Analyzing your Traffic to Measure your Success
Part 2
By Robin Nobles

In Part 1 of this article, we discussed some things you should
look for when analyzing your log files. You should also look at:

* Top entry pages How are people first coming in to your site?
Which pages are bringing you the most traffic? What about some of
your other pages? What can you do to make them "top entry pages"
too?

* Top exit pages Exit pages are another very important area of a
log file, according to Degner.

"Where are they leaving? What off site links are they clicking on
the most? If this is an intro page or another sub page that is a
doorway, I may need to get rid of it or use a redirect. It tells
me where I am losing visitors.

"As an example, a client insisted upon having a second intro page
that played their radio commercial, so you clicked on the index
page to enter and were stuck in a second media-enhanced page. We
could see half of our traffic leaving right there and going no
further into the site, which was a really big clue that it was a
turn off to the surfing public.

"A lesson to corporate sites - a Web site is the wrong place to
be vain. Serve up your product or service immediately or pay the
price with an impatient dotCom'r.

"On other sites, we have discovered that a screen shots page made
a huge difference in converting sales, and that was where the
most orders came from (exit link was the order link)."

* Single access pages Which pages are being viewed by themselves,
where visitors aren't even clicking to go to another page? Again,
look at these pages carefully to see what you can provide on the
page to keep up the interest of your visitors. You're losing
them, and you need to figure out why.

* Errors, such as 404 pages If your visitors encounter too many
error messages when visiting your Web Site, they'll assume that
you don't do your "house cleaning," and the professional image of
your site will plummet several notches.

* Most active countries If you want a corner of the international
market, study this data carefully. How many user sessions are
being generated for each country that's important to your
business? How you can beef up efforts to improve those numbers?
Are you creating highly targeted information pages for your
international keywords?

* Top referring sites and URLs

* Top referring search engines Do you have some top ranking pages
in certain search engines, but you're not seeing coinciding
traffic through those engines? If so, you may need to rethink
your keyword strategy, because a truckload of #1's won't do you
any good if traffic doesn't follow.

* Keywords that searchers are using to find your site If you're
being found under a particular keyword in one engine but not
another, boost efforts in the other search engine and try to
bring in more traffic. Also, study this section closely for any
holes in your keyword-thinking strategies.

Remember that search engine positioning strategies begin with a
simple keyword or keyword phrase. If you're having problems
finding a keyword phrase that will bring you more traffic, visit
WordTracker at http://www.wordtracker.com and sign up for their
free trial service, Or visit GoTo's Search Term Suggestion List
at http://inventory.goto.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Also
most search engines have "related search" results that can give
you some clues, so don't over look that information.

* Browsers used by your visitors Check this section periodically
to make sure that the technology offered at your Web site can be
used by the majority of your visitors. In other words, if many of
your visitors are accessing the web using older browsers, you
will want to be careful about using technology that will prevent
them from fully utilizing your Web site.

* Visiting spiders Which search engine spiders have visited your
site recently? After submitting your pages to the engines, be
sure to monitor this section closely for spider activity.

Excellent closing advice for positioners . . .

Ginette Degner says, "Keep track of when a spider hits your site
and how deep and compare it to the dates you submit and the dates
the pages actually appear in the index. You will start to see a
pattern emerge with each engine. Yes, there are hiccups, but it
will help you time your submissions, and when a client asks you
when they can expect to see results, you can answer
intelligently.

"When you are stumped as to why none of the words you optimized
for are hitting, look at the logs. Use the words you see actually
hitting with the search engines in your reporting files
(WebPosition Gold). It can open your eyes and help you find more
avenues of traffic for your client.

"At the very least, you can show some positions which will make a
client more comfortable because you are showing they are getting
traffic from the engines. This helps immensely when you hear 'I
do not have any sales' from a client. You can steer the client to
rethink their approach or sales copy."

So, take the time to analyze your traffic, and then put that
valuable information to work on your Web site and reap the
benefits of even more traffic!

Log Analysis Programs

* WebTrends
http://www.webtrends.com/
* FlashStats
http://maximized.com/products/flashstats
* Funnel Web
http://www.activeconcepts.com/prod.html
* Analog (free)
http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~sret1/analog/
* Webalizer (free)
http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer
* eXTReMe Tracking (free)
http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking/?home
* Northern Web's Keyword Sniffer (Free Perl Script)
http://www.northernwebs.com/set/kw_install.html


Robin Nobles is the Director of Training at the Academy of Web
Specialists (http://www.academywebspecialists.com). Over the past
few years, she has trained over 1000 people in her online and
onsite courses in search engine positioning strategies and has
written three books that can be ordered through Amazon. Visit the
Academy's training Web site to learn more about their online
courses: http://www.onlinewebtraining.com.