Depending on the stat software you are using, there may be no difference. Sometimes a hit though is counted for something like every image downloaded ('a hit') so can render ten or more hits for one page view, or something like that.
Do not worry about that variables. Concentrate on your unique visitors, that is the important variables in SEO
If your page has 5 images and someone visits it, that would be 5 "hits". A page view is a page being loaded. Just focus on unique visitors and your bounce rate and you'll be golden.
Within Pageviews, the total no. of pages viewed will be shown and if any page has one image and text content too then it will be counted as two hits... one for the image and one for the text.
Hits means, number of visitors that came to ur site. Page views means: how many pages are the visitors are viewed.
I disagree. Hits is traditionally a server based statistical. like JasonLP says. You might have 5 images and a page load equal 6 hits from one visitor. Page views are each time a distinct url is loaded
Hits are the number of visitors to your site and page views would mean the number of times the pages are visited. However the most important thing is the number of unique visitors to the site…
Don't concern yourself too much about this. Like others already mentioned, it's unique visitors you want to "count" or keep track of. How many times someone viewed a page is something more important when you are campaigning (trying to reach a goal for) a product or service on a specific page. But then everything depends on your goal when it comes to SEO. You want to build backlinks first. The traffic will increase with the back links.
A hit is term that is used very generally, but a page visit is how many pages on your website that a visitor, robot, etc., visited within your site... A hit is a term that most webmasters, and seo's don't use it's way to general. Unique visitor is the real benchmark and reference of a strong performing website.
Hit is someone coming to your site. If that person views 7 pages other then the landing page then they accounted for 8 page views. If they only landed on your site and then left without viewing any other pages then they are only counted as 1 pageview and one hit. Hope this helps!
Unique visitor: The unique visitor visiting your site. Do not count several hits. Important for SEO purposes. Hit: Each new request to the page, file, image or any internet resource. Page View: Each request to the page. One unique visitor may hit more than one time each page.