Web Analytic Metrics or "Why love web site stats?"

Two weeks ago I wrote about the parts of a web site that have an immediate direct impact on its search engine position. This week we will look at that nefarious "web spider" from the various search engines, always lurking in the background, waiting to spider your site, but unknown to you.

For example, in the months of January and February www.castlegarbc.ca received visits from web spiders owned by "google", "Msn", "Yahoo" and other sites it is linked to. The real estate site received its traffic from the MLS site, the national cooperate site, castlegarbc.ca (but not castlegar.com), web spiders from "Google", "Msn", "Yahoo", and other "sister" sites it is linked to.

Visual inspection of each section of the web site statistics report (all domains "should have" a standard statistic package as part of their hosting arrangements) will allow you to view the frequency of each search engine web spider visit. As an example, in the month of January www.castlegarbc.ca received 42% of referrals from search engines. The real estate site received 14% of traffic from search engines and 72% from related sites (MLS and cooperation site). Visual inspection of entry and exit page statistics will indicate which pages work and which don't. Very rough guesses, of the site visitors behaviour, can be measured. The real estate site, for January had 1000 visitors with 25% or 292 making return visits. Www.castlegarbc.ca for January had 2200 35% or 760 making return visits. Visitors to the Castlegar real estate site viewed (on the average) 5 pages and the visitors to www.castlegarbc.ca 4 pages.

In summary: two different sites, two different approaches to marketing. Using your available web statistical tools can tell how your web site works and who is using it. If you make a major change and follow the web statistics you can assess the impact of the change.