Have you ever wondered why some sites are successful online, and why some sites fold up after only a few days of being out in the open? Have you ever wondered how the successful sites manage to get so much traffic despite the crowded Internet marketplace, and despite the fact that there are so many sites that are almost exactly like these successful sites? And have you ever wondered why some people decided that they should stop running their websites and instead find other day jobs?
Traffic is the new currency of the online arena, and it is an important aspect of Internet marketing simply because full and in depth analysis of it will spell either the success or failure of a site. In general, web developers and website designers of successful websites know exactly what their traffic is all about: they are able to differentiate between useful and useless traffic information, and they are able to use their traffic statistics in order to make their sites better. On the other hand, the web developers and website designers or less-than-successful, or even mediocre websites do not pay attention to the details of traffic and will instead tend to rest on their laurels simply because it seems as though they have a lot of visitors and hits.
The long story can be summed up in these few words: not all traffic is equal. Having a thousand hits only means that a thousand of your files were accessed by remote servers when people were viewing your website. If you have a lot of pictures on your website, or software that can be downloaded, each of the pictures, software, or anything that is not a text element on a web page will be counted as a hit. A hit is therefore not an accurate measure of web traffic, and should therefore not be used when analyzing the success of a website.
Instead, try relying on three major kinds of web traffic: unique visitors, referrals, and search strings. Unique visitors are the people who come to your website, and this number is the most accurate when you consider how many people arrive and look at what you have to offer. However, be wary: search engine robots and spiders are also considered visitors, so if you see visits made by bots or spiders, they cannot be counted in favor of traffic for you.
A list of referrals in your web traffic statistics will simply tell you how people get to your site. This list may contain information on blogs that are linked to you, or sites that might have links to you and may have served as the jumping-off point for people to get to you. On the other hand, a list of search strings will contain a list of search engine queries that led people to your site: this can help you understand what keywords are being picked up in your site. If you know what these keywords are, then you can maximize on other keywords that might be of interest to your target market.
These are only a few aspects of web traffic that you might want to think about. Remember, not all traffic is good, and never rest until you have completely analyzed your web traffic. For more information, talk to software engineers and web designers in order to completely understand the intricacies of this new currency of the online arena.
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