Web Moves Blog

Link building is all about traffic–trying to get more targeted traffic so you can get more visitors and/or sales.

Now everyone talks about your traffic increasing when you make improvements to your link popularity via reciprocal linking and through general link building, but rarely has anyone every discussed how you can tell. You need to have a reliable way to measure your website traffic. Sounds simple enough, but it really is not.

There are tons of free and paid services (see links below) you can use to measure your traffic. But before you start searching the web, check with your web hosting company and see if you have access to your server logs-if so should provide the best overall picture for your website. When I compare the traffic reports from my server logs and those from a free service I subscribe to, I get very different results.

Studying your traffic is critical in link building, this is the only way to tell that your efforts are paying off. I check my stats daily to see what is going on and then at the beginning of each month, I create a detailed report of the previous month’s traffic. In the beginning, it will seem frustrating and slow but as your link building grows and your website is spidered more and more, you will definitely see improvements.

When I study at my traffic stats, I look at which links/websites are providing the best traffic, how my advertising efforts are working, which search engines people are finding me in, and what keywords they are using, and finally if there are any new (unknown to me) websites providing traffic.

If you do not have access to your server logs, then get some sort of traffic analyzing tool for your website. Which is best to use? That is a hard question since there are so many options. Pick one that fits into your budget and provides the information you need.

Traffic Analyzer
For any webmaster using link building as a promotional technique, it is recommended to have a traffic analyzer that:

can provide information for all pages of your website
will provide the exact referral URL, not just the domain
has easy to read graphs/charts of your stats
provides information on entry/exit pages
Most free services can provide these but there are usually limitations, so check the fine print.

Once you get the traffic analyzer, you need to understand what it is tell you. A question that webmasters are often asked is “how many hits does your website get?”. Well you then need to ask “do you mean hits, unique visitors, or page views?”. Each one of these terms provides a different picture of your website and you need to understand the difference.

–What is a hit?

A hit is the result of a file being requested and served from your web site. This can be an html document, an image file, an audio track etc. Web pages that contain a large number of elements will return high hit scores. Hits are of very little consequence when analyzing your visitor demographics.

–What is a page view?

A page view means just that. Once again, it is not a true indication of how many different people are visiting your web site, but it is a good way to judge how “sticky” (the ability to retain the interest of visitors) your web site is and is an important consideration regarding the possibility of attracting high paying advertising.

–What is a visit?

A visit is the interactions between an IP address and the web server.

–What is a unique visitor?

A unique visitor is one who begins a “visit” on your website and this is where stats really count. It is someone with a unique IP address (when you log onto the Internet, you are assigned a unique IP address, or if you are a cable modem user your IP address is usually “static”, it never changes) who is entering a Web site for the first time that day (or some other specified period). Your IP address is an identifier, while you are using it, no else on the Internet can utilize that particular set of numbers. Your number is counted once, usually for a 2-24 hour period, dependent up the tracking software. So no matter how many times a visitor refreshes or navigates through your web site, they will only be counted once for the specified time period. This is by far the more accurate way of analyzing web site performance.

–What is bandwidth?

Bandwidth is the amount of data requested from the Web Server during a visit.

–What is the Entry Page/Exit Page(s)?

The entry page(s) is the web page(s) of your website that visitors are using to enter your website, while the exit page(s) is the last page(s) of your website they were on when they left. This is another good stat to know so you can see where people are going. If most are entering and leaving your index page, then you need to make sure that page has everything on it you want them to see.

–What is referral URL?

The referral URL is the URL of the page that was visited immediately prior to the start of the visit on your website This is the most important stat for link builders because this will show you the pages where your links are located.

Conclusion
When you divide the number of visitors by the number of page views, this can give an excellent indication of whether traffic is transient or is staying on your website. If the average is one page or under, you can be pretty sure that there is something on your pages or the lack of something, that is “scaring people off”. Perhaps the load time is too slow or your opening statement is inappropriate. Remember that due to bandwidth considerations, those first few elements that display as your page is loading may be the deciding factor as to whether a visitor waits around for the entire page to load.

Take the time and review your website traffic statistics. Knowledge is power, the more you know about your traffic patterns, the more successful you will be. You can build tons of links to your website but still go nowhere-you need to know what is happening. Without a good idea on your traffic, your website promotional work will simply be stabs in the dark.

Places to start looking for traffic tools:
http://www.bravenet.com/
http://www.freewebsiteproviders.com/counters-statistics.htm
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/misc/free-traffic-monitoring.htm

Author Bio:
Larry is the owner and webmaster behind Linking101, is a website dedicated to assisting webmasters find information, resources, and a better understanding on the power link popularity and link exchanges wield. Linking101.com has a free opt-in newsletter, product reviews, articles, and its own unique custom link products to help give you the edge you need.