Did you know that by tracking your stats and making a few minor changes to your site you can:

• increase search engine traffic? This is so easy it’s almost ridiculous.
• better your Alexa ranking?
• increase your conversion rate on ad click-through?
• increase the amount of pages your visitors read?
• turn more first-timers into daily readers?

I wanted to write this article three days ago, but realized that many people don’t track their stats. That’s why I created this 3-part series. If you don’t track your stats yet, start with Part One! If you use a different stat service, give this article a read - everyone can improve from statistical analysis in a huge way.

Here are the three parts of the series:

• Install a real-time stat counter. (Part One)
  
• Learn how to check your stats and what you should be looking for when you analyze your stats. (Part Two)
• Learn how to improve your site’s performance using statistical data. (Part Three - the most important part of the lesson)

During the last two lessons of the series, I showed you how to install and check your stats using StatCounter. People keep asking me if I’ve tried Google Analytics - yes I have. I prefer StatCounter but really like both services. No matter what tracking service you use, the same principles will apply.

Those of you that have followed the first two parts of the series, log into your StatCounter accounts! I want to walk you through some important things to learn. There are a lot of different aspects of statistical analysis, but there are three aspects that are significantly more important than the others:

• Summary Stats - comparing total pages viewed against the number of unique people that found your site.
• Recent Keyword Activity - finding what keywords people are finding you with and getting ranked better for those keywords.
• Visitor Paths - seeing the paths visitors take through your site and making it easy for them to find valuable information.

Summary Stats
With the summary stats, the main thing we want to look at is the average number of pages each visitor is viewing. If your page loads (green bar in StatCounter) were 100 and your unique visitors (blue bar) were 98, we would learn that almost all of your visitors would be viewing only one page - probably your home page.

Unless you’re getting 2+ page views per visitor, you probably will want to make some changes to your homepage. Your visitors aren’t seeing anything they want to click on! Let me make a few suggestions for you:

• Install the Related Posts plugin. This will show related posts at the end of each of your posts. If your visitors read to the end they will likely be looking for something else to read - this will give it to them.
• Create a section in your sidebar that shows your best articles and posts.
• Up your game with your writing! Creating interesting posts is huge - if a reader finds one post interesting they will search for more posts.
• Make your posts scan-able. Using bold headings and bullet lists will make your posts easier to scan. I’ll be honest, I don’t read entire posts very often. I usually scan it first to see if there’s anything interesting before I read.

Recent Keyword Activity
Seeing the keywords that people are using to find you is vital. When you go to Recent Keyword Activity in StatCounter, you will see something like this:

You’ll also have two more columns that show you the date and time of the search. The left hand column in the above picture shows you what search engine the visitor found you in. The middle column shows you the keyword phrase they searched for to find you. The right column shows you which page of your site they found in the search engine.

The middle column, which is the one labeled ‘Query’ gives you a link that you can click to go to the search engine. You should be able to easily see your site in the search results! Pay special attention to where you’re ranked - you can better that ranking by using a few easy techniques.

To better your ranking, you first need to figure out why your ranked for that keyword. For the purpose of this example, I’ll use the second link down in the middle column. It shows that someone found me by searching for ‘build a successful blog from scratch’. They did the search in Google, and when I click on the link, it takes me to the Google page where I was found. It looks like I’m currently on page 2 in the search results for that keyword phrase.

Why am I ranked for this keyword? Upon examining the page that was ranked in Google, I am able to see that in the 8th paragraph I wrote ‘build a successful blog’. Down at the bottom of the article there is a pingback that has ‘From Scratch’ in it.

Can you see why I was ranked for this keyword phrase? All the words in the keyword phrase were found on the post that got ranked.

Getting Ranked Better For The Keyword Phrase
I would obviously get more traffic from the keyword if I was ranked first in Google for it. Since I’m on the second page, I won’t see much traffic from it at all. It’s a good thing that getting ranked more highly is easy. Here’s what I’m going to do:

1. Change the wording in the post to read ‘build a successful blog from scratch’ instead of ‘build a successful blog’. It doesn’t change the readability at all and will surely better my ranking.
2. Make it bold.
3. Link to it from other pages using the anchor text of the phrase, i.e. build a successful blog from scratch.
4. Optional - write an article to submit to free article directories. At the end of the article use the anchor text ‘keyword you want to better your ranking for’ to link to the page whose ranking you’re trying to boost. If you don’t know anything about this technique you should read these 2 articles from my archives: The Effective Way To Market With Articles and Offsite Optimization - SEO That Works For A Change. If that’s too time consuming for you, do the first three, it will still help!

Visitor Paths
If you go to the ‘Visitor Path’ section of StatCounter you will see the paths your visitors are taking through your site:

As you can see this visitor found my Sitemap page first, wandered around for a while, checked out my About page and then started reading articles. I have found this behavior to be quite common. People kind of float around for a while to see if there’s anything that makes your site stand out. The sooner you can make yourself stand out the better!

If you look closely you can see that 3 of the articles this visitor read were articles from my ‘Court’s Best Work’ section of my sidebar. I would highly recommend writing some good ones and showcasing them - it makes your site a lot more sticky and will really increase your page views and therefore your Alexa ranking. When people read the articles of that section, they usually turn into daily readers.

As an interesting side note, increasing your page views will increase your conversion rates on your ads a lot. It’s a lot more likely that someone will see a juicy ad if they view 30 pages of your site. I’ve learned to think of conversion in terms of ‘clicks per visitor’ instead of the regular ‘click through rate’.

Important Steps To Create An Easy Path To Credible Information

• Create a good ‘About’ page. No matter what level you’re at, use your ‘About’ page to establish credibility. I worked at an internet marketing firm for a few years as a consultant and helped hundreds of people to start and better their online businesses. I obviously have that on my ‘About‘ page. What makes you a credible source? You don’t have to have work experience in your niche to be credible. Maybe you’re an information junkie who has read everything published in your niche in the last 10 years. Maybe your credibility lies in your passion for your topic. That would give you some credibility. Start thinking about what makes you credible. Put it on your ‘About’ page.
• Write some authority articles. Give them awesome titles. Display them prominently on your site.
• Link to old articles that are related to your new posts. If you read this article, you can find links to 5 articles from my archives. Each one of those articles adds value to this one - reading them would help my readers. Linking to useful information that helps you to explain concepts will significantly improve your blog’s readability and make it easier for your readers to find your information.

Hopefully you can see that analyzing your statistics can make you a bazillion times more successful. I have been able to improve the site a lot by watching how my readers use the site.

Any questions about the lesson? Does anyone have anything to add? Does your stat-tracking service have a function that you really like?