If you own or manage a website, you are probably already aware of the importance of your log files or site statistics. Such data can give you insights about your site’s usability, errors in your HTML code, the popularity of your site pages and the type of visitors your site attracts. But did you know it can also highlight the success or failure of your search engine optimization campaign?
1. Entry Paths
Most sites can be developed and analysed around the concept of visitor pathways. If, for example, your site is a Business to Business (B2B) site and you service small, medium and large businesses, there should be pathways through your site designed
for each class of visitor. An extremely simplified example would be:
Clients coming to the site through an optimized home page:
home page —> small business page —> order page —> order confirmation page
home page —> medium business page —> order page —> order confirmation page
home page —> large business page —> order page —> order confirmation page
2. Top Exit Pages
These are pages from which most visitors click away from your site. Why is it useful to track these? Because exit pages can tell you:
If there is a technical problem with the page that is causing visitors to leave your site. For example, if there are broken links, or the form on the page is not working properly etc.
3. Single Access Pages
These are entry pages that are viewed once before the visitor clicks away from your site. Similar to Top Exit Pages, Single Access Pages can tell you a lot about why people are not staying on your site for long.
4. Most Requested Page(s) and Top Entry Pages.
Tracking these pages is key to measuring the success of your SEO campaign. If your optimization is effective, the Top Entry Pages and Most Requested Pages should be those that you have optimized for target keywords. The Top Entry Pages are particularly relevant as you consider the pathways through your site. Do the most popular entry pages have any relationship to the start pages for your plotted visitor pathways? Or are visitors entering and navigating your site via ways you didn’t intend? You can use this information to continually tweak your page optimization to guide visitors to the right pathways.
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