Chapter 14 - Monitoring and Measuring

The long-term key to success on Google is to be able to measure and monitor the “performance” and “success” your web site over time, modify your efforts, test, and repeat. This means you need to regularly monitor different metrics of your website.

Monitoring Your Site Traffic

This is a must-do activity. If you are not viewing and analyzing your site traffic and visitor statistics over time, you are essentially flying blind. This would be akin to a retail store not tracking how many customers come into their store, what they look at, what they buy, and on which days.

Here is a representative screenshot of a typical site traffic statistics program interface:

Getting your Web host to install and configure a different log-file analyzer than the default one they offer can be a frustrating and difficult experience. Regardless of where the program is run from, make sure you ask that the referrer option is turned on for your site (it is usually turned off by default), otherwise you’ll be reading IP addresses in order to figure out where your traffic is coming from.

One issue with log-file analyzers is that the information isn’t shown in real time – the server log file they read data from is typically generated daily. This usually isn’t a problem however. One of the more popular analyzers is Urchin - however it will set you back $500 or more. There is only one free log-file analyzer that I consider worthwhile and easy to read and that is Funnel Web Analyzer, available from Quest Software at http://www.quest.com/funnel_web/analyzer/.

Using a Real-time Tracking Service

Real-time tracking, also called browser-based tracking, is sold as a monthly service. Instead of reading a log file, this method involves you inserting JavaScript tracking code on each page of your site you wish to monitor. Each time a visitor comes to your site, the JavaScript code sends information to the service provider where it is stored and accessed from. Information can be accessed in near real-time and usually the quality of information is better (more accurate visitor and page view counts) than with a log-file analyzer. However you are paying a monthly recurring expense if you go this route and you are charged by how much traffic you receive on your site – this can be very expensive for high-traffic sites.

The most popular providers of this service are WebTrends Live and HitBox, which charge around $25/mo for low-traffic sites. There are also a couple of lower-cost vendors that I recommend – Web-Stat (http://www.web-stat.com) for $5 per month and HitsLink (http://www.hitslink.com) for $10 per month.

What to Monitor?

I cannot stress how important it is to get into the habit of regularly viewing the traffic statistics for your website. At a minimum you should check them weekly as they are a veritable goldmine of information. Of particular importance is tracking the following parameters for your web site:

Keywords: This lists the actual keywords people typed into search engines to find your site. This list will probably look similar to results you obtain using WordTracker. Also listed is the percentage of the total traffic each keyword brought in. There will probably be an entry called “other”, “no keyword” or something similar. This represents people that either directly typed your site into their browser or that have bookmarked your site in their browser Favorites list.

Spend time determining which search terms visitors used to find your site. You may uncover some new keyword combinations that you didn’t think of using on your pages. If this is the case, tweak your site or create a new page around this phrase accordingly.

Search Engines: This lists the search engines that visitors used to find your site. Also listed is the percentage of the total traffic each search engine brought to your site. Usually Google is at the top of the list – both the US version as well as the Canadian version.

Referrals: This lists the actual websites that brought traffic to your site and what percentage of the total traffic each “referral” site brought in. Over time, you should start seeing referral traffic from websites you've exchanged links with. There will probably be an entry called “direct”, “no referral” or something similar. This represents people that either directly typed your site into their browser or that have bookmarked your site in their browser Favorites list.

Tip: Consider creating a favicon.ico file. A favicon is a small 16 x 16 pixel icon that is displayed when you bookmark a page and add it your Favorites using Internet Explorer. If you create a favicon and place it in the root directory of your server, you can monitor how many referrals are coming from people that have bookmarked your site. Favicons are created with special software that creates the correct file format. They are also great for branding purposes. For more information, see http://www.favicon.com/.

Page Views: This represents the most viewed (or popular) pages on your site. This is useful for determining where your visitors are spending their time on your site.

Click Path or Visitor Path: This shows the actual path that a visitor took while browsing through your site. This is great for determining what visitors are looking for on your site.

Exit Pages: These represent the last pages that a visitor views before leaving your site. Hopefully it is your sales page and not your home page!

Length of Session or Page View: This shows how long visitors spend on each page and on your site in general. Are people leaving your site too fast? Try to find out why.