Website Ranking - Basic Metrics (Elements)

According to statistics by Internet Live Stats, on April 19, 2016, there were over ONE BILLION active websites. Yes, you read that right – over 1,000,000,000.

That’s a lot of noise . . . a lot of competition.

I’ve used the analogy before, about being a speck in the sky, and it’s true. You need to find and use marketing strategies, specifically website optimization strategies, to give your site (or your client’s site) a brighter light. You need to create visibility and ranking.

One method of keeping track of ‘how you’re doing’ in all that noise is using analytic tools, like Google Analytics, SumoMe, Statcounter, and so on.

There are a number of factors these analytic tools look at to calculate their numbers, including daily page views per visitor and daily time on site.

Then there are ‘sites linking in,’ ‘search visits,’ ‘bounce rate, and ‘new visitors’ categories that are also SEO (search engine optimization) basic factors for ranking.

Let’s breakdown these elements:

‘Pageviews per visitor’ are the number of website pages a visitor clicks on while visiting your website. The more pages the better.

An effective way of ‘upping’ the pageviews is to:

•    Use long-tail keywords for title tags and headers
•    Have separate pages for specific
•    Have a ‘freebie’ page
•    Use deep-linking (link to other posts on your site)

‘Daily time on site’ is the amount of time (in minutes and seconds) a visitor stays on a site during one visit. The ‘pageviews’ plays a factor in this. If your content contains links to other pages or posts on your site, then the ‘time on site’ will increase. This is deep linking.

Another strategy to increase the ‘time on site’ is using video or audio. Even short 30-60 second animation keep the visitor in place.

‘Sites linking in’ (inbound links) reflects the number of websites that find your website informative and valuable enough to link to it. 

External links are hyperlinks that point at (target) any domain other than the domain the link exists on (source). In layman's terms, if another website links to you, this is considered an external link from their site, but an inbound link to your site.

Your external links are those you create to link to other sites from your website.

Linking can be done through anchor text, which is the best format for site linking, or through a direct URL link. ‘Sites linking in’ is an important SEO factor.

‘Search visits’ are those visits to your site that are a result of online searches, usually for a particular keyword. But, simply getting a search visitor doesn’t do much if he’s gone in less than 5 seconds (considered a bounce).

The ‘bounce rate’ is the percentage of visitors who leave within a few seconds after visiting just one page (the page they originally land on). High bounce rates are usually an indication that your keywords aren’t really relevant to your content. Or, your site may be difficult to navigate or read, or confusing. You want a low bounce rate.

A key factor to keeping your bounce rates low is to deliver on what you promise. Meet your visitors’ expectations. This means having quality content and relevant keywords.
You also need to have a visitor-friendly website design. This means it needs to load quickly, be easy to navigate and easy to read, has an easy to find call-to-action, and is clean (uncluttered).

There is much more involved in search engine algorithms and website analytics, but these elements are some of the basics.

I hope you found this information interesting and helpful.

MORE ON MARKETING

How to Build Your Online Authority with Focused Writing Goals
6 Tips to Grow Your Readership and Manage Your Content
10 Tips for Networking