analytics and AdWords accounts have been linked. You can track Content and Search separately or together to see their performance.

The tools available from Google can make a site publisher's like easier. Used effectively, they could lead to better profits too.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.