Optimize My Search

Five Key Stats Involving Your Website Traffic

You have labored tirelessly on your site for months. You have researched keywords, concentrated on key phrases, built links and are listed in search engines. How do you find out if all that work and tons of hours are working? It is easy if your host has CPanel with AWStats

It is not necessary to have CPanel to use this program, it is what I am most familiar with and will start from there. When I check my web page traffic statistics I click on Web/FTP Stats and then AWStats. If you are hosting more than one domain then you have more step and that is to click on the domain you are checking.

If you have never used AWStats, the page you see now can be overwhelming. You can see stats broke down by the hour, the day, week or month. Stats on who is visiting, when they visit and where they visit from as well as numerous other stats that could keep you occupied for hours on end.

I am interested though on traffic patterns and where my traffic comes from and how I can improve it. To do this I look at five key stats in AwStats all under the Referers Section: Origin, Search Engine, Site, Search Key Phrases and Search Keywords.

Referers:

Origin – This stat gives you an overall view of all your traffic. It will show what percent came directly (Bookmarked or typed in), links from other sites, search engines and what ever source may have picked up your link. Each site has its own dynamic and may rely heavier on one traffic generator more than others. Keep an eye on these to make sure you are maintaining the balance you want for your site. Also it can show if you are suddenly falling off in a category or if a recent attempt to increase your hits from a source is having an effect. For example if you have been concentrating recently on link building you would hope the percentage shown from links from other sites would be increasing.

Search Engines – This breaks down what percent of your traffic came from what search engine. When I think search engine I think Google, Yahoo and MSN in that order. The latest reports as of this writing is Google does 49.5% of total searches, Yahoo accounts for 28.7% and MSN 20% and the rest divided among all the other engines. Does your sites search engine traffic mimic these numbers? I believe it should because if you are heavy in one search engine, then when it implements some changes it can have a direct effect on your site. If you are low in one engine, then that shows an opportunity for increased growth and shows you a place you can concentrate some effort on.

Sites – This will give an indication what other site you have a links on is giving you the best traffic. Here you can see if a certain themed site gives you better results, if you use an article submission site, which one is working better, what type of press release seems to have better results, a social book marking site out performing or any other non search engine type traffic is working. The strategy here is simple; if it works do more of it!

Search:

Key Phrases – This will display the top 10 keywords phrases used to find your site. Look over the list, you will always find a strange phrase here or there but overall are they the phrases you targeted to help people find your site? More times than not you can spot trends that take you away from what you originally anticipated and move your site in a different direction that will increase your traffic. You can also expand this to see the entire list. Check and see if there is a phrase you overlooked that you might be able to implement into your site.

Keywords – This list can really show if your specific optimization is working. Do you see the word you where emphasizing on the list? This is another area to look at to see if there are words you didn’t think about on the list and maybe adjust your pages to reflex this word more often. Maybe even a word that allows you to add pages specifically for it to boost your sites interest and appeal.

This is just one of many web statistics programs out there and one of many ways to analyze those stats. If you are new to the stats part of web building, you can not go wrong starting with these five items.