Understanding Website Traffic Hits, Page Ranks, And Web Analytics

Having over a hundred website traffic hits within a short period of time won’t make any sense on your business if you do not know what they are for. You have to know how to analyze your website traffic statistics so you can use them in tweaking your business and marketing plans. The information on the number of visitors that came by your website may be combined with other pertinent data such as the frequency of views your pages were exposed to, when your website is visited, from where your visitors originate, and how long your visitors stay on your website. All these information are extremely important for you to determine how you can build your online business.

Before going any further, there are a few basic website traffic terms that you should understand:

1. Website traffic hits – The number of hits are measured in terms of the number of files that are served up as recorded in the web server log file. Your hit count does not necessarily equate to the number of visitors who passed through your website. For example, a webpage that has three images would count as four hits, with one hit for the webpage and three hits for the three image files. Multiply this by the hundreds or maybe thousands, and you have a bloated hit count that does not necessarily reflect the same increase in the number of visitors to your website or in the amount of business you are generating.

2. Page ranking – This represents the popularity of a website in the search engines which are normally Alexa and Google. These search engines measure the number of visits each website enjoys and ranks them accordingly. Try visiting a popular website and scrolling down to the bottom where the Alexa Page Rank or Google PR box is often situated. You will see there a ranking that indicates how the website compares to others in terms of number of visits. While this is one of the tools used by online marketers, there are some experts who do not see much value in displaying the rankings since these do not really indicate a website’s relevance. If you are ranking high in these page rankings, it means that your website is getting visits more than the others. Some controversy surrounds the rankings since many website owners find that they are not regularly updated.

3. Unique visitors – This figure represents the number of visits that count each individual user. You can specify the time frames within which you want these visits counted. Trackers utilize user identification information and IP addresses as basis for counting these visits. This becomes important in determining how many people are actually being exposed to your website and your messages within the time frame you want to analyze. Running this figures against your hits and page views will show you whether your individual visitors are coming back to visit other pages in your website.

4. Conversion rate – This is the most important part of your online business. You might be enjoying high website traffic hits from an excellent link building mechanism, but you might not have the right product for your online visitors to make a purchase or for them to come back and patronize your site again. When you find that you have a low conversion rate, you have to exert efforts in analyzing your traffic data even more and consider the other factors that could spur growth in your profit levels.

Now, how do you interpret these figures so that they become relevant to you? Using a combination of these figures, you can run your web analytics to translate these figures into readings of how your online business is faring so far. When you know that you have a high rate of website traffic hits and page ranking but notice dwindling sales figures, it could only mean that you have the right materials that attract huge amounts of traffic to your website, but your sales proposition might not be compelling enough for them to make a purchase. This kind of analytics could also mean that you are not reaching the right audiences or market with your web traffic campaign or generator software.

Your business success can only come from knowing who you audiences are, how they behave online, and what would compel them to do business with you. The traffic hits, page ranks and analytics are simply tools that you can use to get the data you need in making your online business grow.