What to Look For
There are lots of website stats for you to look at to improve your rankings with the search engines. Each one can tell you something useful about how your business is currently doing.
1. Page views - How many people look at each page of your website? You can check page views on a monthly basis to see what portion of your website is the most popular. Maybe certain pages are more popular at different times of the year due to seasonal product offerings. You can also learn what items are doing well and which ones are dragging down the bottom line.
2. Unique visitors - Your site may get many visitors each day but they could be the same person coming back more than once. Unique visitors are first time visitors to your site and not repeat ones. The more unique visits you get the more potential customers you are coming in contact with.
3. Links - These can be outgoing links. If someone clicks on your Digg icon to bookmark one of your articles or blog posts, you can find that out as long as you have the right software set up on each page of your site. Any ads you post can also be tracked to see who clicks them. Programs like Google AdWords will track those stats for you so you can get paid.
4. Sales - You can track how well your shopping cart does each month. See when sales do down or up and see how many people used the shopping cart but didn't make the sale. Compare statistics to track product buying trends to predict future sales.
5. Keyword analysis - Each page can be dedicated to one or two keywords. By looking at page views you can analyze how well your keywords are working. Using a different page for different keywords also allows you to know which ones are underperforming for you so you can try a new tactic.
Google Analytics is a free program that you can use to measure these and other website stats. Having so much information at your fingertips can help you rise to the top of your business niche and stay there.
