Inbound Marketing University: Analyzing Site Traffic (AZ401)

Here are some key points, from the Analyzing Inbound Marketing webinar (AZ401), which I recently attended at Inbound Marketing University, coordinated by HubSpot. Make sure to check out these excellent resources on inbound marketing, available through HubSpot Inbound Marketing’s Presentations on SlideShare and the Inbound Marketing Wiki. HubSpot has also set up a related LinkedIn Group: Inbound Marketers – For Marketing Professionals.)

Class 10: Analyzing Inbound Marketing (AZ401), Professor: : Marshall Sponder, Monster.com, Web Analytics Association for Social Media 

• There are 4 types of traffic your website gets: Direct, Referral / Campaign, Search traffic (Paid/Organic), and Social Media Traffic. Different types of traffic have different value for your site.
• Direct traffic may include type-ins and bookmarks. This is the most difficult type of traffic to track, representing loyal subscribers.
• Referral traffic is “when a visitor arrives to your website by clicking a link on another website. If others are accessing your site through a wide variety of keywords, it indicates a website with lots of buzz, and, SEO-wise, is in a strong position. Referral traffic is  more likely to convert into a loyal subscriber of your website and actively participate in it than other forms of non-direct traffic.”
• Search traffic only counts “if a visitor arrives to your website from a specific search engine (for example, Google or Yahoo) by clicking your link on the search engine. It’s also possible for PPC (pay-per-click) traffic to be categorized under search traffic with some traffic analysis tools. Whereas search traffic is generally free, PPC traffic is traffic that comes from paid advertisements on a search engine.”
• Social Media traffic can from a social network, blog, bookmarking site, photo-sharing site, message board, micro blogging site and is generally very targeted to a specific piece of content. “Probably the least desirable form of traffic in terms of both value and monetization. However, social media traffic can provide value over time as you build relationships with this group of visitors – they may become your most loyal customers.”
• Look for unusual traffic coming to your site in Referral logs and segment your traffic by type. Referrer Logs contain “*Which engines have sent you traffic; *What keywords were used to find your site; *Which pages were accessed the most or the least; * Who are the visiting spiders; *User profile by region; *Average length of time someone remains on your site; *Average number of user sessions or page views per day; *Top entry and exit pages; *Top referring sites; *Summary of activity by day; *Server errors; *Bandwidth, which is the measure (in kilobytes of data transferred) of the traffic on the site; and *Type of technology used by your visitors.”
• “Search engine traffic accounts for anywhere from 50-70% of an established website’s traffic. Searchers are looking for specific information. Because the visitors are only searching for a specific bit of information, they generally won’t stay for a very long time and will leave once they’ve found what they’re looking for. They aren’t actively searching for the information you provided, so are less interested in your material than any other type of traffic.”
• “Make decisions of your traffic based of thresholds and goals.”
• Certain kinds of site traffic need to be tracked in a deliberate way. Examples of ways to analyze site traffic: creating a custom segment for social media traffic in Google Analytics, using web analytics to compare paid search traffic vs. organic for customer acquisition, looking at the landing pages and finding out if advertising is being run well, analyzing keyword usage (Are we going after the right keywords and is there content answering visitors’ needs (questions)? Have I harnessed my site to take advantage of The Long Tail?), filtering for new subscribers to your site, filtering on engaged visitors, and filtering on best keywords for attracting “Engaged New Visitors” (Organic and Paid).
• Use Social Media to find influentials and engage with them. (Top Blogs and Bloggers, Technorati, Google Blogs , socialmention, Delicious, daylife, AllTop, Facebook Grader, and Twitter Grader.)
• More information: Webmetricsguru.com, @webmetricsguru, Facebook.com, and marshall.sponder now.seo@gmail.com.
• Resources Marshall Sponder recommends: How to classify whether traffic is from social media, How to improve site tracking for Flash Rich Media sites, How to improve site tracking for Ajax sites, How to track video and audio events, and Using Social Media take action and increase quality traffic / revenue / leads. 

Related Links

• Inbound Marketing University: Kudos to HubSpot
• Inbound Marketing University: Stats of Note
• Inbound Marketing University: Getting Found (GF101, GF102, and GF 201) 
• Inbound Marketing University: Getting Found (GF202, GF301, and GF401)
• Inbound Marketing University: Converting Leads (CV101, CV201, and CV301)