DAY 9 -- Know Your Visitors

SBI! Modules Used Today -- TrafficCenter (Traffic Stats and
Click Through/Click IN Analysis)

Your business-building foundation is solid... You are creating more and more high-quality PREselling content. You are securing quality in-pointing links, growing your Link Popularity.

As a result, traffic is building. The increased traffic is more than merely satisfied, they are PREsold.

Search Engines measure the hundreds of ways satisfied human visitors naturally respond to great content. They also note your increasing volume of appreciated information.

And so the momentum grows, like an ever-building downhill-rolling snowball. As your traffic starts becoming appreciable...

It becomes important to know as much as you can about your visitors and your traffic-building efforts. Who are they? Are they doing what you want them to do? Are you getting the best returns for your time and money?

Your DAY 9 goal is to get to "know" your visitors by using SBI!'s traffic-reporting tools in the TrafficCenter of Site Central (Traffic Stats, Click Through/Click IN Analysis).

Monitor traffic patterns, especially outgoing/incoming traffic. Adjust your traffic-building efforts for maximal profit.

"Read" and "watch."
Click here to access the Action Guide Videos!

Today's Action Steps

Knowledge is power.

Traffic knowledge gives you the power to boost income.

Analyze your "big picture" Traffic Stats.
Explore Click Through Analysis.
Explore Click IN Analysis.

What do you know about your traffic? Not much yet, except that they have an interest in your content. What do you need to know?

Much less than you might think (especially if you read all the promotions of companies selling complicated, expensive traffic-analysis software). Today, we'll boil it down to the small amount of important info you do need.

Think of traffic as being a two-direction event. Every visitor comes into your site. And every visitor, sooner or later, leaves. It's nothing personal, just "the way of the Web." After all...

No one stays on one site forever. So...

Traffic is coming into your site (from all your traffic-building efforts), most of it naturally (some call this "organically") from Search Engine search results. But there are a variety of other ways to attract traffic and we'll see how to track those in Step 3 ("Click IN Analysis").

The SE traffic itself is easily tracked in Step 1 ("Traffic Stats"). You will know, easily, which engines are sending you visitors, and for which keywords. And, as you have already seen, SE HQ allows you to drill down for more detailed reporting on "organic" traffic.

Traffic is also leaving your content pages. Hopefully, they are clicking on a link (or filling in a form or subscribing, etc.) and not just closing your browser window. A closed window does you no good. So...

"Get the Click!"

You already know how to track certain key "Backup Responses." For example...

Form Build It! tracks and reports on every form submitted.
MailOut Manager provides full stats for your e-zine.

Refer to DAY 8 for those specific reports.

"Get the Click!" Did I just hear you ask...

"Why? Don't I lose the visitor when s/he clicks out?" That's a common question. But every visitor leaves sooner or later. So "get the click."

Clicks usually mean monetizing since they are either links to more content pages (increasing PREselling) or links to your income-generators, such as...

Google AdSense ads
your order page at ClickBank (to sell e-goods)
affiliate links to merchant-partners' sites
ads to sponsor sites
and so forth and so on, all depending on your Monetization Mix.

"Click-Through Analysis" (coming up in Step 2) tracks the monetizing clicks!

Remember Business 101...

It costs you expenses (time and money) to generate your incoming traffic. Your OUTgoing traffic generates income.

Income - Expenses = Profits

The goal, of course, is to maximize profits. DAY 9 helps you do that by understanding your visitors' actions.

We have come full circle. We started the 10-DAY process with this essential business equation.

As any entrepreneur, you understand that, at first, you invest substantial time for small rewards. As your site builds, however, the reverse happens... increasing profits with less time required.

Your bottom line is to maximize profits wherever you are in your business cycle (planning, startup, growing or mature).

Traffic analysis shows you how to increase income and decrease expenses. The key to effective traffic analysis is simplicity -- knowing only what you need to know, which is information on your....

Traffic
Links out
Links in

SBI!'s TrafficCenter provides you with exactly that information. Let's start with your traffic stats...

Step 1 - Analyze your "big picture" Traffic Stats.

The Traffic Stats module provides monthly and daily stats. The monthly high-level stats cover three "big picture" categories...

Visits -- the number of visits to your site
Visitors -- the number of different people who visit your site (ex., a visitor could account for 10 visits)
Page Views -- the number of pages viewed by all the visitors during all the visits. A single visitor might view only one page... or twenty.

What about "hits"?

Forget hits. A hit is simply a line in your site's log file. If a page has 3 graphics on it, that's 4 hits (1 for the HTML page itself, plus 3 for the graphics). But if that same page has 100 graphics on it, that's 101 hits!

By comparing your monthly "big picture" data, you should be able to see growth in your site's overall traffic. In the early month(s), you may feel discouraged...

You are building traffic, getting some in-pointing links, yet... not much traffic. This is the investment phase of your entrepreneurial business. Have faith -- C T P M works.

Once you see traffic start...

Yeeehaw! You're in business...

300 visitors per month (10 per day), then 600, then 1500 (50 per day).

You're on your way!

Let's investigate Traffic Stats now. Log into Site Central. Go to the TrafficCenter and click on the Traffic Stats link. As always, follow the online help as you check out the Summary by Month Report...

In the screenshot above, you see the "Monthly Totals" for Visits, Visitors, and Page Views on the right. The daily averages are on the left.

By scanning your monthly data, you should be able to see "big picture" growth in your site's overall traffic. Of course, your growth pattern will not be a straight line upwards. There will be a sudden burst of traffic, followed by flat or slow-growth months, followed by another burst, perhaps even followed by a down month or two.

That is simply the nature of traffic growth. But overall, the "big picture" trend line will be up.

Avoid "Month-Start Heart Attacks"

See the above screenshot? Pretend that's you. You're doing nicely when suddenly your visit count drops (April 2005). Relax, this is an early-in-the-month illusion.

The Traffic Stats module updates daily early in the morning. So it counts that extra day (with only a couple of hours in it) in the calculations.

When you drill down to daily details, you will see that all is well.

Truly Dropped? Don't Panic!

That said, Search Engines can be finicky. One may drop your site. Then you may see a real drop. This is gut-wrenching. However, since you are building a real site with genuine content (and doing nothing to trick the engine), it is merely a glitch at the engine. The cure?

Keep building real content and, if your Link Popularity needs it, garner a few more quality in-pointing links.

All will return to normal. Click here to see Elad's story about this.

This is a frequent "panic request" in the "Major SE Forum." If it happens to you, save time and check its FAQ. You will receive the answer you'd get by posting. Here's the bottom line...

The Search Engines simply cannot and will not ignore a solid content site. They need you (so they can sell advertising) as much as you need them. Hold your course and keep building solid content. All will return to normal.

Now it's time to delve inside the Traffic Stats module. Click on the monthly links to get the following useful information...

Daily statistics -- visits, visitors and page views on a day-by-day basis, in both absolute terms and as a percentage of the total (ex., percent of total visitors).

If You Thought Monthly Results Fluctuate...

Wait until you see the "Daily's"! This is pure statistics. Unless you are running a special promotion and expecting a huge increase on a certain day, traffic numbers can bounce around day-to-day. Be neither alarmed nor elated by day-to-day numbers.

If you do a special traffic promotion on a certain day (ex., run an ad in an e-zine), this is an easy way to gauge the response. And, as we'll see in Step 3 below, Click-IN Analysis will give you even more precise data on special promotions.
Most popular pages -- delivers page view stats on a per-page basis, with the page generating the most page views reported first (heading example, "Top 100 of 150 Total Pages"). By understanding which pages are most popular, you understand better the needs of your visitors.

Correlate this with your link-tracking data (more on this below). Make sure that your most visited pages get the click to your income-generating programs. Also, use this data to get a better feel for what your market wants... and, just as important, what it does not want.
Most popular entry pages -- tells you which pages are the most popular "entry" pages (heading example, "Top 50 of 125 Total Entry Pages"). A page counts as an entry page when it starts a visit.

Correlate this with how people find you (referrers and keywords, discussed just below), and you have a wealth of insight into how your site is being discovered... and what people want. Use this info to give you ideas for other related, profitable areas for content development.
Most frequent exit pages -- shows the pages from which people leave your site (heading example, "Top 50 of 135 Total Exit Pages"). Some people look upon high numbers for a given page as "bad" because "horrors, people are leaving my site there."

But you have to correlate this with other data before drawing conclusions. As noted above, everyone leaves sooner or later. If visitors are clicking on your monetizing links, this stat actually means your exit pages are your money-makers!

If a "high entry" page is also a "high exit" page, that's not really a surprise. If a "high exit" page is also generating tons of links out to your income-generating programs for you, that's not so bad, is it?
Referrer URLs -- this tells you where your traffic is coming from (heading example, "Top 41 of 41 Total Referrers"). Note how much of your traffic comes from Search Engines -- that percentage should grow.

Note, too, how much traffic the "Image Search" versions of Google, Live Search, and Yahoo! send you. That can be important information. See Image Search (via Site Central) for more information.

Correlate other referrers with other activities you may be doing (ex., directory listings, link exchanges, etc.). Look for "surprises" -- you don't know what you don't know and opportunities lie in the surprise referrer. Extremely useful info!
Keyword Search -- identifies which keywords people are entering into engines to find your site (heading example, "Top 45 of 45 Total Keywords"). Correlate with the keyword reports in Search Engine HQ for greater detail. And correlate with Referrer URLs to learn where and how your visitors find you, which gives you a base to build even more traffic-building ideas!

Summary?

Traffic analysis is the base. It tells you what you need to know about quantities of visits, visitors, and page views. It shows you where they come from and what words they used to find you at the Search Engines. Traffic Stats lay a strong base of information. But you need to know more...

Now that you understand your traffic big picture, you need to be able to see what's working in the two bottom-line areas that matter most...

how you make your money. Gear your content more and more towards what "gets the click." Because that's what builds your income.
how you spend your traffic-building time and money -- what's working, and what's not. Spend only on the techniques that bear fruit.

So how do you get this information? Through two forms of analysis that have been especially developed and optimized for Theme-Based Content Sites...

Click Through Analysis, and...
Click IN Analysis.

Before going further, let's talk about two different kinds of links...

ON-SITE links These links appear on your site, and send visitors OUT of that page. These links go to income-generating sites (merchant-partners via affiliate programs, your own online store, or your own e-goods sales site for products that you have developed, and so on).

In short... ON-site links generate income.
OFF-SITE links -- these links do not appear on your Web site. In other words, people do not click on these links while they are on your site.

Rather, potential visitors click on these links OFF of your site... in Pay-Per-Click buying campaigns, e-zine ads, or offline print ads, in flyers that you distribute at trade or hobby conventions, or even in your sig file at the end of your e-mail. They click on these links to come inTO your site.

In short... OFF-site links build traffic, but cost you time and/or money.

Since you spend time and/or money on these traffic-building activities, you need a way to measure which off-site promotions are working (getting the "Click IN"), and (just as importantly) which ones are not. Once you know this, you know where to spend more... and where to stop! Build upon your successes and fix (or drop) your weaknesses.

SBI! makes it easy to track these two kinds of links...

ON-SITE: Track what's generating income by Click Through Analysis.
OFF-SITE: Track which traffic-building efforts work via Click IN Analysis.

Let's talk about Click Through Analysis first...

Step 2 - Explore Click Through Analysis.

"Get the click." Remember that?

Sure you do. But now the questions are...

Are they clicking? How much?
Which pages "get the click?"
Which links "get the click?" And even...
Which links on which pages "get the click?"

Get the picture? Click!

We're talking about "Click Throughs" in this section. Since each Click Through has the potential to monetize, this is important. Hey!...

We're talking "money" now. And that means...

You need to know how and when visitors monetize on your site. "Lucky" for you...

SBI! automatically encodes every outgoing link so that you don't have to. That means you are immediately ready to measure and track Click-Throughs!

This type of encoding for tracking purposes is normally an expensive proposition. Sophisticated sites pay substantial amounts in dollars and learning-curve-time to set this up.

Most small business sites do not have this capability. SBI! levels this playing field -- Click Through Analysis is detailed, automatic, and free.

Let's get started...

Click Throughs occur when people click on a link on your site ("ON-SITE link") and leave it.

If you've followed DAY 6 properly, you don't actually lose your visitor, not completely anyway. Links out should open a new browser window, leaving your site underneath.

The exception is Google AdSense ads. Visitors who click on those ads leave your site. But that's OK... you make money for each of those clicks! And Google provides all the click data you could possibly want on its AdSense reporting site.

"Click Throughs?" We should actually call them "Click Outs." But since the industry uses the term "Click Through," we're stuck with that!

Click Throughs earn you income. Your visitors could be clicking to...

your affiliate programs -- a percentage of those clicks turn into sales or leads, earning you income
your order page for your own e-good (be your own best affiliate!)
your own store (or third party store)
... site sponsor ads, or any other monetization option.

Click Through Analysis yields the following...

total Click Throughs for all your ON-SITE links, as well as the breakdown for each ON-SITE link (i.e., on a link-by-link basis)
"first-time vs. repeat" Click Throughs, for the total of all Click Throughs on all your ON-SITE links, and also on a link-by-link basis. In other words, has the person clicked on the link before?
Click Throughs divided by Page Views, which yields the overall Click Through Rate ("CTR") for all your links (as a group), and also the CTR breakdown on a link-by-link basis.

What else? "Wait, there's more" (no, I'm not selling Ginzu knives!). Click Through Analysis gives you...

link-by-link data, broken down for every page that each link appears on (in other words, if LINK A appears on Pages 1, 2, and 3, it shows you how LINK A performed on each of those pages)
page-by-page data, broken down with the performance of every link on each page (in other words, if Page 1 contains LINKS A, B, and C, it shows you how each of those links performed on that page).
data for any time span that you request!

This is a powerful and revealing tool. You simply need to find one seriously underperforming link, look at the page to see how you've buried it out of view, reposition the link, and earn more from that link forever going forward.

It goes without saying, but you know me, I'll say it anyway...

Maximize Click Throughs.

Maximize your Click Through Rate by creating high-value content that OVERdelivers what your visitors were looking for. Blend "in-context" text links into your copy to get the Click Through. "Blend," but make them obvious.

Click Through Analysis shows you the exact success rate of every single ON-SITE link. You know exactly what people are clicking on... and what they are missing.

Fix what is not getting the click. And let the winners ride! Maximize income by building upon successes and fixing weaknesses.

Here's how to get your Click Through Analysis...

In the Click Data part of the TrafficCenter, select the Click Through Data radio button. Then select the date range for which you want Click Data (from the Day - Month - Year drop-down menus).

All set? Click the Show Me Data button, like this...

From there, it's the ever so familiar advice... follow the links and online instructions and Help & Strategies for each page.

A fellow SBIer explains how easy it is to opt-in or opt-out of link tracking. Click here to see his article in the TNT HQ.

Step 3 -Explore Click IN Analysis.

Click INs occur when people click on an OFF-SITE link and come into your site. How can you track Click INs?

Create a special Tracking Link for each OFF-SITE link that you want to track. When the about-to-be-visitor clicks on your special Tracking Link, special encoding records the click and where it came from. Then the link sends the visitor to the page on your site that you are promoting.

Tracker Library vs. Link Library

The Tracker Library is composed of encoded URLs that link into your site. These encoded links start from off your site and send a surfer to your site. You set them up for a specific OFF-SITE promotion to track Click INs and never use them on your own site.

This is the exact opposite of the Link Library (covered in DAY 6), which is full of URLs heading OUT of your site. The Link Library automatically encodes URLs as you set them up for use with the Link Block. (If you upload your own HTML, SBI! automatically encodes all OUTgoing URLs -- you have nothing to do!). This enables you to track Click Throughs.

Using the Tracker Library

This library is structured in the same way as the Link Library. And the usual advice applies...

Give the link a "meaningful-to-you" name for easy identification and then follow the instructions and online help. Use the new Tracking Link (instead of the ultimate destination URL on your site) for each new promotion.

Here are just a few types of promotions that are easily tracked...

Track each Pay-Per-Click ("PPC") advertising campaign (ex., when you buy Google ads to sell your services). This is especially useful if you set up a special version of an existing page as a landing page exclusively for a specific ad (or group of similar ads) -- you not only know how many visitors clicked in from your PPC ad(s), but can check monetizing Click Throughs or form submissions from this special page.
Track the Click-IN results of buying ads in e-zines.
Track the clicks on a Tracking URL in a free e-book.
Track your offline efforts (newspaper ads, flyers, even bulletin board ads at your local post office!).
See how many people click on your sig file (i.e., the short message added to the end of your e-mail).

It's endless. Want to make your promotions more "accountable"? Track all!

A Special Use

The "ultimate destination" does not have to be your site. Use Tracking Links to track Click-INs to your affiliate merchant-partner's site or to an off-site order page (ex., ClickBank order page for your e-book).

For example, say you set up a Tracking Link from Google Ads to an affiliate-merchant-partner ultimate destination URL. People who click on this link do not arrive on your site at all, even though the specially coded URL has your domain in it.

Now let's say that $50 "buys" you 500 clicks (via Google ads) to the merchant. If those 500 sales make one sale that yields a $75 commission, you have a winning money-making formula. If not, drop it.

Use Click IN Analysis to your best advantage

Here are some particularly useful scenarios...

The Untraceable Link

Some links have no referring URL, so you can't tell where they came from through Traffic Stats analysis. But you may really need to know this data. For example, the following have no "referrer"...
1. links from a free e-book that you are using as a promotional tool.
2. links from e-mail of any kind... sig files, links in mailing lists, autoresponder campaigns, links in the e-zine that you publish, ads that you buy in e-zines.
  
  Read this TNT HQ article to find out how tracking can help you know whether or not your e-zine is "hitting the mark."
3. links that are simply typed into the browser -- offline promotions (ex., targeted print media or your local community bulletin board) always result in "typed-in" URLs! Tracking links are perfect for offline promotions.
  
  A Special Name Park It! Trick
  
  The key to offline promotions are short, memorable URLs. You may want to shorten your Tracking Link. How? Take a memorable Name Park It! domain and redirect it to your Tracking Link!
  
  By creating a special tracking link for each of these "untraceable links," you can now know what has been previously impossible to fathom.
Testing e-zine ads

Set a different tracking URL for each ad that you write. That way you can measure which ad generates a better response. Here's how...

Run Ad #1 in E-zine #1 and Ad #2 in E-zine #2, then switch a month later. Which ad generated more responses overall? Stick with what's profitable. Drop the "losers."

No successful ad writer creates "100% winners." But they all test, test, test.

P.S. Great ad writers do well if even half of their ads "pull" well. Now you can know "which half!"

A refinement... Some e-zines can rotate 2 ads in the same issue. Half the subscribers see "Ad A" and the other half get "Ad B." Called an A-B split, it's the best way to test.

Bottom line? E-zine advertising becomes very cost-effective when you can drop the losers and increase your budget for the winners.

Find out more about how e-zine tracking can improve your bottom line...

http://sbitips.sitesell.com/track-your-ads.html
Test Web-Based advertising

Use your special Tracking Links to track the performance of ads on outside Web sites, not just on Pay-Per-Click campaigns. You could even track the effectiveness of posts to forums and discussion groups (where allowed). Note, though, that Tracker Links will not boost your link popularity, or count as incoming links.

Possible Ultimate Destinations

So far, we've talked about tracking different origins of Tracking Links (i.e., OFF-site starting points such as e-zine ads). We have assumed (mostly) that the ultimate destination of those OFF-SITE links is to your Theme-Based Content Site. Not necessarily!

Let's examine possible ultimate destinations, and when you might use each...

Your Theme-Based Content Site

Let's say that you have a terrific page about a special kind of flower. That page has several in-context text links... links to books, growers, ClubMom, as well as to your Clickbank Order Page for your e-book. You take an e-zine ad. What should the ultimate destination of the Tracking Link be?

Easy... to your Keyword-Focused Content Page on the flower -- that page monetizes! Since you have worked so many in-context text links into your OVERdelivering copy, you have several chances to monetize.
Your (affiliate) Merchant-Partner

On the other hand, suppose you write a comprehensive article about this special flower as content for a prominent e-zine published by a third party. It's based on a Web page on your site. Your "payment" is that you can include your URLs. Where should these links point?

Easy (especially if you do not sell anything directly related to that flower). No point in directing them to the same info on your site, right?

Work your special Tracker Links into the content of the article, and point the destination URLs straight to your merchant-partners. One link for each merchant. You'll see exactly how many people clicked on each link (and you can track the sales effectiveness through each merchant's affiliate reporting)!

Of course, include your own URL in your sig file at the end of the article.
A Free Trial Download

Yes, even a download URL can be the destination. Offering a free e-book with more info on that special kind of flower? The destination of the Tracking Link in the article (or ad) should be the direct download URL (straight to the .zip, .exe or .pdf file).

Naturally, the e-book will have links to your Theme-Based Content Site and your various monetization options. Every one of those in-book links should be special Tracking Links, too!

See how this can be a powerful income-generating tool? Tracking what works... works.

Getting dizzy at all the possibilities? No?

I am, but if you're excited, here's another great idea...
Your Online Store

Same idea. Suppose you have an online store that needs more traffic (ex., a Yahoo! store or eBay store -- many SBIers get more traffic from their SBI! sites!). If the situation dictates that you are better off sending visitors "directly" to your store as the destination URL, do it!

Same goes if you have a Clickbank site that sells e-goods...
- If an ad costs you $100, and
- if your Click IN Analysis shows that it generated 500 visitors, and
- if you know that 2% of your visitors buy...
It's easy to figure out that you doubled your money if your e-good sells for $20 (leaving Clickbank commissions out of the example for now).

Ah, maximizing profits... it's the goal of Click Through Analysis and now, as we've seen, Click IN Analysis, too. Actually, maximizing profits, Monetizing, is THE goal, the M after you do C T P so well. And before we move on to the 10th and final DAY (Monetizing)...

Here's how to get your Click IN Analysis...

In the Click Data part of the TrafficCenter, select the Click IN Data radio button. Then select the date range (from the Day - Month - Year drop-down menus) for which you want click data, like this...

Then click on the Show Me Data button.

The Click IN Analysis will, indeed, show you the data! Just click on the question marks for clear Help & Strategies on how to interpret and use...

First-time vs. Repeat Click IN Totals.
Breakdown by link.

Bottom line for DAY 9?...

Traffic is your lifeblood.

"Know" your visitors by following Traffic Stats regularly. Watch for trends, but don't obsess on fluctuations. Use Click Through Analysis and Click IN Analysis to maximize profits (i.e., increase income and drop efforts that don't work).

And now? And now... I can hardly stand it...

The anticipation is killing me...

It's the moment that we have delayed gratification for, ever since DAY 4. Let's harvest the fruits of your labor.....

It's time to Monetize!

Need help or advice about DAY 9? Try one of these forums...

Traffic Stats

Click Data (Clicks In & Clicks Through)

For quick access to other Forum FAQs, please use (and bookmark) this Directory.