Web Traffic and Search Engine Rankings

How popular a website is can be misleading. How can some sites have 100,000 hits a day? How can I be the top Google search result for my field? Often times people distort or misrepresent the values associated with website traffic and rankings. Read on for a brief explanation of what the terms mean and how the systems work.

Traffic Metrics:

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There are many metrics used to describe how popular a website is. Some are more popular than others.

Hits

Hits are often incorrectly used to represent visitors on a website. Hits are NOT a representation of people, systems or visits. Instead, hits are requests made to the server for files. Hits can even be files that weren't there. Automated programs like search engines or malicious programs sometimes take guesses at where files might be. Even if the file isn't there, it counts as a hit. Each page, and each image or object on the page is a hit. Each visitor might have 100 or more hits. Thus, a site that has 10,000 hits a day! might have only ~500-1,0000 visitors each day. Traffic by hits is the least useful metric for measuring visitors, but it may be useful for determining the load your server is under.

Page Views

Page Views are slightly more accurate picture of how many people have been to your site, but they can be distorted, depending on the layout of your site. Most sites have more than one page. As such, people who go from one page to another would generate more Page Views than the actual number of visitors. People returning in the same day to the site would generate more views. Page Views are a valid way of measuring how much a user has been looking around your site, which is a good sign. Often, users may arrive at your site and quickly leave, or Bounce, without looking at another page. This is usually a sign that the site didn't clearly meet their needs.

Visitors

Visitors are usually all the Page Views from a single IP address. This can generally be a good metric of users viewing your site. However, visitors as a measurement is also sometimes inaccurate. Some traffic monitoring software doesn't account for different computers on the same network sharing a common Internet Connection. For example, a small office might have 10 computers sharing one connection. If two users, on two different computers, visit your site, they may appear as one. Modern tracking software may properly detect these as two separate visits. It may also incorrectly detect a browsing user as visiting more than once, depending on variables in the server.

Unique Sessions

Unique Sessions or Visitors is one of the most useful metrics. It acts like visitors, but attempts to use computer and network information to determine if the user has already visited the site in that time frame. Thus a visitor who showed up at 6:00AM and later at 8:00AM would only be counted as one Unique Session. As always, though, it can be fooled. Usually, unique sessions can not determine if the user is the same one from before if the user changes their browser between sessions. For example, if you visited your site in Internet Explorer, then returned in Firefox, you would be seen as two different visitors.

Conversions

Conversions is a highly relevant, but specific, way to measure traffic. Conversions can be almost anything, but they represent a customer doing what you want them to do. One common example is purchasing. Many users might go to an online store and look around. But few will likely purchase anything. By tracking those that do, you can assign an accurate value for how effective advertising, site layout and inventory are. The measurement of each user who purchases would be the conversion for that site. Another example might be signing up for a forum account, a newsletter, a form or anything else you'd like the user to do or see. Conversions are only as accurate as you make them, and you need to set the software specifically to track them.

Search Engine Ranks

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Many customers have incomplete or incorrect views of page ranks. While being the first result for a given keyword or phrase is certainly enviable, it's not always possible, and it doesn't guarantee success. There are a few things which must be considered when you talk about your page rank:

The Search Engine

While Google is the most popular search engine in America, it's far from the only one. Yahoo and Bing have their own following, as do smaller engines like Ask, which present many of it's content in article form. Each of these engines has it's own user group (though they sometimes overlap) and their own method of indexing and searching. Keep in mind that a good rank on one doesn't mean a good rank on them all. Sites which are successful on one engine may barely be noticed by another. Also be aware that each search engine has it's own rules about if a site is reputable or not, meaning that a tactic that helps you get higher in one may hurt you with the others.

The Keyword or Phrase

A Keyword or Keyword Phrase is the important part of what the user is searching for. Most search engines no longer consider the exact phrase, but pick out words and relationships. Searching for Where can I buy Labrador Puppies will likely create keywords for Labrador, Puppies and Buy. This is why you may get results like I was buying food for my new puppy. It's a labrador.... Also, be aware that search engines often have no sense of what you're looking for. The same search could easily bring up a pet shop in Labrador, Canada.

For this reason, you should carefully consider what Keywords or Phrases you want your site to be associated with. If the word you want to be your primary keyword is common, consider a keyword phrase. There are many hotels in the world, so if you want to be ranked well by search engines, you may want to focus on what makes your hotel special. You may be on page 15 for Hotels in Virginia, but you could more easily be on the front page of 1950's Themed Hotels in Virginia.

The Competition

As was just discussed, competition can often be brutal. While you may be competitive in your local market, online you'll likely be competing against everyone in your field who has a website. Well, not everyone. There are a few things that will factor in on who your competition is. One is language. If your target market speaks Korean, you probably won't have much competition from English only websites. Another is geography. For some things, like services or heavy or living goods, you probably will only have legitimate competition in your area.

Because of these two things, you can tailor how meaningful your rank is by focusing on Keywords and descriptions that emphasize why you're special.

The Relevance

Relevance is the sum of the above points. Sites often pick up keywords from spurious comments or homonyms which distort their traffic and their page rank. This is why it's important to consider what you need to ranked and how it sets you apart. A blog about learning a foreign language might casually mention an obscure band in passing. If someone searches for that band, the blog may be the only source of information about the band. This ranking may be first on Google, but it's not relevant. It's far more important that the site is on page 2 for Self taught Learning Cantonese than being the first result for a marginally related topic.


Proselyte Graphics Policies

We offer two types of tracking: a more detailed, technical Urchin profile, or a more straightforward Google Analytics tracking. Google Analytics fails to track users who block Javascript, but it provides far more useful results. As such, we usually provide our clients with data based on Analytics.

We do NOT promise any certain amount of daily hits or page rank for a site. SEO services should improve your page rank and your monthly visitors, but there are no guarantees given or assumed for the amount of increase.





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