DripIt’s time for another installment of our series on web statistics and what they can mean to a photographer. We talked about about web statistics goals, looked at web statistics software, and asked what hits, bounce rates, and unique visitors mean. Today we’re going to look at referrers, exit pages, and outbound links.

Referrers

Referrers (sometimes misspelled referers, to match a misspelling in the actual web specification) are the web pages that are driving traffic to your website. When a visitor arrives on your site because they clicked a link on another site, the URL of that other site is recorded by your stats software as the referrer. If someone does a Google search and clicks on your site in the results, you’ll see google.com in your referrers list. If they clicked a link on your Flickr profile to get to your site, you’ll see flickr.com as the referrer.

Referrers are important for a couple of reasons. First, when you see a referrer you don’t recognize, it probably means that someone linked to your site, and it’s worth checking out the page. The other use for referrers is to know (over a time period) where most of your traffic is coming from. If you’re spending a lot of time on a particular forum in order to drive traffic to your site but find that it has only sent you three hits in a month, you might rethink that strategy.

Exit Pages

Exit pages are the opposite of entrance (landing) pages. Exit pages indicate where a visitor was on your site immediately before they left. It can be interesting to know where people are leaving your site from. Sometimes you might want to look at the top exit pages and figure out why they’re driving people away.

Outbound Links

If your analytics program can track specific outbound links, not only will you know which page they were on, but you’ll be able to know precisely which link they’re clicking.

Wrapping it Up

With the various web statistics blog posts thus far, we’ve talked about quite a few metrics and what they mean. Next week, we’ll talk about one more specific statistic (search terms) and then start bringing it all together to increase traffic, leads, and readership.

Photo by AMagill, used under Creative Commons licensing

These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. The Web Stat that Leads to SEO: Search Referrers
  2. Basic Web Stats: The Hits Keep Coming
  3. RSS Statistics: What to Know and What to Ignore

Tagged as:
analytics,
exit pages,
outbound links,
referrers,
webstats

FunnelOver the past month or so, I’ve posted several articles related to web statistics and what they mean. Let’s take a look at an important referrer-related bit of information: inbound search links. These identify the terms that visitors are putting into search engines and then finding your site. For example, if one searches for Portland wedding photography, gets a page of search results and then clicks on a link to Gabriel Boone Photography, the web statistics for the Gabriel Boone Photography site will note that someone arrived via a search for Portland wedding photography.

Pay attention to the search terms that people are using to find your site. Some of them might be expected, but odds are that you’ll find some search terms that might be outside of what you planned. That’s not a bad thing; it can actually be an eye-opener to some topics that you should address more frequently or in more detail.

In the opposite scenario, you might find a lack of referrers coming from search terms that you’re expecting. If you focus on senior pictures in Seattle, ideally your site will be listed when people search for senior pictures Seattle. If it’s not, that’s when you’ll want to look at doing a bit of search engine optimization (SEO). A good place to start might be my short article on SEO and keywords, or view all posts here tagged as SEO-related.

We’ve tied together web statistics and SEO. They are two separate areas that a web publisher should address. Web statistics give a view into your site’s current performance and popularity, while SEO can help you gain more traffic from people who are performing web searches.

Next week, we’ll look at a few more advanced SEO topics that go beyond simple keywords and links.

Photo by David Trowbridge, used under Creative Commons licensing

These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. Web Statistics: Referrers, Exit Pages, and Outbound Links
  2. Goals Before Numbers
  3. Posting Video Online? A Quick Tip for Search Optimization

Tagged as:
referrers,
seo,
webstats