31/03: Use Server Stats To Your Advantage and Exploit Keywords

This is not one of those posts about strange and obscure search terms that brought people to your blog, amusing as the first few hundred of them might have been.With unique monthly visits now exceeding ten thousand on this domain alone, and search terms in excess of one thousand, I wanted to talk about the importance of taking note of the data provided by your host. 

Due to the rise of analytics software, and its availability for free, many webmasters and bloggers tend to ignore the server stats as being far less accurate and informative. This is true to a certain degree, but the one set of statistics that I tend to focus on closely from my server are the search terms used to find me. I can analyze them in greater depth with my analytics program, but often, rather than get too bogged down in statistical minutiae, I just want to know what people are looking for, and if what they find when they get here is likely to be of help or interest to them.

Do you pay much attention to your visitor's search terms? If you're not, then perhaps you should look at the patterns more closely.

For me, some of the biggest and most rewarding searches are on very competitive and potentially lucrative terms such as "hosting", "web hosting", "hosting reviews" and other webhosting industry related phrases and words. This is as it should be, and I'd be worried if I wasn't getting traffic from these searches. What is of far more interest to me are the subjects that pop up quite frequently, often as a result of keyphrases I have not targeted or even thought of.

Why? Well, if people are finding me when looking for certain things, it gives me countless ideas for blog posts or for expanding the content on my hosting directory, just for starters.

Because I run a general article directory on this domain now, I get a large number of one off searches covering a very diverse range of subject matter. Some of the keyphrases are indeed a little weird, but these searches provide me with a lot of information regarding how the directory is performing in the SERPS.

It teaches me that prompt approval of submissions, the linking structure of my site and such, all affect my chances of outranking other directories and getting the traffic I want. It also demonstrates the subjects that bring me lots of visitors and which ones result in very little traffic. It can also be an alert to attempts at sneaking in links to undesirable neighborhoods. This all helps me focus on the strengths and weaknesses and where I need to improve things. This in turn gets me thinking about how to actually go about it.

After reading Josh Spaulding's excellent post about building minisites, optimized for Adsense click through ratios and revenue, (a highly recommended free report called The $5 A Day Minisite Formula) I realized that there are many more things I could be doing on my own sites to generate even better returns.

If you study your server stats carefully, there can often be some nice surprises and very exploitable traffic that you would otherwise have ignored, perhaps to your detriment. Let's just say you suddenly begin seeing a lot of visitors searching for Spyware and Adware but are a little baffled as to how they are landing somewhere on your site. Don't ignore it.

The first thing to do is conduct the search yourself, and find out what page is pulling in those visitors. Is the page monetized in any way? Is it running relevant targeted PPC ads or affiliate programs? If it isn't, maybe it's time to add one or both.

(That last link is an example of how just one tweak to your particular page could help if it wasn't there before - not in the context of this particular post. By adding that link, you have maybe given your visitor a chance to find just what he or she wants and perhaps make some money)

By editing the content in just a small way with a couple of recommended products, maybe some of those visitors who were looking to buy some software might do so, rather than leaving and spending their money elsewhere. If they are searching for a specific program, you should make sure you are doing all you can to convert them and make sure it's you who gets a commission and not some other Charlie.

You might be surprised to know how many people arrive on my pages every month after searching for "Kiosk.ws Scam" or similar. Lots of people carry out searches with that word tagged on - they are often looking for information or reassurance and if you happen to be the one that provides it, you have a good chance at making a sale or at least a good impression. Many marketers already know this of course and use the keywords cleverly to promote competing programs or to funnel the undecided buyer into their net!

On the other hand, maybe some well placed Adsense units would be your preference, particularly if you know that the keywords are high paying ones (go and download Josh's free report if you want to know more about that subject).

Maybe you're not concerned about making any money from your site, but this kind of information is still very useful, because presumably you are trying to cater to some kind of audience, even if you're not trying to open their wallets. You will still see chances to possibly increase, enhance and consolidate your visitor base.

If you run an analytics script on your sites, it's easy to see how long those visitors stay, what pages they navigate their way to, and where they leave from. From there, you do have a pretty good idea of what they probably wanted and what to provide for future guests. The aim being to keep them at your site longer, perhaps turn them into a subscriber, a potential link love giver, or maybe just to sell to.

I think of these things as happy accidents, and sometimes a few minor tweaks can work wonders.

We all know that getting traffic is every webmaster's and blogger's obsession, along with SERPS, Page Rank, commenting....OK so we're an obsessive bunch about lots of things :-) What I'm saying is that sometimes, having brought the visitors, we don't do enough to make the most of them. Such "accidental" visitors may not be targeted, but you can turn that around for those who arrive through the same door in the future.

Studying your stats is pointless if you don't act on the information they are giving you.

The strange and downright weird can be funny, but they are not the ones to waste your time and attention on. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

TCH