How to monitor hits and get more visitors to your website

How can we increase visitors to our web site?

It is critical that you do not work in the dark when you are trying to improve your search engine rankings and that you are aware, at all times, what is working for you and what is not working. Just in case you didn't know this already, good rankings in search results are essential to helping people find your site. Many people don't go beyond the first page of the results' pages. So the first objective that you set yourself is to try to get on the first page for specific keywords and keyword phrases that apply to your business.

How do I get on the first page of the search engines for my business?

The first thing that you need to do is to identify what you want to say. If your are selling something it maybe a service or product you need to identify the keywords that people may type into the search engines to find your product or service. Pretend that you are a customer and ask yourself, what would I type into the search engines to find this product or service?"  List all the words and phrases that you think people will enter into the search box then go to your favourite search engine and try these words out. You will probably see on the first page a number of competitive websites that operate in the same or similar industry to you. Study some of these and try to establish what keywords that they are using, and try to find out how they got to the first page of the search engine.

>> EPNET do this exercise for all our clients and analyse their competitor web sites and in addition we are able to lookup keywords and keyword phrases that people are looking for in your industry. The point is that if you use the right keywords and optimise your web site for these you will get to the first page of the search engines.

OK I have got my keywords how do I apply them to my web site?

This is called web site optimisation and involves strategically placing your keywords onto your web pages so that they appear in the correct order of importance on your web site and in the correct places on the page and with the correct number of repetitions.

>> EPNET have been doing this for many years and know how to optimise a web site properly.

Advantages of real time web statistics over log analyzers

Monitoring the real time hits to your web site is something that over 90% of web owners do not do or cannot do as they do not have the technology. It is crucial that your service provider does not give you monthly reports of keywords that people have used to find your site, as if they do, it will take you a lot longer to get higher on the search engines. You need to be aware daily of what is going on.

This monitoring of keywords is however the most important but time consuming exercise. If you know what words people have used to find a page on your web site today then you are able to strengthen the page by adding these and similar words to that page. The result, over time, is the way that you can guarantee a very highly ranked website for your keywords. Simple isn't it? Yes it is but it is very time consuming work and that is why we get paid to do it!

The first thing our clients receive each day is a keyword report, (we also get an email copy of this report). It tells us what keywords people have used the day before, and includes a hyperlink to the search engine that found the web page among other important information. Our clients can then click on the keyword or keyword phrase and they will be taken to the exact page on the search engine where their site is listed. They can then see exactly what page the website appeared on (whether it was on page one for that keyword or page 300).

Below is a picture snippet from the EPNET keyword optimisation website report:

Your will see next to A that the keywords used by a visitor was "website design companies" and when we click on this hyperlink it takes use to the exact web page on Google where the visitor found our website. If you click here to test it you will be able to see the results for this keyword phrase yourself. Click here (opens in a new window). You should see the result for our website www.epnet web design.co.za

A similar result for the keywords B as follows, keyword phrase: "website costs" click here

The search engine keyword report also displays other important key information as follows

Building keyword filters. You are able to determine where the visitor is searching from. A possible scenario may be that you are only interested in visitors to your website that come from a certain part of the world, in our case it is South Africa. Maybe you only operate in South Africa if so then this visitor and this visitors keywords would be VERY IMPORTANT if the visitor was from another part of the world maybe not so important. In any case it is important to know where a visitor was from when they arrived on you site.

Choosing the right keywords

Keywords are the words that customers use to find your site when using a search engine. The idea is to optimize your page for these words or phrases. You should choose keywords that accurately reflect your business. They should be specific enough to target potential customers, but not too narrow.

Of course, you'll probably have numerous keywords. The best approach is to pick different keywords for different pages. If your business' name is well known, use it as a keyword for the About Us page. But most customers will be searching for your product or service, not your name.

However, it is important to monitor your progress. Do searches with the major engines for your keywords to see how you rank. You might also be surprised to find you start popping up for related terms. That's icing on the cake.

Results will fluctuate. Rankings change daily or even hourly. Check frequently for an accurate gauge of where you stand. Don't sweat the minor ups and downs. But if you notice a downward trend, take action.

As your site traffic increases, so should sales. If sales aren't increasing, re-evaluate your site content and navigation. Good copywriting and pointers go a long way in increasing sales.

Monitor your search engine rankings

By monitoring your search engine ranking on various keywords which your website focuses on, you can easily begin to focus your attention and search engine promotion efforts on those keywords that are rising, and include some extra promotional strategies to further improve and boost your rankings.

How, you say?
For one, your website usually comes with a website statistical feature, or stats package, that allows you to see which "keywords" are drawing in the most amount of traffic. Here at EPNET, we use software to deliver stats to you daily with our hosting and optimisation package. This makes it truly easy to uncover which keywords are drawing traffic from any keyword that has a search engine ranking and obviously listed in one search engine or another.

Once you discover those keywords you already have search engine rankings for, you can then begin to build reinforcements to make them rise even higher.