Website visitor tracking is an important component of SEO management. If you have ever wondered why you’re not getting the most out of your online interface, your site could be falling short of reaching its core audience and sustaining its attention. If operated properly, your website can dominate the search results.
Don’t fret if this is the first time you’ve ever encountered website visitor tracking! This article will aid you in becoming an visitor analytics professional so you can better monitor what SEO tactics are most beneficial to you and your business.
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Visitor Tracking
Before we get ahead of ourselves, what is visitor tracking and which services are the best for it? Visitor tracking is an analytics tool that provides information on who is visiting and what they are doing on your website. Often, it can go beyond what Google Analytics’ free service provides you. Instead of focusing on quantitative data such as identifying your audience, visitor tracking measures their behavior.
For any marketing team, it’s important to know how well your audience is responding to your content. It is also a great way to passively receive feedback from your websites visitors. In regard to e-commerce, your understanding of what’s working for your visitors determines your business’ longevity. In short, visitor tracking is important in the overall success of your website.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the best place to start when measuring website visitor tracking. This tool is a great way to understand who your website is targeting. If you wanted to expand your current audience pool, utilizing this feature will aid in driving traffic and improving your SEO. It is not just a simple visitor logger.
In addition to visitor tracking, Google Analytics allows you to view bounce rate, device usage, and session frequency. You can also specify a date range and analyze page traffic during a particular time period. If you’re interested in learning more about Google Analytics, Google offers a free certificate program that teaches you how to navigate the platform.
Paid Visitor Tracking Services
Paid services operate similarly to free services except they offer exclusive incentives and you may have to deal with a sales team. An example of a paid service is Crazy Egg. They’re on the cheaper end of the spectrum as their plans start at $24 per month. Unlike Google Analytics, their software offers a wider array of options regarding visitor tracking.
Compared to other paid software, Crazy Egg identifies where your visitors are clicking and where they stop scrolling on each webpage. Taking advantage of features such as behavioral analytics will improve your understanding of your visitors’. With a more concrete understanding of how your audience behaves, you can optimize your website’s success.
There are several other paid website visitor tracking software available, for example:
- VWO Insights
- Visitor Queue
- Leady
- Kissmetrics
- Leadfeader
- Mixpanel
Free Visitor Tracking Services
If you aren’t interested in paying for premium software or don’t have a use for all of Google Analytics’ elements, there are simpler and more cost effective alternatives. However, these services have size limitations and only report raw data such as hit counters, IP addresses, operating systems, and countries of origin. It may be useful during the beginning stages of a website’s launch, but as your business continues to grow, we recommend employing a more integrative approach.
Below is a list of some free visitor tracking software that we recommend:
- Histeps
- Live Traffic Feed
- Supercounters
- Web Stat
- Clicky
- Who.Amung.Us
Website Traffic Advertising
Littering a web page with adverts can annoy users and negatively affect your bounce rate; however, advertising can be a worthwhile source of revenue. A great way to measure potential PPC (Pay Per Click) or CPC (Cost Per Click) is to manage the amount of traffic your website generates. In this case, the cheaper and simpler website tracking options will be adequate in measuring your traffic.
Understanding where your visitors are spending most of the time on each webpage is great for ad placement. Equally important, your website will be earning additional revenue through advertisements, which is useful for your business. With more money, you can make worthwhile investments that make your website more successful.
Website Tracking and Its Results
Now that you have the means to view your metrics, what do they all mean? Managing your visitor numbers, their session duration, and their preferred device will aid you in perfecting your site. Additionally, understanding who your site visitors are will make curating your content easier.
For example, if your visitor tracking shows that mobile users have a higher bounce rate on search results pages, you can reevaluate that page’s usability for mobile devices. If your website performance sees a visitor boost during certain times, you can craft a marketing campaign to take advantage. Furthermore, perfecting your website’s design will improve your SEO in the long run.
Website Visitors
Now that we know why visitor tracking is important for your business, let’s review the different types of website visitors. A traditional website visitor is someone who visits your website, creating a browse session. These browse sessions are what you analyze in visitor tracking. Site visitor activity determines the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, business plan, and SEO. There are many valuable metrics that can be gathered from each visitor session.
Unique Website Visitor
You have probably heard of the term “unique visit” before. While the difference between a visit and a unique visit is straightforward, they have two different functions when executing visitor tracking. A visit is how many times a user views your website. A unique visit corresponds to the different people who visit your website.
For example, if a visitor views your website ten times, you can count those ten views towards your visit counter. If you have three unique or new visitors who view your website five times each, only three unique visits are recorded toward your unique visit counter.
Now that we’ve differentiated a website visitor from a unique visitor, let’s discuss why it’s important to visitor tracking and the success of your business. A site visit depicts how popular a web page is among your audience. A unique site visit depicts the size of your audience. A larger audience means a more successful website. Therefore, unique visitor analytics can help you grow your audience.
Why Website Visitors Are Important
Website visitors are a valuable metric when measuring the popularity of your website. Not to mention, it calculates the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. Tracking user visits and website performance also helps you pinpoint problem areas. Your ability to create unique visits and maintain website visits will aid in the success of your website.
Page Views Vs Page Visits
Website visitor frequency is important to the success of your website as it helps increase its popularity. To better understand and get the most out of site visitors, it is important to know the difference between page views and page visits.
A page view is the number of times a visitor navigates to a specific page. A page visit can be used interchangeably with a session. To put it another way, page views can occur multiple times during a page visit. In order to maximize your click rate, it’s best to convert page views into page visits.
However, it should be noted that having higher page views than page visits is not a sign that your website is operating poorly. Naturally, certain pages will have more page views than others. This could be an indication that your website has great content creation, web design, and accessibility. This is where visitor tracking comes into play. To optimize your website, you should maintain a balance between the two.
Ways to Increase Sessions
We have established why page visits are important, but how do we increase the rate of website visitors? Visitor tracking is important to the success of your website and the management of its metrics. Being aware of how your audience is responding and what they’re gravitating to is a great way to start. This is how you get a visitor boost with visitor analytics.
For example, if a how-to blog post has more page views than an article explaining a certain concept, curating content centered around teaching a visitor how to do something could be beneficial to your website performance.
Improve your SEO
Your page view rates can also highlight areas where you can improve your SEO. For instance, if pages that have embedded videos have higher page views than other pages on your website, it could be beneficial to replicate similar content.
You could use these situations as opportunities to increase your conversion rate (percentage of visitors who take an action) on your website. The recommended session duration time is two minutes or more. It’s vital to introduce content to your audience and keep them there.
Bounce Rate
Another metric visitor tracking can measure is bounce rate. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of site visitors who click away from a website. It can thus inflate your visitor logger. Managing your bounce rate is a great way to improve page visit frequency and increase conversion rates.
On average, it’s recommended that a website maintains a 45-47% bounce rate. With visitor tracking software, you can pinpoint problematic pages and implement necessary changes. In other words, keeping your audience satisfied and engaged is a key factor to a website’s success.
Get the Most Out of Visitor Tracking
After exploring the ins and outs of visitor tracking and discussing why it’s important for your website’s success, it’s time to ask ourselves: “Where do we go from here?”. The maintenance a successful website requires can sometimes be overwhelming, but it’s a worthwhile investment that’ll benefit your business in the long run.
It’s important that you consistently evaluate your visitor tracking metrics. Digital marketing and the needs of your website visitors are ever-changing. To ensure the success of your business, you should be up-to-date with how your audience is responding to your content.
Do you have more questions about visitor tracking and improving your SEO? SEO Design Chicago offers an array of services to help your website dominate the search results. Visit our website to browse through our services and schedule a consultation with us today.
FAQs
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- What is the best tool for visitor tracking?
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