For a long time you’ve been hearing how important it is to track the visitors to your site, where they came from, and how they behave while they’re there. Some people call it online metrics while others call it analytics. Regardless of the name the numbers are identical.
So now that you have all those glorious graphs, numbers and tracking software in place just what the heck do we do with the information? GShift’s top-flight software crunches those tracking numbers into simple tasks and easy-to-read charts that show you where your website’s strengths and weaknesses are.
Knowing why visitors come to your site and what keeps them clicking can lead us to better and more effective online marketing campaigns.
Let’s take a look at some common traffic statistics, what they mean and how we use those numbers through GShift to target more visitors.
Making Sense of Online Metrics
Web traffic is complicated at best. Your website’s traffic can come from a multitude of places on the Internet. Social Media, business directories, article submission sites, blogs, the list goes on.
Overall Traffic
First things first. Nothing happens on your website without traffic. There is no conversion, no sales, no like’s, shares or digg’s until there are people visiting your site.
GShift allows us to see all your website’s complete traffic details in one easy panel but also breaks down where it came from and when. With this extra information we know exactly what parts of your campaign are working, be it organic search and keyword phrases to social media and backlinks.
Knowing what isn’t working also allows us to make adjustments. We beef up a weak area of your site with more conversion tasks or focus on what is working with additional content. GShift helps us with both.
Keyword tracking
One of the best ways to get traffic to your site is with keyword campaigns and tracking your top keywords is a great way to see if our choices drive the desired amount of traffic. Keywords that we’ve chosen aren’t always going to be the best. Occasionally keywords we haven’t even optimized for turn up as the number one source of organic traffic to your online doorstep.
GShift shows keywords we’ve tracked and keyword suggestions, letting us know if a change in focus is needed for a page or post.
Once we’re decided on your final keyword, perpetuating that keyword into your overall web presence such as social media and article submissions is of paramount importance. Search engines see consistency and with enough of it you can own an entire results page on Google with your various accounts.
Top Pages
With GShift we can easily see your Top Pages listed by total views in a given timeframe. That information doesn’t come alone however.
Along with those stats are Bounce Rate and Goals. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of people that immediately navigate away from your site while goals indicates the number of visitors that complete a task like a purchase, sign-up to an email list, or leaving a comment.
The more pages we get a visitor to view before bouncing means more chances we have to persuade them to complete a goal.
Where the info gets incredibly useful is when you use all three sets of numbers in tandem.
A page with the most views but the lowest conversion rate is a problem. Even your most visited page could benefit from some on-page SEO. GShift’s handy task manager not only suggests areas of improvement but allows us to build a task list based on those suggestions.
Producing more traffic with better conversion rates is what GShift does.
Top Domains
In the first section of this article we briefly mentioned backlinks. Backlinks are the lifeblood of a healthy web traffic campaign.
Think of the Internet like a giant circulatory system and your website is the heart of it all. The more veins (links) that flow to your heart (website) the better your circulation will be. When those veins (links) come from strong and healthy hearts (other websites) your authority increases in the eyes of search engines.
Knowing who your best supporters are, therefore, comes in quite handy. If another website is constantly giving you backlinks, we want to keep that relationship strong. GShift shows us who to thank.
As with the other categories you can focus on a steady backlink provider already getting you traffic or foster additional backlinks from a website that you think would give more benefit. GShift gives us more than enough info to make an informed decision.
Search Index & Crawl Data
After all the hard work doing on-page SEO tasks in the tasks manager or building links as part of an off-page SEO strategy you’ll probably want to see what results you get for your blood, sweat and tears, but not everything happens instantaneously.
It can take a while for search engines like Google and Yahoo to track all of the pages on your website. GShift shows you exactly how many pages each search engine has ‘looked at’ and in what way your site is trending.
In this way, we can stay on top of what’s been seen and what hasn’t.
Competitor Overview
In the real world you want to know what your competition is doing. It’s a fairly simple process. Visiting other storefronts for ideas on merchandising and displays is almost as old as selling itself. How can we see what the competition does when everything is virtual or electronic?
GShift finds other websites that are in competition for your subject matter and keywords. It lists them and helps identify your target competition. GShift lets us see the competition through a crystal clear lens.
Online metrics success is fantastic but if you don’t know why it’s happening how can you hope to maintain that momentum? When dealing your web presence, insight is paramount. GShift gives us the tools to help our clients achieve SERP domination, and the ongoing feedback necessary to maintain ongoing positive trends.
And so we ask you… How many people visited your website this month? How many of those people converted on a task? Where did they come from?
GShift has the answers.
