How's my website doing?

Every website has a different set of goals, but there's one thing all have in common: We want more traffic! Although a surefire way to build Website traffic quickly remains as elusive as a surefire way to predict stock prices, there are some tried-and-true methods that can help you build your Website traffic slowly but surely. (See also Search Engines)

Often overlooked is the use of your Web server log files to direct your efforts and measure your success. You don't have time to do everything, so you need to figure out what works, and spend your time accordingly. Careful analysis of the information in your log files can give you lots of promising traffic-building ideas, and also help you measure which ones live up to their promise.

Every time a file is retrieved from a website, the server software keeps a record of it. The server stores this information in text files, (usually with a .txt or .log extension), called the Access Log, Error Log and Referrer Log. The log files contain not only a record of which pages were requested at which times, but also a good bit of information about the people (or other entities) that requested them.

The wealth of data in the log files is not readily mined for the casual reader, so reading these log files is a challenge. Thankfully In Vancouver! has a solution. At the end of every month your log files are combined and translated into real, useable data.

Logging In

Step 1 is accessing your log reports. The URL is yourdomain.com/stats/
The User Name is: stats The Password is secret and was given to you when the account was first set up. If you do not remember your password then please call. (See Contact Us)

Stats Index

The first page you will see after logging in is the stats index. Each month a stat report is generated for your website. The reports are listed from oldest to newest. Each report is named for the year and the month as such: yyyy-mm.html. Scroll to the bottom of the list and click on the most recent report to view it.

Statistics Report

Although the report covers all the information from the log files for the month we will focus on 6 reports:

1. General
2. Request Report
3. Failed Requests
4. Search Query
5. Search Word
6. Referrer

Additional information can be found at the homepage of the company that makes the software generating this report.

General Report

The General Summary contains some overall statistics about the data being analyzed: the most important being

• the number of requests (the total number of files downloaded, including graphics);
• the number of requests for pages (just counting the various pages on your site);
• the number of distinct hosts (the number of different computers from where requests have come);
• the amount of data transferred in bytes.
• the least popular pages
  
  

For exactly what the various lines mean, see the section on Analog's definitions.

Looking at the relative amounts of traffic that certain pages (or directories) get, you can get an idea of how people are using your site. Are most of your visitors coming for product support? for product information? Which products are they asking for information about?

Least popular pages - Remember, this doesn't mean people didn't like those pages, it means few people saw them in the first place. If this list contains pages of limited importance, that you wouldn't expect many people to visit anyway, then you're looking good. If you see important content pages on this list, you may want to take steps to steer more people toward them.

Request Report

A request is commonly referred to as a hit. When you type in a URL like
http://www.in-vancouver.com/index.html you are requesting the file index.html from the server. If you move through the In Vancouver website, 'surfing' from page to page you are generating 'hits', or requests. Therefore one person can generate many hits on a website. To accurately gauge how many unique visitors you have had you need to read the Distinct Hosts Report. The Request Report is very useful in determining the % of visitors traveling into your website. In the figure on the right line a is the total number of requests for the index page (/_), 679. Line b is the total number of requests for the homepage (/home.html), 320. This data tells you that approximately 1/2 of the website visitors are actually entering the site.

Failure Report

Failure Report lists the filenames which caused errors. Reviewing the failure report can help to find missing files, dead links or other problems that may occur. It is important to note that if your % of failures is more than 1% of your total requests than there may be a problem with your site.

website errors mean lost traffic. Fixing dead links and malfunctioning scripts may not sound like marketing work, but every visitor who fails to find what they're looking for, or leaves in disgust because your whizzy features don't work right, is a penny out of your pocket.

To err is human, and humans built the Web, so even the most tightly-run website will log a few errors. If the percentage of requests resulting in errors seems unusually high, however, there may be problems that need to be addressed.

NOTE: You may find entries in the report that look like /scripts/..%5c../winnt/system32/cmd.exe. This error is generated by a virus called the Code Red Worm. This virus is harmless, has not infected your computer and should be ignored.

Search Query Report

The Search Query Report list which search terms people used to find your site.

This report is very useful in determining the keywords for your meta tags. If you have used a number of keywords in your meta tags and no one is using them to find your site then remove them and try others. Are all these keywords included in your META tags? Are there certain keywords that you think should be yielding lots of hits, but aren't? What might you do about it?

Also, by comparing the same keyword across different search engines, you can get some ideas about the differences in the search engines' ranking algorithms.

This is one of the most valuable sections of all. The first step in increasing your traffic is knowing from where your existing traffic comes. The two biggest sources of traffic for most sites are first, the search engines and directories; and second, links to your site from paid listings or other related sites.

Search Word Report

The Search Word Report lists which search terms people used to find your site.

This report is very useful in determining the keywords for your meta tags. If you have used a number of keywords in your meta tags and no one is using them to find your site then remove them and try others.

Getting listed on the various search engines is only half the battle. You also want to try to make your site come up as high as possible on the list of results for your favorite search terms.

Referrer Report

The Referrer Report lists which pages linked to your files (and also pages which included your images).

After the search engines, you'll find listings for the various sites that have links to yours (You have been politely asking for links from related sites, haven't you?) The sites near the top of your list are your buddies, so treat them well. Make sure they always have the latest info about your site, and do them favors if you can.

By following links to pages that have links to you, you can often turn up scads of other promising places to solicit links. The line of reasoning is this: If a "links page" has a link to you, they may also have links to other websites that should also link to you, and their links pages probably have links to other links pages.