Referring Source - Deciphering Web Metrics Pt 4
As with my previous web metrics posts, this one uses Google Analytics as an example, but you can use any web analytics package. Under the Marketing Optimization section is a subsection called Visitor Segment Performance. Under this subsection is a report called Referring Source. This an extremely valuable report, and a potential source of ideas for future blog posts.
Once you've clicked on this report, you'll see a chart of the top ten referring domains to your selected site (or blog). Depending on your traffic source your number one referring source is either a search engine or "(direct)". The latter simply counts those visits by people who typed in one of your domain's URLs directly into their browser (or had it bookmarked). That is, they didn't click a link from another page (your website or another one) to get to your site.
To the left of each referring source listed is a circle with a double up-arrow. Click the double-arrow beside the highest-ranking search engine source, say Google, Yahoo, or MSN. You'll see a drop-down box of three items. The last item, Cross Segment Performance, has a right-pointing arrow at the far left. Click the arrow to get a longer drop-down box. Near the top of the new list is "Keyword". Click on this to get a top-ten list of keywords or phrases that people used from the referring search engine that you selected.
For example, for this blog, over a period of a couple months, I've had a total of 229 referrals from Google's search engine. Some words and phrases were used multiple times. These are the search terms that you want to focus on. That is, focus mostly on the top ten, unless you've already blogged about them. (You could always write more on the same topics.)
For example, the top search term for this blog is "wordpress textpattern". This is too nebulous to determine what the visitors were really looking for, but you can guess that maybe they wanted to find a comparison of these two blogging platforms (WordPress and TextPattern). In fact, just a bit further down my top-ten list is the term "wordpress textpattern comparison". Hence, I may want to check my archive to see if I've written such a comparison. If not, this goes into my to-do list.
Similarly, don't ignore those terms with only a few referrals. Many will be very similar. If you group together very similar search terms, the total referral may be quite significant. Don't forget that you are probably getting search traffic from several engines and directories. So add up referral counts for similar search terms from all of these sources.
If you can decipher what visitors are really searching for, you have a motherlode of ideas for your future blog posts and articles. Even if you've already blogged about your most popular search terms, in a few weeks or a few months, you may have something new to say.
While you don't need to check your web metrics every day, I recommend using a "wind-down" day such as Saturdays or Sundays to check your weekly statistics. Try to blog soon after on the topics searched for in the past week. When you have time, you can back in your analytics reports to see if any older search terms may be worth talking about as well. So try checking both the most recent weekly report as well as a "since earliest date" report.
(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
Technorati Tags: blogspinner, blogging, pro blogging, multi blogs, writing, web metrics, web analytics, google analytics, statistics
Once you've clicked on this report, you'll see a chart of the top ten referring domains to your selected site (or blog). Depending on your traffic source your number one referring source is either a search engine or "(direct)". The latter simply counts those visits by people who typed in one of your domain's URLs directly into their browser (or had it bookmarked). That is, they didn't click a link from another page (your website or another one) to get to your site.
To the left of each referring source listed is a circle with a double up-arrow. Click the double-arrow beside the highest-ranking search engine source, say Google, Yahoo, or MSN. You'll see a drop-down box of three items. The last item, Cross Segment Performance, has a right-pointing arrow at the far left. Click the arrow to get a longer drop-down box. Near the top of the new list is "Keyword". Click on this to get a top-ten list of keywords or phrases that people used from the referring search engine that you selected.
For example, for this blog, over a period of a couple months, I've had a total of 229 referrals from Google's search engine. Some words and phrases were used multiple times. These are the search terms that you want to focus on. That is, focus mostly on the top ten, unless you've already blogged about them. (You could always write more on the same topics.)
For example, the top search term for this blog is "wordpress textpattern". This is too nebulous to determine what the visitors were really looking for, but you can guess that maybe they wanted to find a comparison of these two blogging platforms (WordPress and TextPattern). In fact, just a bit further down my top-ten list is the term "wordpress textpattern comparison". Hence, I may want to check my archive to see if I've written such a comparison. If not, this goes into my to-do list.
Similarly, don't ignore those terms with only a few referrals. Many will be very similar. If you group together very similar search terms, the total referral may be quite significant. Don't forget that you are probably getting search traffic from several engines and directories. So add up referral counts for similar search terms from all of these sources.
If you can decipher what visitors are really searching for, you have a motherlode of ideas for your future blog posts and articles. Even if you've already blogged about your most popular search terms, in a few weeks or a few months, you may have something new to say.
While you don't need to check your web metrics every day, I recommend using a "wind-down" day such as Saturdays or Sundays to check your weekly statistics. Try to blog soon after on the topics searched for in the past week. When you have time, you can back in your analytics reports to see if any older search terms may be worth talking about as well. So try checking both the most recent weekly report as well as a "since earliest date" report.
(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
Technorati Tags: blogspinner, blogging, pro blogging, multi blogs, writing, web metrics, web analytics, google analytics, statistics
