These days it is a truism that understanding search engine optimization bears as much on success as does understanding the needs and wants of the audience. One without the other won't achieve nirvana online.

But also contending for attention is the large area of analytics, how many visit and how often, where they come from and what they seem to seek, the sources of their arrival and the time they spend and where they go later --- all of it is important to understand.

The 10,000 Words blog has assembled a handy Analytics 101 for anyone with a website looking to comprehend the portrait of the audience. There is nothing advanced in the piece, but it's an excellent and clear starting point.

Zachary Seward posts a new take on user engagement at the Nieman Journalism Lab and suggests a metric that ought to be evaluated is how much content is cut and pasted --- and thus shared.

Other services carry shared content, of course, but new technology is emerging (from such firms as Tynt) with the Web analytics field to measure which passages in a post are moved to another file.

It suggests there is more to Web success than page views and unique visitors.