Thanks to competition among Web-hosting providers, and the falling costs of Web storage, it’s never been easier to get a Web site up and running — from buying the domain name to building a site to setting up a payment system to tracking traffic.
We’ve bought the web address, found a host and built the web site. Then we added ways sell products and advertising on our web site. We wrap up the series with tracking traffic that comes to the web site.
A bunch of companies offer free tools to help you track who visits your Web site, how they find it and what they do once they’re there. This can help you tweak your Web site to attract more potential customers.
The best-known provider of tools is Google; you can find its offerings at Google Webmaster Central. We’ll focus on one of the programs: Google Webmaster Tools.
To set this up, follow Google’s instructions for uploading a file to your Web site so that Google can track it. Once you’ve done this, look at a few areas on the Google Webmaster page.
In the “Statistics” area, click on “Top search queries.” This shows you two things: the search queries for which your Web site turned up, and the queries from which people actually visited your Web site. If a search term appears in the first list but not in the second, it means your Web site is showing up in search results for that term, but people aren’t clicking on it.
To improve your site’s performance for that term, you should tailor the language in your Web site. Say your Web site shows up in searches for “experienced Seattle therapists,” but nobody is clicking on it; that suggests that you might want to describe your level of experience on your site to improve your performance.
You can find another handy feature of Webmaster Tools in the “Links” area. Click on “Pages with external links” to see a list of other sites that include links to your site. This can give an insight into how others view your site. For instance, if you run a bar and see that a local hotel links to it from its own Web site, you can guess that the hotel is recommending your bar to its customers. So, you might offer special discounts to that hotel’s visitors.
Photo by lusi/CraigPJ.
cassy on September 13th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
To improve your site’s performance for that term, you should tailor the language in your Web site. Say your Web site shows up in searches for “experienced Seattle therapists,” but nobody is clicking on it; that suggests that you might want to describe your level of experience on your site to improve your performance.