If you have a website or blog, you will also have a way of tracking your Online Traffic Statistics. If you don’t, you are missing out on a great opportunity to hone your internet marketing education and skills.
One of the keys of successful marketing is knowing who your customers are, where they come from, and how they found you. Without this information, marketing techniques are a shot in the dark – how can you tell if what you are doing is truly effective?
Reviewing Your Traffic Statistics
What is most important to know about your visitors? How about where they are coming from? There should be an area on your stats tracking page that shows how many visitors are doing an internet search to find your content, how many are being referred from other sites, and how many are typing your URL directly into the browser.
These numbers are vital for the successful internet marketer. For one thing, if you have a PPC campaign in place, you need to know if this is worth spending your marketing budget on. If there are fewer visitors to your site from search engine results for your paid keywords, then this may not be the best use of your marketing dollars. Then again, it might mean your keywords are not effective. Either way, some changes need to be made.
On the other hand, if most of your visitors are reaching your site through referral links, then that indicates you should spend more time developing them. Getting lots of clicks from a Tweet? Then plan on spending some time each day on Twitter. Seeing quite a few referrals from a reciprocal link? Consider finding more similar websites you can partner with.
Then again, what if most people reach your site directly? This might indicate that you are doing a great job of direct marketing via whatever means you use, i.e. face-to-face interaction, promotional materials, email marketing, etc.
Capitalising On This Information
There are several ways you can take your Online Traffic Statistics and make them work for you. Direct traffic is the best. It is not dependent on the whims of Google and its page ranking system, it is not directly related to popularity on social media, and it means that your incoming traffic is already qualified.
When much of your traffic is coming from referral links, you could look at this a couple different ways. Number one is that you could do a better job of marketing your site – why are they coming from somewhere else rather than accessing your pages directly?
Number two is that you should continue to build relationships with the owners of popular sites. Join some networking groups, partner with a blogger who has a good following, or advertise on other sites. Encourage referrals from sources by offering an incentive.
Make sure you use direct traffic to its full advantage. Once they’ve accessed your home page, don’t let them get away. Persuade them to opt in to your mailing list or consider adding a pop-up before they leave the site. These visitors are “warm” leads who should not need much encouragement to make a purchase or perform some other call to action.
Paying attention to your Online Traffic Statistics helps you to stop spending your marketing budget on techniques that aren’t working and capitalise on those that are. This makes good business sense, and saves you both time and money.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.AussieSEO.com 2010
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Sean,
I’m always checking my online traffic statistics. The traffic I get from referrals has the lowest bounce rate. In Google Analytics it has my site listed with referrals. Where exactly is this traffic being referred from?
Other sources of traffic with low bounce rates are some websites that I visit and comment on and anything from Hootsuite to Delicious. My direct traffic bounce rate is nowhere near as good as my referrals.
My worst bounce rate is organic traffic from Google. But, that’s because my keywords are wrong and I’m working on fixing them. So, I’ve got lots of work to do to improve my online statistics.
Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Learn and Earn – It’s a Marathon Not a Sprint
Hi Sean
Now this is something I really need to learn. I see utmost value in knowing where my customers are coming from so that I can enhance that lead in.
I like the idea of linking to a bigger more popular site. You may be inundated with YOTA Forum people very soon Sean! But I can see the way that would work as it would increase traffic to my site and hopefully I will be able to keep them interested in having a look around.
Does a pop up work well or do people feel harassed by it as they are leaving a site? I am not sure about that.
Thankyou .
Blessings,
Elly
Elly´s last blog ..
In wordpress there are ways to track traffic . Any traffic has to be good
Obviously there is room for improvement as we progress
Thanks for the analytics tips Sean,
At first I thought that it was more important to generate high levels of traffic but over time it seems a bit of a waste of time and opportunity when they start bouncing straight off your site.
I have started paying closer attention to my website statistics as a result of reading your Aussie Seo blog & it’s really starting to make sense to me now.
By tracking your online traffic statistics you can see what is working for you & what is not, then with a bit of alteration you should be able to eliminate what doesn’t work & focus on what does!
I use google analytics to track my traffic statistics as well. It is a fantastic tool to let you know exactly what is happening with your site. When you say direct traffic is best, do you mean that they actually type in the name of your website into google? Unfortunately my domain name has nothing to do with my product so I don’t think that will happen.
Jackie Stenhouse´s last blog ..Anxiety Separation in Children
Direct traffic is straight from the address bar in the browser. If you are getting a lot of this, it means people know your URL and have remembered it… meaning you have done a great job with branding and promotion etc.