Making Sense Of Website Statistics

Every website owner wants lots of traffic directed to their website, but this can sometimes involve spending a lot of time and money. Fortunately, most website owners can increase their return on investment simply by paying closer attention to their website log files. Most website hosting companies have special software installed that will process these website log files and display the information in an easy to read format. From this information website owners can get an understanding as to how many people are visiting the website, where the visitors are coming from, where they are entering and exiting the website, the average number of page views per visit, and many more interesting facts. These statistics will allow you to better analyze the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and give you some insight as to how you can tweak your website to increase your return on investment.

"Hits" Explained

There seems to be some confusion regarding the terms used to describe website visitor traffic. We usually hear website owners speak in terms of "hits" to their website. Hits don't accurately describe the number of visitors viewing the website - but they are actually just any sort of HTTP request made to your server. Not only are requests made for website pages, but also for all the images and other files associated with viewing a single page. Therefore, one page view could actually result in dozens of hits, and if a single user visits many pages on your website, this visit could generate hundreds or even thousands of hits. This can excite some website owners, but this number is not a reliable indictor of how many people have actually visited the website.

The term that website owners want to focus on is the amount of unique impressions that are generated by their website. A unique impression will measure the number of actual people visiting the website based on their IP address, browser, and operating system. No matter how many "hits" a visitor registers on your website, the server will record her session as one unique visit. Thus, the number of unique visits gives us a much better idea of the amount of traffic the website is generating.

What to Look for When Analyzing Website Traffic

Number of Unique Visitors: We've already determined that the best measure of true website traffic is the number of unique visitors. What we want to look for is a trend in the average number of unique visitors. On a day to day basis, their may be a good amount of volatility in the number of unique visitors, but we want to pay attention to the trend of the average number of visitors per month. Optimally, we'd like to have the number increase on a monthly basis.

Entry Page Statistics: From these statistics we can learn which page people are entering your website. Most visitors will enter from your home page, but you will notice that up to 50% of your website traffic originates from a page other than your home page. It's important that your website have an easy to use navigation structure to ensure that visitors can find the information they are looking for, even if they don't enter through your website's main page.

Bounce Rate: The bounce rate can be defined as the percentage of people who visit your website and immediately leave. Don't get worried if your bounce rate is high - most websites have a bounce rate of about 50% or so. If the bounce rate is unusually high, you can experiment with your website to try and retain more visitors. Maybe you need more enticing graphics, less text, faster loading pages, or a more engaging design.

Exit Page Statistics: These statistics will show you where people are leaving your website. When you know which page is losing the bulk of your website's visitors you can experiment with some changes in an attempt to retain more visitors.

Average Time & Page Views Per Visit: Website visitors are very goal oriented and task driven. Upon visiting your website, most visitors will merely scan the page to quickly determine whether or not it contains the information they are searching for. By analyzing the average amount of time spent on your website and the average number of page views per visit, you can determine how engaging your website's content is. The key to retaining visitors and increasing the number of page views is to have relevant and interesting information your website. Remember - content is king!

Top Referring URLs: This statistic lets you know where the bulk of your website's traffic is coming from. This is important if you're pursuing a website marketing campaign or search engine optimization campaign because you can easily judge the campaign's effectiveness by looking to see how many visitors each marketing method is generating.

Top Search Words & Phrases: This information will let you know which keywords and phrases visitors are searching for in Google and the other search engines in order to find your website. With this information you can gauge the effectiveness of a search engine optimization campaign, or get an idea of how your website's keyword density should be altered to position for the keywords and phrases that you're targeting.

Browsers, Platforms & Screen Sizes: This information gives us some insight as to the type of software and hardware your visitors are using. You should ensure that your website looks the same across all browsers and operating systems. In addition, you must pay attention to the screen size and resolution in which your visitors are viewing your website. The goal is to ensure that no visitor has to resort to the horizontal scrolling bar to view you website - this is a major turnoff for most people.

Country of Origin: A good website stats program will also let you know the geographic region of your website's visitors. This is important if your website only has appeal in a particular region. For instance, if you own a retail store that caters to Southwestern Ontario and you notice that 90% of your website traffic is coming from the U.S., then it can easily be determined that you need to re-think your online marketing strategy.

The goal of website traffic analysis is to assess how well or how poorly your website is working for your visitors. From these statistics you can figure out what the problem is and try out some possible solutions. The problem often lies in the website's visual appearance, layout, navigation structure, or keyword optimization. When making modifications to your website in order to remedy these problems, it's best to only make minor and gradual adjustments, and then assess the progress over the next month or so to truly understand if your changes were for the better. Also, remember that sites with greater number of visitors will have more accurate web statistics. Sites with smaller numbers of visitors are more prone to have their averages thrown off by a few anomalous visitors.

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Rss Feeds - Content Reliability

Websites have become very sophisticated and the demand for quality content is systematically increasing. Consumers have become very demanding in terms of the knowledge-based content an online business has available on their site.

One of the ways you can add new content to your site in a way that is potentially hands free is through the use of a third party Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feed.

In most cases you will need permission to do what I am about to suggest, but you will also find some resources that see this idea as a marketing boon for their online business and offer it without the need to ask.

If you find a source with consistently good information you might do well to consider asking this source if you can either extract personally selected content for redistribution on your site, or ask them if you can simply use the RSS feed as a third party news distribution source on your web.

In the first scenario you have the most control over the information you share. In the second scenario the information can self-update leaving you free to pursue other marketing endeavors.

The article you are reading was originally available through an RSS feed. In fact, you may be reading this article based on your willingness to sign up for an RSS feed of the articles I produce.

Be sure to check with any provider of an RSS feed to see if they will allow you to simply capture and redistribute the material. Some will have conditions as to the total number of articles you can use in a given period of time, so make sure you follow the rules of any content provider.

Content remains the brass ring in marketing. Without quality content your customers may be less inclined to spend time with your site, which often translates into minimal conversion of a potential customers.

If the consumer is motivated to make a purchase they may not care how much information you can share. However, this type of consumer is among the minority in online sales.

Even in affiliate marketing, online businesses will typically use some form of RSS feed to ensure they have the most up to date advertisement for the company they are representing. In the case of affiliate marketing the third party wants to make this is pain-free and low maintenance as possible.

RSS feeds remain a positive tool for these individuals to use in taking care of business.

How are you using RSS feeds to your advantage?

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Online Identity Theft Means More Than Lost Money

Now that internet shopping is a very common pass time, there has been a rapid increase in instances of online identity theft. Thieves are moving off the high street and, with a little knowledge of web programming, have broadened their horizons to include a much larger amount of targets.

One of the most common, and thankfully easily avoided forms of online identity theft is a technique known to the industry as 'phishing'. A phishing attack involves sending out huge numbers of emails which pretend to be from a popular online retailer, an auction site such as eBay, or a bank or online wallet site. The email will usually say that the customers account has been suspended, or that they need to update their details. When the user clicks a link in the email they will be taken to a fake page that looks just like the login page of that company. When the user logs in, they will be giving away their personal details to the identity thief.

Some of the emails give themselves away instantly through spelling mistakes and poor grammar, others are very convincing on first glance, and it is easy to understand how these attacks manage to fool a huge number of people.

Do Not Trust Emails Asking For Personal Information

When you click a link in a 'phishing' email, the page you are taken to will ask you to enter account information, password and other personal information such as a credit card number, checking account information and social security number along with other items. Entering this information and submitting it will give the person committing online identity theft all the resources needed to access your accounts, or open new ones in your name or even change your mailing address.

Most online companies tell their customers that to prevent online identity theft always log on to their website by typing the address in yourself, not by clicking a link in the email to see if the requested information is really needed. Chances are it isn't, and you should then forward them the email so appropriate action can be taken.

Failure to take even the simplest of precautions can open the door for online identity theft which will attempt to cheat you out of your money by establishing transfers from your checking or savings account put charges on your credit card or simply add a new address and have all merchandise of cash advances sent to the new address.

Most banks will work with victims of online identity theft to help them get their money back, however it can take a lot of time for them to trace transactions and verify the things you tell them. Make sure you check your credit report and your bank statements frequently, and query any unusual transactions with your bank. If you suspect that something is wrong, act immediately, and contact the Federal Trade Commission to make the first steps in regaining your financial identity.

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Experience Sant Juan the Best Summer Fiesta in Barcelona Spain

he festival of Sant Juan (Saint John) is celebrated every year all over Spain between June 20th- June 24th. It climaxes on June 23rd when the summer solstice, or shortest night of the year is marked with an explosive mix of fireworks, bonfires and beach parties that wont stop until the sun comes up.

As well as the fireworks, stages with concerts, music and dancing will be set up around the city, with the busiest areas being Ciutat Vella, Eixample, Montjuic and Barceloneta, the popular beach side district of the city.

Bars and clubs will be open all night, and thanks to the free-spirited culture in Spain, alcohol will be cheap and fast flowing, even in the streets.

Party-goers will be arriving from all over the world to celebrate with the locals. Cava (champagne) will be drunk, Coca ( a traditional cake) will be eaten, and people of all ages and all walks of life will come together to party hard.

The festival of Sant Juan is without a doubt one of the best reasons to visit Spain, especially Barcelona, at this time of year. So, now that you have decided you want a piece of the action, here is a few tips from the locals as to how to get the most out of your experience.
The festival of Sant Juan (Saint John) is celebrated every year all over Spain between June 20th- June 24th. It climaxes on June 23rd when the summer solstice, or shortest night of the year is marked with an explosive mix of fireworks, bonfires and beach parties that wont stop until the sun comes up.

As well as the fireworks, stages with concerts, music and dancing will be set up around the city, with the busiest areas being Ciutat Vella, Eixample, Montjuic and Barceloneta, the popular beach side district of the city.

Bars and clubs will be open all night, and thanks to the free-spirited culture in Spain, alcohol will be cheap and fast flowing, even in the streets.

Party-goers will be arriving from all over the world to celebrate with the locals. Cava (champagne) will be drunk, Coca ( a traditional cake) will be eaten, and people of all ages and all walks of life will come together to party hard.

The festival of Sant Juan is without a doubt one of the best reasons to visit Spain, especially Barcelona, at this time of year. So, now that you have decided you want a piece of the action, here is a few tips from the locals as to how to get the most out of your experience.
The festival of Sant Juan (Saint John) is celebrated every year all over Spain between June 20th- June 24th. It climaxes on June 23rd when the summer solstice, or shortest night of the year is marked with an explosive mix of fireworks, bonfires and beach parties that wont stop until the sun comes up.

As well as the fireworks, stages with concerts, music and dancing will be set up around the city, with the busiest areas being Ciutat Vella, Eixample, Montjuic and Barceloneta, the popular beach side district of the city.

Bars and clubs will be open all night, and thanks to the free-spirited culture in Spain, alcohol will be cheap and fast flowing, even in the streets.

Party-goers will be arriving from all over the world to celebrate with the locals. Cava (champagne) will be drunk, Coca ( a traditional cake) will be eaten, and people of all ages and all walks of life will come together to party hard.

The festival of Sant Juan is without a doubt one of the best reasons to visit Spain, especially Barcelona, at this time of year. So, now that you have decided you want a piece of the action, here is a few tips from the locals as to how to get the most out of your experience.

Find accommodation. And do it quickly.
In a city experiencing a continual and aggressive increase in tourist numbers, it may be difficult to find accommodation for this time of year in Barcelona. Especially if you have left it this late to make a booking.

Skip the hotels and hit the net to find an apartment for your stay. Renting an apartment is the perfect choice of accommodation for groups, couples or families of any size. It is the most affordable, private, safest and comfortable choice of accommodation.

Select your location strategically.
You are in Spain. It is summer. It is hot and the sun is shining. You need to be close to the beach. Not only will the beach be packed with parties, bonfires and the freshest seafood on the Spanish coast, you need a comfortable place to recover from the night before during the day, and the beach is obviously a great choice.

Barceloneta is the area of the city to stay if you want to be close to the sand whilst still being well connected to the main areas of town, where all the action will be taking place.

Originally a small seaside fishing village, Barceloneta is a grid of narrow streets and residential apartments. The perfect place for a quiet retreat when and if, the bars discotheques finally close at dawn. Best of all, you are an easy 20 minute walk to the main areas of town such as La Rambla, El Born, Barrio Gotic and Raval.

In Barceloneta you will also find plenty of corner stores, cafes, restaurants and bars dotted around the place where you can buy anything from groceries, alcohol, cigarettes, souvenirs and sun cream.

Try the seafood. Trust us.
Again, you are in Spain, on the coast. Barcelona is one of the cheapest places to sample really fresh seafood. From Paella to Octopus to Shrimp and Fish. It is all here.

You will not find it hard finding good seafood in Barceloneta. We recommend Ancora for a traditional (not packet) Paella starting from 10 euros per person. Find it on the corner of the main street Passeig de Joan de Borbon and Carrer de Almirall Cervera. They also do a great Sangria.

Get some rest. You are going to need it.
The night of the 23rd is not to be missed. You are going to need all your energy to get the most out of it. Do this the Spanish way with a siesta after lunch on Saturday. We recommend a massage on Barceloneta beach. A full body massage will cost you about 10 euros and it is definitely money worth spent.

See the sights. There is plenty.
You have come all the way to Barcelona, so you might as well check out some of the local attractions. There is plenty to choose from. If you do not have a lot of time, taking a bike tour is an excellent way of getting a glimpse of the city is top attractions and getting your bearings around town. If you have got a bit of time to spare, your list should include some of the following:

Gaudi masterpiece La Sagrada Familia
The Gothic Cathedral and surrounding labyrinth of streets with some of the most well preserved architecture in Europe
The Picasso or Dali museum
The Aquarium (the biggest of its kind in Europe)
Performers, tapas and shopping on La Rambla
La Boqueria where seafood, fruit, meat and cheese can be found at its freshest.

So, that's about it. The essentials. That's all you really need to know. The best way to experience Sant Juan is to jump right in and go with the flow. Like most fiestas in Spain, anything can happen... Enjoy

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Cruise Vacations - Sampling The Delights Of Being Afloat

Well apart from the blindingly obvious, here are a few more ideas that you might not have thought of.

Did you realise?

- Not only are all the meals free, you get some of the world's best cuisine to sample - the ultimate 'all-inclusive'! In fact you'll find it hard to resist all those culinary concoctions!

From East to West and all stops in between, you will have the opportunity to delight in what the very best chefs have to offer up. Can you save yourself - well, maybe, but only after you get home!

- Dining doesn't usually require a tux anymore, (though you get to glam up if you want to!). Most ships offer choices of dress in at least a selection of the restaurants on offer.

In fact, depending on the cruise line you use, there might even be no chance at all to try to squeeze into that fabulous black jacket that fit perfectly just a few years ago (remember Steve Martin in 'Father of the Bride'!).

- The food is almost on tap, 24-hours a day, even as room service. From breakfast to mid-morning snack; through lunch, ever so quaint tea; dinner and supper, it's possible you might still fancy a snack as well at 2am in the morning.

Well, no fear, you can! Oh and if that's still a problem, you can always ask in between meals and there will be no refusals!

- Often the biggest of all concerns for cruisers, especially on their first trip, tipping, has been removed from the ships as an 'issue'.

You can get 'all-in' prices on some cruise lines to ensure that every dollar you spend is ultra-indulgently, just for you!

- Pretty usually, the cruises are geared up so that you get almost all of your daytime at leisure, to visit the most wonderful of destinations, many with exclusive excursions.

So, a lot of the fun can be off the ship. Don't miss out on these - often they will be just as, if not more memorable than the cruise you are on - and that is saying something!

- The most amazing range of leisure activities are available. It is not just 'quiots' these days! From rock-climbing to culture; watersports to specialist courses and seminars by some of the world's leading experts.

- Want to see fabulous shows like on Broadway, Las Vegas and the West End? You can and will. In fact cruise lines are one of the biggest opportunities for top stars.

So, you will not be disappointed. And if that's not quite your scene, most cruise lines have a wide variety of opportunities for evening entertainment.

- Need your fix of 'www' or need to keep in contact with your business? Many ships have internet access for you, often from your cabin through wi-fi. On others, special internet cafes are available in neatly designed areas to make you feel like you are at home.

So there's no reason not to keep in touch. And with technology as it is right now, there are all the opportunities for friends and family maybe even to share your fun onboard through photos and video through the computers available.

- Shopping - did you say shopping? Both on-board and on-shore, you have as wide a range of fantastic value shopping opportunities. This really is the time to relax your wallet. Often the things you find will be unique to your cruise line.

Maybe it's about souvenirs. Perhaps a line in exclusive jewellery. Or fashion designs you just haven't seen before. On land local traditional products can be found if you get past the stalls selling the usual tourist trap merchandise.

And finally, the key that brings so many back to their cruise idyll. Think too, of the fresh air of the sea, the memorable views, the comfort and luxury. Cruise lines have it all - you, can have it all!

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Getting Indexed?

As an Search Engine Optimization Guy I am always get asked the same question. When will google list my site?

There is a lot of speculation about how search engines index websites. The topic is shrouded in mystery about the exact workings of a search engine indexing process, since most search engines offer limited information about how they architect the indexing process. The truth is none really knows. The only thing some experts can do is draw conclusions based data from log files. Here is some known information. Google runs from about 10 Internet Data Centers (IDCs), each having 1000 to 2000 Pentium-3 or Pentium-4 servers running Linux OS.

Google has over 200 (some think over 1000) crawlers/bots scanning the web each day. These do not necessarily follow an exclusive pattern, which means different crawlers may visit the same site on the same day, not knowing other crawlers have been there before. This is makes web masters very happy.

Some crawlers jobs are only to grab new URLs (let us call them URL Grabbers for convenience). The URL grabbers grab links and URLs they detects on various websites (including links pointing to your site) and old/new URL's it detects on your site. They also capture the Date Stamp' of files when they visit your website, so that they can identify new content or updated content pages.

The URL grabbers write the captured URL's with their date stamps and other stats in a Master URL List so that these can be deep-indexed by other special crawlers.

The master list is then processed and classified

a) New URLs detected b) Old URLs with new date stamp c) 301 & 302 redirected URLs d) Old URLs with old date stamp e) 404 error URLs f) Other URLs

The real indexing is done by (what we're calling) Deep Crawlers. A deep crawler's job is to pick up URLs from the master list and deep crawl each URL and capture all the content, text, HTML, images, flash etc.

Priority is given to existing URLs with a new date stamp as they relate to already indexed but updated content. 301 and 302 redirected URLs come next in priority followed by New URLs detected. High priority is given to URLs whose links appear on several other sites. These are classified as Important URLs. Sites and URL's whose date stamp and content changes on a daily or hourly basis are stamped as News sites which are indexed hourly or even on a minute-by-minute basis.

Indexing of Old URLs with old date stamps and 404 error URLs are altogether ignored. There is no point wasting resources indexing Old URLs with old date stamp, since the search engine already has the content indexed, which is not yet updated.

The Other URLs may contain URLs which are dynamic URLs, have session IDs, PDF documents, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Multimedia files etc. Google needs to further process these and assess which ones are worth indexing and to what depth. It perhaps allocates indexing task of these to Special Crawlers.

When Google schedules the Deep Crawlers to index New URLs and 301 and 302 redirected URLs, just the URLs (not the descriptions) start appearing in search engines result pages when you run the a search.

Since Deep Crawlers need to crawl Billions of web pages each month, they take as many as 4 to 8 weeks to index even updated content. New URL's may take longer to index.

Once the Deep Crawlers index the content, it goes into their originating IDCs. Content is then processed, sorted and replicated (synchronized) to the rest of the IDCs. A few years back, when the data size was manageable, this data synchronization used to happen once a month, lasting for 5 days, nicknamed Google Dance. Nowadays, the data synchronization happens constantly, which some people call Everflux.

When you hit www.google.com from your browser, you can land at any of their 10 IDCs depending upon their speed and availability. Since the data at any given time is slightly different at each IDC, you may get different results at different times or on repeated searches of the same term, thus the name Google Dance.

Bottom line is that one needs to wait for as long as 8 to 20 weeks, to see full indexing in Google. Unless you can increase the importance of your web pages by getting several high quality incoming links from good sites, there is no way to speed up the indexing process.

Dynamic URLs may take longer to index (sometimes they do not get indexed at all) since even a small data change can create unlimited URLs, which can clutter Google index with duplicate content.

Conclusion:

First of all, most of this will be GREEK to most people, but to the ones that have an idea, and attempt SEO on their own, it should be a wake up call. Not only do you need to know what to do and how to do it, you also need patients, lots of patients. Too much tweaking, too much subversive SEO and you'll end up getting banned.

Patiently wait for 4 to 20 weeks for the indexing to happen. And Then comes the big work Getting Page Ranking!

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Anchor Text Optimisation Guide

What if I were to tell you that one of the most important principles of search engine optimisation is so simple you that you will kick yourself for not realising it before? I'm talking about something called anchor text optimisation. The basic idea behind anchor text optimisation is that when one website links to another using a text link, the text that the web designer uses to form the link is called the 'anchor text' i.e. someone linking to this article would probably use something like 'anchor text optimisation article' or 'anchor text optimisation guide'.

Why Is This Important?

You may well ask. Well here it is. Behind the scenes search engines look at the anchor text of the links that point to your site and use it as one of the major factors in deciding what your site is about and what search terms your site is relevant to. Let's take a look at an example. If I were to set up a website discussing the advantages and disadvantages of anchor text optimisation, I would want to collect as many incoming links from other SEO related sites as possible that contained the key phrase 'anchor text optimisation' in the text of the incoming link. If I have 100 incoming links from related websites that all have 'anchor text optimisation' in the link text then the search engines can conclude that my site is indeed related to the topic of 'anchor text optimisation'. When you combine this with the fact that my site is also optimised for my target key phrase then the search engines can clearly see that my site is all about that particular topic.

But Why Do Search Engines Place So Much Weight On Anchor Text

When you stop and think about it, a web designer can put whichever key phrases he likes into the content on his website so these on page search engine optimisation factors are very easy to manipulate and very easy to change. Links on other people's websites however, are very difficult to manipulate. The owner of each site has a choice of the text that they can use to form the link. So by looking at all the links that point at your site, the search engines can make a more accurate and unbiased decision about what the internet community are saying your site is all about.

An Extreme Example of Anchor Text Optimisation

If you visit Google and enter the key phrase 'click here', you will find that the result that is returned is the Adobe Acrobat Reader download page. Furthermore if you look through the page you won't see the key phrase 'click here' on there anywhere! So what's happening here you will probably ask. Well when someone puts a PDF file on their website, they invariably but a link next to it that says something like:

This file requires adobe acrobat. To download a free copy of adobe acrobat please 'click here'.

The anchor text on the links to the adobe acrobat download page is invariably 'click here'. Consider the fact that there are thousands, if not millions of links pointing at this page and I'm sure you can understand that the search engines are getting a pretty strong indicator that the adobe acrobat download page is in fact about the key phrase 'click here'!

Conclusion:

Anchor text optimisation - although a very simple principal is very, very, important to your search engine optimisation success and in my professional opinion is just as important as having the right target keywords written into the content on your website. The best advice I can give is to decide which key phrases you intend to target and set about obtaining as many links as possible with that key phrase in the anchor text of the incoming link.

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