Hello, I am doing SEO for one my client for last few years. Earlier we used to calculate the site performance via hits in the website. I know its not the effective way to calculate the site performance. Now the client wanted to change it to the visits referred by search engines. I told them that it’s not a effective way to calculate SEO performance in the website as we do lots of other task like directory submission etc to get the rankings. So what about the traffic from those referring websites. They understood but we are not getting any effective way to calculate the SEO performance in the website Here's what I want from my SEO expert friends advice. Please tell me what is the best or an effective way to calculate SEO performance in the website. Thanks & Regards -- Ann
My dear friend Add this tool in your website "http://awstats.sourceforge.net/" this is the best tool i have even seen. There are so many tools in the market may be better than this. All this tools are called website log file, website stats, website statistics, etc. so you can even search with the above keywords also. A full log analysis enables AWStats to show you the following information: * Number of visits, and number of unique visitors, * Visits duration and last visits, * Authenticated users, and last authenticated visits, * Days of week and rush hours (pages, hits, KB for each hour and day of week), * Domains/countries of hosts visitors (pages, hits, KB, 269 domains/countries detected, GeoIp detection), * Hosts list, last visits and unresolved IP addresses list, * Most viewed, entry and exit pages, * Files type, * Web compression statistics (for mod_gzip or mod_deflate), * OS used (pages, hits, KB for each OS, 35 OS detected), * Browsers used (pages, hits, KB for each browser, each version (Web, Wap, Media browsers: 97 browsers, more than 450 if using browsers_phone.pm library file), * Visits of robots (319 robots detected), * Worms attacks (5 worm's families), * Search engines, keyphrases and keywords used to find your site (The 115 most famous search engines are detected like yahoo, google, altavista, etc...), * HTTP errors (Page Not Found with last referrer, ...), * Other personalized reports based on url, url parameters, referer field for miscellanous/marketing purpose, * Number of times your site is "added to favourites bookmarks". * Screen size (need to add some HTML tags in index page). * Ratio of Browsers with support of: Java, Flash, RealG2 reader, Quicktime reader, WMA reader, PDF reader (need to add some HTML tags in index page). * Cluster report for load balanced servers ratio.A full log analysis enables AWStats to show you the following information: * Number of visits, and number of unique visitors, * Visits duration and last visits, * Authenticated users, and last authenticated visits, * Days of week and rush hours (pages, hits, KB for each hour and day of week), * Domains/countries of hosts visitors (pages, hits, KB, 269 domains/countries detected, GeoIp detection), * Hosts list, last visits and unresolved IP addresses list, * Most viewed, entry and exit pages, * Files type, * Web compression statistics (for mod_gzip or mod_deflate), * OS used (pages, hits, KB for each OS, 35 OS detected), * Browsers used (pages, hits, KB for each browser, each version (Web, Wap, Media browsers: 97 browsers, more than 450 if using browsers_phone.pm library file), * Visits of robots (319 robots detected), * Worms attacks (5 worm's families), * Search engines, keyphrases and keywords used to find your site (The 115 most famous search engines are detected like yahoo, google, altavista, etc...), * HTTP errors (Page Not Found with last referrer, ...), * Other personalized reports based on url, url parameters, referer field for miscellanous/marketing purpose, * Number of times your site is "added to favourites bookmarks". * Screen size (need to add some HTML tags in index page). * Ratio of Browsers with support of: Java, Flash, RealG2 reader, Quicktime reader, WMA reader, PDF reader (need to add some HTML tags in index page). * Cluster report for load balanced servers ratio. Cool Mate and Enjoy your Day
If I were a client, I'd be bothered about the total number of search-engine referrals. I don't think any directory, other than the Yahoo directory, send any worthwhile amount of traffic. In my experience, the traffic referred by directories is minimal and also not as valuable as traffic from search engines. It is also my everyday practice to see the number of referrals from the search engines only. I can't remember having tracked any "total visits" metrics for my site.
Do not forget about the number of page views - that is the best indicator of wether you are getting quality targeted traffic!
Only search engine referrals.. then what will happen to seo effort in posting about the site in related niche forum, community, groups, answers etc. The site like yahoo answers, Digital point forums, wiki answers etc has huge traffic & posting about your website genuinely will drive a traffic to your website. Also with visits, there is a problem. Now a days we know that the surfers surf mostly from offices or by cyber cafe. The IP address will be same in such a case & as visits is A number of visitor from a large corporate network will surf your website & will be counted as a 1 unique visitors & 1 visits, so that is also not an effective way to calculate the site performance.
Thanks choicefreedom2000. But we cannot use any third party software as we are already using webtrends. Nor do we want to go for Google Analytics. I am only asking which parameter like pageviews, visitors, visits, search engine referrals, hits will be best to measure the website performance. @Tugeza : Even we are thinking of targeting page views.. lets wait for others SEO masters to reply.
For Search Engine Optimization Bounce Rate, page views, time on site, search engine visitors, keyword rankings, amount of unique content, indexed pages, # of links, # of links to internal pages Search Engine Marketing Bounce Rate, page views, time on site, keyword rankings, content, indexed pages, # of links, # of links to internal pages, all traffic, conversion rate, cost of sponsored traffic, conversion rate of sponsored traffic, social media exposure It sounds like you might want to tell them you're their search marketing company? JMO