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    Acquiring high volume, quality traffic to a site requires work and a certain level of expertise. Sites must be structured with attractive content to draw and make best use of quality traffic. Web Analytics can be used to monitor and tune page performance.

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    Acquiring high volume, quality traffic to a site requires work and a certain level of expertise. Sites must be structured with attractive content to draw and make best use of quality traffic. Web Analytics can be used to monitor and tune page performance.

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    69 views17 pages

    Midterm Exam, MDJ

    Uploaded by

    mdjaznc
    Acquiring high volume, quality traffic to a site requires work and a certain level of expertise. Sites must be structured with attractive content to draw and make best use of quality traffic. Web Analytics can be used to monitor and tune page performance.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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    of 17

    Johnson 1

    Mike Johnson

    Professor Craig Piercy

    MIST7500, Fall 2009

    15 October 2009

    Midterm Exam

    The internet web site game of drawing visitors and racking up points in the page hit-

    count has been in play for many years. During the build-up of the dotcom bubble, it seemed that

    folks had begun to believe that, “if you build it, they will come” (Field of Dreams). That notion

    was not quite true, while web-bots would eventually provide some exposure automatically; it has

    always been the case that acquiring high volume, quality traffic to a site requires work and a

    certain level of expertise. Starting out as a complete novice, creating a first web site, one might

    wonder how a search engine like, Google will find this site and, in response to a users search

    query, and return its address on the first page of search results, or even the 20th, or 100th page.

    Then, and even more so now, sites must be structured with attractive content to draw and make

    best use of quality traffic. In order to monitor and tune page performance, the charts, graphs,

    percentages, etc. provided by an analytics package, and/or a professional in the field, are very

    helpful. The following paragraphs take a closer look at these areas, and the current meanings of

    SEO/SEM.

    Part 1: Web Analytics

    The first web site produced by this author was in 1996, using Microsoft web authoring

    software, FrontPage. The page was hosted on a third party server located in Florida. Web

    Analytics were offered as part of the hosting service and were very useful in gauging the sites

    value, especially as statistical trends changed in lockstep with various other promotional

    endeavors, such as:


    Johnson 2

    ➢ Registering the web site with internet search engines

    ➢ Using client lists to generate Email informing customers about the web site

    ➢ Telling clients about the site during phone calls and face-to-face visits

    ➢ Putting the web site address on business cards, advertisements, letterhead, brochures, etc.

    ➢ Placing an employment opportunities page on the site

    The statistics module tracked how many hits the site received, which pages visitor clicked into,

    how long the visitor remained on each page, how long they remained on the site, where the

    visitor was located in the world (roughly), sites that placed links on their pages linking to this

    site, and other relevant metrics.

    During research for this writing, the first analytics service investigated was on

    WordPress.com. Bloggers using this web site automatically receive free access to a page that

    tracks what is going on with their blog postings. The following paragraph, quoted from the

    WordPress web site, details this service. (WordPress.com.)

    “All blogs on WordPress.com get Stats as a free feature. Every time a visitor views a

    URL on your blog, the web browser loads a small smiley-face image from our stats

    system. The action is logged and the logs are summarized every few minutes to update

    the graphs, charts, and lists.

    The following are not counted:

    • Visits from registered users of the blog when they are not logged in.

    • Visits to uploaded documents and files

    • Visits from browsers that do not execute javascript or load images.

    • GoogleBot and other search engine spiders. “ (WordPress.com)


    Johnson 3

    Screenshot (WordPress.com)

    The above screenshot displays the WordPress.com analytics page and metrics available

    for viewing thereon, immediately after it was set up on this Author’s blog.

    Google, among others, currently offers an analytics module for tracking similar

    information, and as is the case with most things, analytics are much improved since 1996. This

    service is available free of charge, to anyone signing up on the Google Analytics web site. After

    registering and entering credentials for the web site to be analyzed, a short bit of script is

    generated. This script must be copied to each page, just above the <body> tag, that the user

    wishes to track. While investigating the possibility of using this service with WordPress.com

    blogs, documentation revealed that analytics for WordPress.com are currently handled by

    Google Analytics.

    There is much more to web analytics than what is conveyed in the few screenshots and

    descriptions displayed within these pages. Getting the most out of the tools available takes time
    Johnson 4

    and dedicated study of collected data by an experienced analyst, but every experienced

    individual started somewhere, and this field is no different.

    The results promised by web analytics tools and actual results, often disconnect for

    various reasons like, Inability to customize to business needs, Lack of analytical resources, Too

    much aggregated data, Inordinate complexity, among others. A list, produced by randfish,

    detailing many of the factors involved in this process, follows within this writing. It helps

    highlight these issues and the need for experienced professionals in this field. (Phillips)

    The following screenshots display the Google Analytics Dashboard page and results of

    the first 18 hours of data collected for the Jackson County Water and Sewerage Authority web

    Site. This time period occurred on a Saturday evening through early the following Sunday. It is

    not surprising that the number of web site visitors is low. What is surprising, is that there were

    referring sites and one visit from another country. Who knew that folks from other countries

    would be interested in United States water systems, located in North Georgia?


    Johnson 5
    Johnson 6

    Screenshot (Google.com)
    Johnson 7

    Part 2: Web Site Attractiveness, SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization/Search Engine

    Marketing)

    SEM closely resembles the practice of buying search listings. Search engine visibility is

    increased through paid placements. North American advertisers spent $9.4 billion on SEM in

    2006, a 750% increase from 2002. SEM is growing much faster than traditional advertising and

    other channels of online marketing. (Haakon et al)

    The following list, taken from a blog by randfish, identifies some factors involved in web site

    SEO.

    • Search Engine • Conversion Rate • Banner Advertising

    Guidelines & Optimization • Contextual Ads

    Offerings • Web Design • Search Results

    • Crawling & • International & Pages

    Accessibility Multiple Language • Monetization

    • Duplicate Content Issues • Strategies Blogging

    • Keyword Research • Localization & • Offline Marketing

    • Changing Geo-Targeting • Copywriting

    Algorithms • Usability • Keyword Usage

    • Controlling Spiders • Appealing to • Web Hosting

    & Sourcing Linkers • Link Building

    • Emerging Traffic • Content Creation • Viral Marketing

    Sources • Web Analytics • Social Media

    • PPC Ads
    Johnson 8

    This list is quite informative, drawing attention to many facets and possibilities for increasing

    web site traffic.

    SEO is about organizing a web site so that it gets the maximum amount of targeted traffic

    available from search engines. The two basic types of SEO are on-page and off-page. The on-

    page items refer to strategies applied to the actual page like, photos, various layouts, title

    structure, etc. off-page strategies refer to links from other pages and directories. (Bansal)

    This is not your grandfather’s SEO/SEM. Individuals with limited experience and

    training in this area are advised to consider using third party professionals, specializing in this

    field, for best results. (Bansal)

    There are free tools available to assist with SEO. Google offers, Google Web Site

    Optimizer to help with this task. Getting started is not difficult. After logging in, the user may set

    up experiments within their web sites and track what affect the various experiments have on site
    Johnson 9

    traffic and user behavior. The next screenshot displays information about Google’s offering.

    Screenshot (Google.com)

    Part 3: Applying Analytics and Attractiveness

    A portion of this research is dedicated to the application of web analytics and web site

    attractiveness to a blog. Tactics used to improve traffic to mdjaznc@wordpress.com blog were,

    registering the blog with search engines using SubmitExpress.com, and linking the blog to a
    Johnson 10

    social networking address, mdjaznc@Facebook.com. In order to get additional comparative data,

    the search engine registration tactic used for the blog was also applied to the Authors

    JCWSA.com web site.

    Part 4: Report

    The results were not very dramatic. Numbers provided in the following screenshots from

    WordPress.com Blog Stats do not indicate much useful information. However, even with no

    previous baseline data collected, the screenshots displaying data gathered for the JCWSA.com

    web site are more interesting.


    Johnson 11
    Johnson 12

    (WordPress.com)
    Johnson 13
    Johnson 14

    (Google.com)

    The numbers above, from Google.com/analytics, show that considerable traffic has been

    directed to JCWSA.com from multiple search engines. Again, it is difficult to make comparative

    statements without baseline data, but one might conclude that this data will provide an excellent

    baseline from which to judge future performance, as various attractiveness experiments are

    applied and observed. In current data, it is already interesting to observe that much traffic came

    from search engines, which search engines had the highest volume of referrals, and the keywords

    used on each.

    “If you build it, they will come” (Field of Dreams). Without doubt this can be true, if

    they can find it, or even know it is there. Technology has advanced greatly, and like an arrow in

    flight, continues on its way. To be successful, a web site must use tactics to attract and analyze

    high volumes of traffic. The data screenshots offered above are, at best, the beginnings of a

    baseline data set. With time, effort, and experience, developers can build upon baseline
    Johnson 15

    knowledge, gaining insight about how the public relates to a site, as various experiments are

    applied and future data is analyzed, in search of any response an experiment may have produced.
    Johnson 16

    Works Cited

    Bansal, Parmod. “Define SEO’s Two Basic Types?” A1 Articles.com, 22 Jul. 2008.

    <http://www.a1articles.com/article_583817_6.html>. 4 Oct. 2009.

    Field of Dreams. Dir. Phil Alden Robinson. Perf. Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, Amy

    Madigan, 1989. DVD.

    Google.com. “Enterprise-class web analytics made smarter, friendlier, and free.”

    Google.com Analytics, n.d. <http://www.google.com/analytics/>. 3 Oct. 2009.

    Haakon et al. “Search Engine Marketing.” wikipedia.org, 12 Sep. 2009.

    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_marketing>. 4 Oct. 2009.

    Phillips, Judah. “Web Analytics: Easy? Hard? Complex? It Depends.”

    webanalyticsdemystified.com, 18 Sep. 2009.

    <http://judah.webanalyticsdemystified.com>. 3 Oct 2009.

    Phillips, Judah. “WHY Web Analytics Tools Fail.” webanalyticsdemystified.com, 10

    Apr.2009. <http://judah.webanalyticsdemystified.com/2009/04/why-

    webanalytics-tools-fail.html>. 3 Oct 2009.

    randfish. “What Makes SEO & SEM So Damn Hard “. seomoz.org, 1 Mar. 2007.

    <http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-makes-seo-sem-so-damn-hard#>. 3 Oct.

    2009.

    Submitexpress.com. “Free Web Site Submission.” Submitexpress.com, n.d.

    <http://www.submitexpress.com/submit.html>. 4 Oct. 2009.

    WordPress.com. “Stats: Mike Johnson's Blog.” WordPress.com, n.d.

    <http://mdjaznc.wordpress.com/wp-admin/index.php?page=stats>. 3 Oct 2009.


    Johnson 17

    WordPress.com. “Google analytics and wordpress.com statistics.” WordPress.com, 21

    Dec. 2007. <http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/2007/12/21/google-analytics-and-

    wordpresscom-statistics/>. 3 Oct. 2009.

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