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There's an extraordinarily
valuable tool that you have access to but that many
website owners totally overlook in their online
marketing program. These are the visitor logs that are
generated by your server.
What is a
Visitor Log?
All servers track
visitors by generating the log that details which
pages they visit, which files are requested, how long
they spend on the site, and much more. Often, these
logs can tell you not only how many visitors you've
had, but also how many are repeat visitors, which
sites brought them to yours (including which keywords
they used to find you), which paths they took through
your site, which area of the world your visitors are
from, even which browser and operating system your
visitors use.
Much More
than a Hit Counter
Often sites
feature a hit counter. We don't recommend these for a
number of reasons. One, they make a site look less
than professional. Secondly, Internet visitors are
used to hearing about sites that get thousands of
visitors a day. A counter that shows you've had 230
visitors since last February does nothing to improve
that business image. Finally, why would you need a hit
counter when a wealth of information awaits you in
your visitor log.
Accessing
the Information in your Logs
If you look at the
raw log file, you'll find a somewhat cryptic
combination of numbers, text and indecipherable
information. You'll need a log file analyzer to pull
the valuable information out of these logs. We use
software from the WebTrends Corporation, generally
considered to be a market leader. Server software vary
somewhat in the information they capture in their
logs, but a good log analyzer program can present you
with very valuable information that will allow you to
leverage your website into a very effective marketing
tool.
Using Your
Logs to Improve Your Site
Another piece of
information that you can pull from your logs is
something called single page visits. These show up as
people coming to your site, looking at one page and
then leaving again. You should look at the pages that
are responsible for the majority of these visits and
see if there's anything that could be turning off
visitors and causing them to click away from your
site. Possible causes could be large graphics that
take too long to download or corrupt java applets or
javascripting.
How We Use
Your Logs
In addition to
generating reports for your information, we'll also
look at your visitor logs to find information to help
us in increasing the visibility of your site online.
We'll regularly check to see which search engines are
bringing the most visitors to your site and which
keywords they're using to find them. If necessary,
we'll adjust the keywords we optimize for.
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