The title of this post may suggest that I am going to be talking about myself but in actual fact I want to discuss visitor tracking and monitoring.

I use a few tools to track visitor statistics, such as Google Analytics and StatPress (a WordPress Plugin).

What I have noticed is that I get visitors coming to this website by typing the following search term ‘Karl Foxley Marketing‘ into Google.

It makes sense to create a page specifically for this search query and give the visitors exactly what they are looking for, so before we continue:

If you are looking for an SEO service for your business website then you have come to the right place. Foxley Marketing Solutions, founded by Karl Foxley, is happy to discuss your SEO and other Internet marketing requirements with you. You can request further information by using our contact us page.

Returning to the focus of this post, are you tracking the search queries that are bring visitors to your website? If you are not, maybe it is time that you started.

Google Analytics is free, setting-up an account and registering your website can be done in a short space of time, allowing you to have a whole host of statistics at your finger tips.

Inside Google Analytics you can click on the ‘Traffic Sources‘ tab and then ‘Keywords‘ to see how people are finding your website.

Recommendations: You may see keywords and phrases that are very similar that can be grouped, why not create a content page that targets them so that your visitors now have a page that closely matches their search query.

You may see a lot of single search queries that bring visitors to your website, I wouldn’t waste too much time creating content pages for each instance of a search query as it may never be typed in again.

The reason you will want to create content pages to match search queries is simple: if you have too many search queries being met with loosely related content, searchers visiting your site will scan your content and probably leave again as your content will not meet their expectations.

By monitoring what brings searchers to your website you will be able to give them exactly what they want instead of relying on loosely related content pages, this makes the searcher happy and in return makes the search engines happy.

I hope you found this post useful.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. If you are using WordPress you can grab the StatPress plugin here.

photo credit: Ivan Walsh

I am going to share with you the useful things you can do with Alexa.

1. Traffic Rank

Alexa allows you to input your website’s URL (web address) and pull back your current traffic rank data. The lower your score the more traffic your website is receiving. Facebook (at the time of writing) has a traffic rank of 3.

2. Reach

Alexa collects the percent of global Internet users that visit your website. This is useful if you are targeting a particular geographical region to see how effective you currently are in that market.

3. Pageviews

This is a great statistic to know as it is an indication of how relevant your content is to your visitors. The more pageviews you have (visitors that move deeper into your website than just your homepage) the lower your bounce rate will be.

4. Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate is effectively how well your website’s content matches the search query that brought the web surfer to your page. If the bounce rate is high it may be deemed that your content is not relevant to the search term. Alexa allows you to check your bounce rate and to see whether it is increasing or decreasing over a set period of time.

5. Time On Site

How long are your visitors sticking around on your website. Alexa gives you the statistics that will allow you to see how long, on average, your readers are on your website. The longer they stay, the more of your content they will read and see and this will increase your chances of your sales message being viewed.

6. Search

Alexa records the percentage of visits to your website that come from a search engine. This is the information you will want to see increase especially if your website has been optimised for the search engines. 

7. Contact Information

You can register your website details and share your contact information, this may bring you targeted visitors who want to partner with you on a project or bring you actual customers. Add your website information here.

8. Related Links

Alexa has a related links section that allows you to find similar websites that are related to the website you are analysing. This is great for finding joint venture partners, finding similar sites in your niche or for seeing the related sites to your competitors.

9. Keywords

The keywords section shows the top keywords driving traffic to a particular website, be this your website or a competitors. This will give you ideas of extra search terms to target when optimising your website and creating content.

10. Clickstream

Alexa tracks the percent of total users that come to your website and leave your website. This is handy for finding your upstream sites, what sites are referring people to you, and your downstream sites, where your visitors go to when they leave your website.

11. Demographics

Alexa tracks how popular your website is with a particular audience. This is handy for ascertaining if your website is actually being visited by the demographic audience you are targeting.

12. Movers and Shakers

Alexa allows you to find the latest trends by sharing the statistics of the websites that are on the rise and on the decline. This is ideal for finding emerging markets to target. The link: Alexa Movers and Shakers

13. Hot Pages

Alexa shares the most popular pages on the Internet right now. This is a great way for finding the latest buzz topic to write about related to your niche. The link: Alexa Hot Pages

14. Website Comparison

Alexa allows you to input the URL of a few websites and then compare the data. This is great for checking on your competitors and how they well they are performing in comparison to you. You can also find who is linking to them to see if it is somewhere you can also get a link from.

15. Sparky

Alexa also has a free toolbar (for Firefox browsers) that you can download that will tell you the traffic rank of a website (and other data) without having to visit Alexa again.

I’m sure you’ll agree that Alexa is a great resource to add to your collection of online tools.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

Google has a great free tracking system that is packed full of easy to understand statistics. The tool is Google Analytics and you can register for it over at www.google.com/anlytics. Being a Google product you can access it by logging into Analytics with your Gmail account credentials, that is if you have a Gmail account.

Google provide all the necessary information to get you up and running. You’ll need to register your site, confirm ownership by uploading a html file to your server and then copying and pasting a small piece of code into your sites html file. If this sounds difficult to you then ask your website designer or hosting account if they can help you out, I assure you it is really straight forward and if I can do it you will be able to.

After you set up your Analytics account and waited the necessary time for tracking to start (about 48 hours) then you may want to download a free desktop tool that will allow you to keep up to date with how your website is performing without having to log into your Anlytics account.

The tool is called Polaris and you can download it directly from www.polaris.com. The tool uses the popular Adobe Air platform so you will need to download this also (it comes bundled with Polaris). Word of warning, do not spend too much time watching your stats, it can be seriously addictive.

To your online business success,

Karl Foxley

Website usability analysis is an important element that must be factored into your business monitoring. You can use Google Analytics and other visitor tracking software to get statistical data that can draw up a clearer picture of how your users are finding your site, interacting with your site and leaving your site.

You should have some form of tracking in place but to really test usability it is better to watch someone navigate your website. One way of testing your website for ease of navigation is to conduct sessions with a variety of users; always use people who computer savvy and those that hardly ever use a computer. This will ensure you get a broader picture of how easy your site is to use.

You’ll want to watch people use your site with no object in mind but, more importantly, you’ll want to give people specific tasks to see how easy they are to complete. For example, you could give the following instructions:

Find an item, add it to the shopping basket and proceed to the checkout page.

Find the contact page and submit a question.

Find product x add to basket, continue shopping and add item z, now empty basket.

Along with your observations it is wise to ask each person to complete a questionnaire where you ask for their feedback regarding ease of use. You can always use friends and family to do this but be aware that they may lean on giving you feedback that is more positive due to your relationship (you’ll be best to judge this).

An additional tool that can really help with your website usability analysis is to record visitor sessions on your website. Clixpy is free to register with and they give you a number of credits to get you started. You will be able to play-back visitor sessions and see exactly what your prospects and customers are doing on your site.

You’ll be able to see exactly what people do. Let’s say the sessions you record show that people are consistantly adding items to your shopping cart software and then not completing the checkout process. You may be able to deduce that the checkout button is not visible on certain pages, or is not clear enough, or the page you thought was live is actually returning a 404 page not found message.

Clixpy is a great service and purchasing additional credits is very cost-effective. You can find a setup tutorial on my personal blog by clicking here. You can get 100 captures for as little as $5 and they accept PayPal payments. Register for you free account with Clixpy by clicking on the link below:

www.clixpy.com

To your success,

Karl Foxley