You Need A Web Site Traffic Measurement Tool
You’ve spent all kinds of time figuring out the proper keyword usage for your website. You’ve done a thousand things to make your site more attractive to search engine spiders and humans alike. Now it’s time to start using a traffic measurement tool.
It is as important for you to get into traffic measurement as it is for you to boost traffic on your website in the first place. Traffic measurement is how you can tell if your efforts to improve website traffic stats are paying off. How will you know if you never look at the stats?
You can’t look at the stats without a traffic measurement tool. Different kinds offer different things. For example, if all you want to do is find out how many returning and new visitors you have coming to your site, then all you need is a small invisible counter.
You can get one of those free, or you can pay a little for a few extra benefits. StatCounter.com offers free invisible web trackers that will allow you to look at some of your website traffic stats.
ShinyStat.com offers a free one also, but only if you intend to use it for a non-profit website. Generally, the more you pay, the more website traffic stats reports you get to see per month.
If you would like a more comprehensive traffic measurement tool, you can purchase software that measures all kinds of website traffic stats. Not only will you know how many people came to your site — but you’ll also peer inside the minds of your visitors, getting reports on behavioral statistics, as well as track search engines and ad campaigns.
Some of them will even keep an eye on your server, network, and the website itself, and send you a message if anything goes wrong — virtually eliminating downtime. If you are trying to boost the traffic on your website, one thing you do not want is downtime.
Another traffic measurement option is Google Analytics. Although you have to purchase strategic support and consultation services, the actual package itself is free to all site owners, advertisers, and publishers.
In fact, they just unveiled a new version on May 8, 2007 at the Emetrics Summit, a conference exploring issues surrounding the optimization of websites. Whichever traffic measurement tool you opt for, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your website’s traffic.
Not doing so is like studying as hard as you can, but never receiving a grade. You wouldn’t have liked it if your professors had told you to just wait until the end of your college career to see if you wound up with a degree or not — so don’t turn a blind eye to your site’s progress.
Without website traffic an online business will not survive. Get all the latest on traffic measurement tool at http://webtraffic.micronicherecommends.com/, and leave a feedback at Mike Selvon blog at http://www.mynicheportal.com/internet/.
Professional Keyword Research
Keyword research in undoubtedly one of the most important aspects to consider when setting up your own online home business.
If you don’t target your keyword phrases effectively then you will be wasting both time and effort, performing tasks that will never pay off no matter how hard you try.
Here are some points to consider when conducting your keyword research:
1. Consider which tools you are going to use and save them to a one of your favourites folders for easy and frequent access. There are even some tools out there that allow you to download a tool bar with all the tools readily available. There are numerous free tools, many of which are very useful. I personally, use a tool called Keyword Elite to conduct my online keyword research.
2. What keyphrases are you going to target? – If you have very few resources available and are new to online marketing then it is advisable that you target ‘long tail’ keyword phrases. These are keyword phrases with 3-5 words, which make them a lot less competitive and easier to attain top rankings in the search engines.
3. Use a variety of keyword phrases for each campaign – Are you using the keywords in your website content or are they primarily for backlinking text? I would find two or three less competitive keyword phrases for each target market and use these to create backlinks through article submissions. Then, take ten different variations of these keyword phrases and use them in your website content.
4. Target profitable keyword phrases – Obviously the main aim of keyword research is to find profitable keywords. How can we do that? One effective way to target buyers and also find less competitive search terms is to find keyword phrases that contain certain words like, ‘buy’ as in ‘buy keyword research tool’.
5. Find untapped markets – Many of your competitors will be targeting all the same keyword phrases. This is where they fall down. Find obscure phrases that your target are already searching for and go after these by specifically writing articles based on these to achieve better or top search engine rankings. One good way to do this is by scanning your current website visitors and finding the keyword terms that sent them to your site.
Keyword research is only a beginning in building a profitable online business but it is an aspect of your marketing that cannot be overlooked. Effective keyword research is essential to ensure your business becomes a huge success and not a dismal failure.
Mal Keenan is publisher of Home Business Tips Newsletter:http://www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com/
To Check Out His Most Powerful, HIGHLY Effective Keyword Research Tool Click the Link Below:
http://www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com/blog/keyword-elite/
Know Your Visitors Through Website Traffic Analysis
Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.
Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let’s start by examining the most basic data – the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.
There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as “hits” and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.
The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.
The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.
It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.
Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors can access the necessary information on that page.
If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page.
As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.
Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice a exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page.
After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it’s time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor – meaning that they find what they are looking for on your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase – the more valuable that keyword is.
However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed – or should I say misdirected – to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor’s needs and motivations.
Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.
Don Resh is CEO of WebForce, Inc. He is a respected authority on Internet Marketing, especially in the area of home based business. A more detailed bio is available on his web sites at:
http://www.WebForceSolutions.com
http://www.BizBuildSoftware.com
http://www.TurboMaxSoftware.com
Ad Tracking: A Beginner’s Guide
No matter where you are in your business, just started up or a seasoned marketer, you need to have an internet presence to maximize your revenue. And you need to take help of all kinds of internet advertising tools to announce your presence in the WWW world. As in the real world, so with the virtual world; the ad campaigns will spread good words about your product among the prospective customers. But draining out resources on senseless advertisements leads to nothing. The advertisements have to be successful to the point of boosting up the sales of your product. In real world, various tools are employed to find out whether a certain set of advertising are effective. In the advertising terminology they are known as ad tracking research. In case of internet marketing, you need to stage these kinds of tracking researches to know which advertisements are working to your profit and which are not. The process that helps you to evaluate the worth of different ads in the cyber space is known as ad tracking.
Every Online marketer will tell you that it is a must to monitor you traffic to maximize your revenue. There are several sources from which visitors are sent to your website and you have to know which of the sources is most traffic generating. The art of advertising is founded on the behavioral tenets of human beings that are unpredictable and ever changing. So you can not predict flawlessly, which advertisement will work and which won’t. So constant testing and modification is important and the system of ad tracking helps you to monitor the result of various advertisements, so that you get the clue, where to make improvements or changes.
It is a simple program that basically records when your website URL has been clicked. It helps you to find the referring URL, where your visitor came from. You will also get to know about the browser and operating system and the exact time of the visit. Through an ad tracker, it is also possible to learn about total hits and unique hits. These records are stored in your machine and will help you to analyze the trends of responses over a specified time period. When you are online, it is possible to learn about the click made just a second ago.
You can find mainly two types of ad tracking program: Tracking Software and Tracking Service. The operation of two types of programs is more or less same. But they have certain distinctive features.
So far as the tracking software is concerned, it involves one time cost and installation. In this case your tracking URL carries your own domain name.
In the case of tracking services, the program is run by the provider’s site. You have to pay a rental on monthly or annual basis for running the program. In this case your tracking URLs carry the supplier domain name.
You have to consider certain points to select between software and service. They are: types of visitors, campaign features, the way you want the report to be presented, your budget and technical efficiency and your membership to any affiliate program.
Come over to http://www.adtrackercentral.com and take a dive into online ad tracking.
Find quality content and many more ad tracker related articles in our archive.