Keeping Up With Web Traffic Stats
Jeff Alderson
Understanding how to analyze web traffic stats can be important for a variety of reasons. There are a few tricks involved in interpreting the data, however.
This data is available from most web hosting companies. They will provide you with a lot of information that can be pretty overwhelming to decipher at first. It doesn't hurt to understand how to make it apply to the business and website at hand. The first thing to look at is the average number of visitors that land on your website. Take a look at the daily, weekly and monthly figures.
These particular numbers are the most accurate you'll be able to get about your site's activity level. Although it might seem like the more visitors that come, the better the site is doing, this isn't always the case. It's important to dig a little deeper to see what visitors do once they arrive. This can help measure the real effectiveness.
Many people make this mistake of confusing hits with the quality of traffic. Hits only describe the number of requests for information the server receives. Sometimes hits are nothing more than reflective of the number of graphics on a web page. If you have 10 images on a page, for example, the server will record 10 hits for a single visit. This makes hits alone not the way to go for analyzing traffic.
These numbers can become a bit more accurate with the higher the traffic numbers become. The lower the numbers for traffic, the more skewed the numbers will likely be.
The key is taking the stats and using them to determine how effective a site is. One number to focus on is the length of time visitors stay on a site. If they don't stay long, there could be a problem.
In some cases, the problem turns out to be nothing more earth shattering than bad keywords drawing in the wrong traffic. In other cases, it could be the visual design of the site turning off visitors. Should your site be difficult to navigate or hard on the eyes, people might turn away fast. If you make the decision to tweak things to fix these issues, study the numbers again to see if the tweaks worked.
It is also possible to use stats to determine how specific pages on a site are performing. If visitors move too quickly away from important pages, they definitely need improvements. If, on the converse, a page that isn't important gets too much attention, it might be wise to put better content on it since visitors seem to go there on their own.
Learning to read stats and decipher them can be important for all sites. The practice is especially important for those who want to make money from their efforts. Using these numbers can really pay off in regard to tweaking a site to its optimum potential.
Another place these stats can be important is in regard to exit pages. While you might have designated exit pages, such as order forms, other pages might show up on stats as exit points. These are normal to an extent. If a page that isn't meant to be an exit point shows up too much as one, it might be time to tweak it. Look for weaknesses and try to improve them.
Beyond visitor stats, it's also important to look at keywords. See which ones are brining in good traffic, for example, the kind that really wants to visit your site. If visitors are coming in via your site's primary keywords, you're doing great. Those keywords that bring in visitors who buy items, look at ads or so on are valuable words.
If there are a lot of visitors coming in via keywords that aren't central to your theme and they go away fast, work to eradicate them. Good keywords draw in quality traffic. Keywords that pull in people who don't want to be there and result in zero sales or revenue aren't worth using.
When it comes to figuring out a site's effectiveness, stats are very helpful. They can also point out weak spots and assist in fixing them. Those who read stats with care can really supercharge their sites and revenue.
About the author: Jeff Alderson is an expert on search engines and SEO tactics. To http://www.increaseonlinetrafficfast.com/ increase online traffic, Jeff suggests using a variety of SEO software and strategies to http://www.increaseonlinetrafficfast.com/ increase online traffic fast. Don't reprint this exact article. Instead, reprint a free http://www.uberarticles.com/?id=17285&b=79 unique content version of this same article.
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