• Most popular entry pages -- same as the previous section, except that this specifically tells you which pages are the most popular “entry” pages. A page counts as an entry page when it starts a visit. Correlate this with how people find you (referrers and keywords, discussed just below), and you have a wealth of insight into how your site is being discovered, and what people want. Use these conclusions to give you ideas for other related, profitable areas for content development.
• Most frequent exit pages -- these are the pages from which people leave
your site. Some people look upon high numbers for a given page as “bad.” But
you have to correlate this with other data... If a “high entry” page is also a “high
exit” page, that’s not really a surprise. If a “high exit” page is also generating
tons of links out to your income-generating programs for you, that’s not so bad
either, is it?
• Referrer URLs -- this tells you where your traffic is coming from... Search
Engines, other Web sites, link exchanges, etc., etc. Extremely useful info!
• Keyword search -- which keywords are people entering into engines to find
you? That’s what this super-valuable data tells you!
Taken together, referrer page and keyword search data tell you where and how
your visitors find you, which gives you a base to build even more traffic-building
ideas!
As you can see, traffic analysis is actually a pretty simple task... when you know
what you’re looking for, and how to turn data into information.
Traffic analysis is the base. It tells you what you need to know about quantities
of visits, visitors, and page views. It shows you where they come from (if via the
Web) and what words they used to find you at the Search Engines. But you
need more…
Now that you understand traffic flow, you need to be able to see exactly what’s
working in the two bottom-line areas that matter most...
1) how you spend your traffic-building time and money -- what’s working, and
what’s not. Spend only on the techniques that bear fruit.
2) how you make your money -- gear your content more and more towards what
gets the click. Because that’s what builds your income.
So how do we get this information? Through two forms of analysis that are
specialized for content sites like yours...
• Click IN Analysis
and…
• Click Through Analysis
Before we go further, let’s talk about two different kinds of links...
1) OFF-SITE links that bring traffic IN to you
2) ON-SITE links that send traffic OUT.
OFF-SITE links do not appear on your Web site. People will not actually click
upon these links while they are on your site. Rather, your potential visitors see
these links off your site... in e-zine ads, or offline print ads, in flyers that you
distribute at trade or hobby conventions, or in your sig file (at the end of your
e-mail). And they’ll use these links to come into your site.
Since you spend time and/or money on these traffic-building activities, you need
a way to measure this, to track which off-site promotions are working, and which
are not. Once you know which of your expense-generating activities work and
which ones don’t... you know where to spend your promotional time and money!
And where to stop! You build upon your successes and fix your weaknesses.
Let’s contrast that with ON-SITE links...
ON-SITE links appear on your site, and send visitors out of that page. These
links all go to income-generating sites (merchant-partners via affiliate programs,
your own online store, or your own sales site for products that you have
developed). In other words, ON-SITE links generate income.
So how do we track these two kinds of links?...
It all boils down to this. We track how to best spend our traffic-building time and
money via Click IN Analysis. We track what’s generating income by Click
Through Analysis.