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Web analytics is the on-going maintenance phase, after the initial website Optimization process, where you keep an eye on various parameters to ensure your site has increased and relevant traffic. The five main things to monitor and analyze are:
- Keyword Position
- Pages Indexed
- PageRank
- Back Links
- General Server and Site Statistics
Web Analytics for Keyword Position
Keyword position tracking and search engine optimization go hand in hand. One of the first tasks done before search engine optimization begins is a keyword ranking or positioning report. One of the last tasks done after search engine optimization is completed is a keyword ranking or positioning report. Search engine optimization experts are constantly tracking keyword placement on search engines almost on a daily basis. Keywords are researched as a part of your optimization process based on the business you offer and the audience you want to target.
Web Analytics for Pages Indexed
An important criterion in optimizing your site for search engines is to make certain that your pages are "search engine friendly". There are a few tools that you can use to track how search engine friendly your pages are. The tool that you can use effectively is the search engine itself.
To find out which pages from your site are included in the search engine, one can go directly to the search engine of choice and type a simple command.
Google: http://www.google.com/
Syntax: site:www.domainname.com keyword
Example: site:www.acmeleathershoes.com "leather shoes"
Google will bring back all the pages on your site that contain the keyword on it.
Web Analytics for PageRank
PageRank is one of the factors within Google's search engine algorithm that determines a page's positioning in Google's search results. Building Links is explained in our Link Popularity section. Google explains its PageRank as follows:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. Google interprets link from one site to another as a "vote" and weighs "important" page votes higher than the lesser important pages. It's not just the number of links but the quality of the sites that link back that matter.
Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search.
PageRank is a web page score from 0 through 10. Having a site with a PageRank of 9 that links to a site with a PageRank of 3 will greatly help increase the PageRank of the site with a PageRank of 3.
All other things being equal, those pages that have a higher page rank will list higher in the search engine.
To determine your PageRank please download the Google Toolbar at: http://toolbar.google.com
Web Analytics for BackLink Tracking
Back links or links you have coming in to your site from external site is another fundamental metric to track in your SEO package. Link popularity campaigns are sometimes employed by many website to create backlinks. Back Links are important for two reasons
- The more links you have coming in to your site, the more traffic you have and
- The more back links you have coming into your site, the more search engines consider your site important (i.e. PageRank).
Back links have obvious benefits, and here are the various search engines and syntaxes to determine back links.
Google: http://www.google.com/
Syntax: link:www.domainname.com
Example: link:www.acmeleathershoes.com
General Server and Site Statistics and steps to improve optimization
There are hundreds of Web site statistics and analytics software available to choose from. They all provide the basic functions of tracking visitors or traffic, pages visited, referrer sites, keyword phrases and browser/computer types. Many programs offer more options and features that can cost more, so we will just review the basic features available.
- The first statistic one can monitor is daily traffic and visitor patterns. What one would like to see is an increase of traffic to the site over time.
- Monitoring pages visited helps determine which pages are most popular and which just stand in the shadows.
- Referrers or referring sites statistics is an excellent way to find out which sites your traffic is coming from.
- Most Web site statistics software comes with a way to monitor search engine driven traffic and the keywords or keyword phrases used to find your Web pages.
- The last report, which really does not have much to do with SEO, is the browser and computer type report. This is generally important to keep track of when testing your site.
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