Using Your Web Stats for SEO: Getting the Most from your Web Stats - Visitor Information Continued
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- IP Addresses – Every visitor to your website has a unique internet address.
Tracking this address will allow you to accurately calculate the actual number of page views. This address can also tell you a lot about the user as well, such as which part of the world they are from. A word of caution: the inability of IP-based software to track visitors for even 30 minutes (the length of a visit) means that the only figure these systems can provide reliably is the total number of times a page was accessed. Tracking IP addresses alone will not give you the ability to determine other valuable information, no differently than using site hits to accurately calculate the number of unique visitors to your site.
- Demographics – These are statistics that record information about the visitor, based on location and other information
You can learn much about your target audience by viewing visitor demographic stats. These include which part of the world, country, or state your traffic is coming from, what type of operating system they have, their time zone, language, what browser they are using, and even what size screen they are viewing. This will better help you determine your target audience, and where they reside. The more information you are armed with about your visitors and potential customers, the better you can cater to their needs and desires. You can even learn the type of customers from the time of day they browse your website. Are they browsing during work hours, or during leisure time and on weekends?
- Time per visit – This tells you how long a visitor browses your site.
Tracking user sessions is a good idea, because it gives you a good idea of not only how long a visitor spends in your web site, but how long they view a particular page or store category. This can help you determine which pages are attracting page views, and which are not. This is referred to as the “stickiness factor”. How long a visitor “sticks” around directly affects the chances of a sale.
Depending upon your web stats program, and the data collected, you may have even more detailed statistics that breakdown these categories even further. You may have information on how frequent visits are, averages of length of time for each visit, a motivated visitors count (this means a visitor that has viewed two or more pages), and the hours of the day visitors view your site the most.
Part two will cover how to put your stats together to make some determinations about your site, and how to use what you’ve gleaned in your search marketing efforts.
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