Web Analytics, a Measure of Success
Ok, so maybe you’re a small business person in need of some SEO, perhaps you’re an average Joe or Joanne with a personal blog and or website and you want to track how your visitors found your site, how they used it and what the downloaded off it. So many SEO questions so little time. Lately we have been receiving a lot of questions on SEO Analytic packages. What they are, what they do and where to start. Below you will find information that will help remove the mystery of analytic programs and what they do.
What Exactly Is Web Analytics?
What exactly is web analytics? Web analytics is the measuring of data collected from the visitors to your website. This includes: search engines, spiders, bots, and of course people. The information collected can be a valuable resource to website owners, webmasters/designers, and an indispensable tool for search engine optimizers.
Website Information is collected using two main methods: Log file analysis, which uses your web servers log files, is the data that is recorded by your web server ever time your website is “transacted”. The second method is “page tagging” which uses JavaScript code snippets’ that are placed into the code of your website which is usually tracked by a third-party server each time a page is rendered by a web browser.
Log files have been always used by web servers, but interpreting the data was not a time effective measurement tool or considered an important phenomenon until that people discovered that a web analytics programs could be developed to show how popular a website was.
As the web evolved so did log files, servers added an additional measure of page views and visits to give a more accurate account of human activity. Because of the addition of images to the web in the early 1990’s, accuracy became a challenge because log files did not make a distinction, the usefulness of the common log file was defunct, hence came the combined log file (same acronym better accuracy) which introduced page visits and page views.
The method of Page Tagging evolved to address issues surrounding the inaccuracies of log files and as a business opportunity for web analytics companies.
A Few Analytics Terms for You to Digest
- A Hit:
- A hit is a record of any request for a file on the web server (this is for log analysis only) and includes images and every nuance of code that need to be pulled to render a page in your web browser, a single page request may generate double digit hit counts. Recording hits is an extremely inaccurate measurement of site popularity or traffic.
- A Page View (Log Analysis):
- Is a measure of file requests made to a web server whose file type is defined as a page.
- A Page View (Tagging Method):
- The page tagging method would define a page view as an occurrence of the script being run on a page.
- A Page Visit or Session:
- Is recorded as a single occurrence and most importantly is generated from only one user/client that has a set timeout for their session.
So what does that all mean in the real world, well lets use an example. Johnny is surfing the web and goes to www.ilovebenaffleck.com, (and feel free to buy that domain because I checked and as of today it is available) when Johnny arrives at the home page he has made his first visit to www.ilovebenaffleck.com, even if Johnny visited each sub page it will only be considered as part of the same visit, however those individual pages will be considered a view, so when you see that your 5 page website has 600 views the amount of visitors is more likely less than 120.
There is a current debate/conflict over which method of web site analysis is better; log file analysis or page tagging. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages.
Log Files Main Advantages
Spiders: The majorities of search engine spiders, crawlers, bots etc. do not read JavaScript, and therefore cannot be tracked via page tagging.
Files: - you can track PDF’s, SWF’s and measure downloads of files including your Bandwidth usage (I dispute this you can be creative and track the actual request via links)
Log files main disadvantages
Server formatting
Unavailability to alter server for more complex tracking yourself without purchasing your own server
Under reporting/caching
- If a user accesses a web page via an external proxy server, their visit may not be recorded by your web server, Problems also arise for sites that use an external content caching server.
eCommerce transactions
- Many sites use an external payment gateway for processing credit card payments. Often, depending on the setup, it is difficult to measure a purchase or action that has been completed, which is the key component to conversion tracking and ROI.
Main Advantages of Page Tagging
Advanced tracking features are easily changed and added to 3rd party server
No problems with caching
No need to purchase your own web server
Main Disadvantages of Page Tagging
JavaScript: 98% have it turned on 2% do not, so you will loose out on that minority. (But using a tiny image as a backup can be used with page tagging if JavaScript is not enabled, I am not sure of the effectiveness of this method though)
Spider tracking: Most spiders are JavaScript illiterate.
Cookies: if your page tagging analytics uses 3rd party cookies instead of 1st party cookies (client domain assigned) to track users/clients people with 3rd party cookies disabled will be untraceable or if they delete cookies and revisit the site they can be tracked as a false visit.
Who Needs Analytics and Why?
OK, well that is a lot of information on some dry topics, so let’s switch gears and talk about why this stuff is so advantageous to you if you own a website. First and foremost on most peoples minds is to make more money or be number one sort of an ego thing. If you can effectively track your users/visitors you have the advantage of “seeing” which pages users entered on, where they left, and how long they stayed. If you notice people come to your home page and run away, it is a good indicator that there is something that is wrong that needs to be addressed, essentially it is a message from the visitor that “your page sucks”.
Good analytics packages will allow you to see what city your visits came from, not just a county or state. If you are running a PPC campaign for your widgets you might want to know that it would be more effective to run your ads in the Wichita area if that is where the majority of your website traffic originates.
Web designers: Your analytics or server logs are an important resource as to page errors that are occurring. Additionally analytics is a good barometer for effective design and copy.
Advertisers/marketers: Without analytics your landing pages will be without measure. The knowledge that your visitors came first through your landing page rather than the home page help’s you gauge the sales & promotions that you might run via landing pages on the web or even in print to web type promotions.
Search engine optimizers: Most SEO’s know the importance of good analytics, but there are many SEO’s who are starting out in the field, we all were/are there and everyday there is something new to learn. An analytics package that accurately tracks websites traffic is a good tool to present to your clients as a measure of success. Many clients’ eyes glass over when talking technical terms and do not understand ranking etc. (explaining these parts is a skill). Here is where the true advantage, if you tell them before you started they had 7 people/mo. visiting their website and now there are 700/mo. that will make an impression, unless of course they did not convert any sales, remember design is as important to a website as is usability and SEO.
Google Analytics, A Great Place to Start
GA has robust and powerful tracking capabilities with few short fallings. Ideally it is an effective tool that integrates with Google’s PPC, SEO’s can utilize GA to track multiple client Google PPC campaigns while allowing for individual client access to each account by setting permissions and passwords. The Google analytics is a page tagging code using the urchin JavaScript tracking code, but is different from the separate urchin software that is available. The code is placed in each page of your website to track your page visits, views, unique visitors, Geographic’s, funnel navigation and PPC manager and more.
Google Analytics is Free.
Google Analytics is one way we invest in our advertisers and everyone else who wants to create quality content on the web. With Google Analytics, you can get started today creating targeted, ROI-driven marketing campaigns and improving your site design and content.
Our main recommendation is that anyone using page tracking like Google analytics is that you must remember that the JS code is only tracking successful page renderings, so your error pages will not show in your analytics unless….you create custom error pages and add the tracking code to them, you will be surprised at the 20+ different error pages that there are, I know I was, I think there is even one for a possible Elvis sighting. If you are using a server side coding language you may need to ask you host to enable to enable “Check if file exists” on your server for your appropriate file extension for your error pages to work.
Another common mistake is not adding your tracking code to hidden pages such as contact page submission processing pages, although the user never sees that page in order to have the page tracked the JS code needs to be present and especially if it is part of your goal/conversion tracking.
If you are in a quandary about the log file vs. page tracking issue you can quell your unrest with the knowledge that there are analytics companies that are offering both, and if you don’t like them there are many hosting companies that provide good log file analytics packages for free to supplement your need for spider knowledge.