The Importance Of Web Traffic Statistics

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.

The most accurate data on traffic tends to come from the web hosting companies themselves. They, unfortunately, can provide so much information that it might overwhelm at first. Look for the data that applies to the business or website at hand. One of the first things to consider is the typical amount of visitors that stop at a site on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

These numbers tend to be the most accurate in regard to a particular site's activity level. Be careful not to read too much into the traffic numbers without delving deeper. While it might seem as if the more visitors who go to a site, the better the site is doing, it's not always true. You need to know what visitors do once they get to a site. This is the real measure of 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 real trick is to take the traffic stats and use them to figure out how effective is site is for visitors. One of the biggest numbers to pay attention to for this is the length of time visitors stay on your site. If their stays are short, you might have a big problem.

Sometimes the problem is nothing more than poorly chosen keywords drawing in the wrong kind of traffic. The visual design of the site could be off, as well. If your site looks too confusing, visitors might steer away quickly. If you work to tweak things a little, check this number again down the road to see if the tweak worked.

Traffic stats are also useful for figuring out if certain areas on a site are working as they should. If visitors leave a page too quickly that you think is important, it might be time to improve that page or its incoming links. This works in the converse, too. If a page is getting more attention than you think it deserves, maybe shuffling its content with more important material will help since visitors seem to go there anyway.

Web stats are important for any site, but they can be particularly so for those that try to earn money off their pages. Finding out what is wrong and fixing it can turn sales numbers around in a big way.

Although your site might have specific exit pages like order forms or other similar designs, these may not be the only "exit pages" that show up on a report. This is not at all abnormal, since not all visitors will find what they want on your site. If a particular page, however, shows up as an exit page too much and it was not designed to be so, look more closely at the page. Examine it for weaknesses and see what can be done to improve its pull.

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.

Should you find a big number of visitors being pulled in by a particular keyword or phrase that doesn't relate, make changes. Keywords are what draws in quality visitors. Traffic that isn't targeted won't do you any good.

Stats do help webmasters gauge their site's effectiveness. They can even be used to help one see what areas can be improved on. Read them with care to learn how to best optimize the entire website.

Article Source: http://www.exclusive-article.com

Author Jeff Alderson is an expert on PPC and SEO. To increase online traffic, Jeff suggests using a variety of SEO tools and strategies to increase online traffic fast.

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