Who's sending them?
August 2, 1999
This is one of the most valuable sections of all. The first
step in increasing your traffic is knowing where your existing
traffic comes from. The two biggest sources of traffic for
most sites are first, the search engines and directories,
and second, links to your site from other related sites.
Those sites fortunate enough to be listed in Yahoo will
usually find that it is the top source of hits. If you ain't
listed, get on the ball. Yahoo is selective about what sites
they list, and carefully and patiently presenting your case
to them is much more likely to yield results than a massive
Spam assault.
There are some very good tips on getting listed
at SelfPromotion.com,
and also in the little-known section of Yahoo called
"How to Suggest Your Site". If you are listed in Yahoo,
but are getting only a small percentage of your traffic from
it, then you may want to try to modify your listing, perhaps
moving it to a better category, or making the site description
more enticing.
After Yahoo, you should see the top search engines listed
(Excite, Altavista, Lycos, Infoseek). There are a couple of
places on the Web where you can find the latest stats on the
relative amount of traffic each of these has
(see
Search Engine Sizes). The order in which they appear on
your traffic report should roughly correspond to this. If not,
then a problem with one or more of the search engines may be
indicated. For example, if the word on the street is that
Altavista is currently the most popular engine, but it's
sending you less traffic than Lycos and Excite, then your
rankings on Altavista show room for improvement.
Getting listed on the various search engines is only half the
battle. You also want to try to make your site come up as high
as possible on the list of results for your favorite search
terms. Everyone knows to use plenty of
keywords
in your page titles,
META tags and body text (and even filenames and ALT
attributes), but every engine uses slightly different
criteria for ranking sites.
The art of maximizing rankings in the various engines is an
arcane one. Some folks go so far as to build individual
"gateway" pages, each one optimized for a particular engine.
Others are parted from their money by sharpies who claim to
have "secret formulas" for getting top billing. At the
WDJ, we type
the URL of the desired engine on rice paper, using a manual
typewriter. Then we burn the paper, while our staff all link
hands and dance in a ring around it, chanting and drinking a
lot of wine. Snake oil and false prophets abound, so think
twice before committing money or time to any scheme for
improving your rankings. You'll find some common sense ideas
for bettering your rankings at
Search Engine Watch.
The advanced log analysis tools can tell you not only which
search engines are sending you traffic, but also what
keywords people are searching on to find you. This section
can offer rich pickings. Are all these keywords included in
your META tags? Are there certain keywords that you think
should be yielding lots of hits, but aren't? What might you
do about it? Also, by comparing the same keyword across
different search engines, you can get some ideas about the
differences in their ranking algorithms.
After the search engines, you'll find listings for the
various sites that have links to yours (You have been
politely asking for links from related sites, haven't you?).
The sites near the top of your list are your buddies, so treat
them well. Make sure they always have the latest info about
your site, and do them favors if you can.
As I've emphasized throughout this article, a high or a low
ranking here can be interpreted in either a positive or a
negative way. Not only should you try to reward those sites
that send you lots of hits, you should turn your attention
to sites that seem as if they should be sending you more
than they do.
For example, let's say you sell a software package, which is
reviewed in two online magazines. One of them sends you lots
of traffic, the other a mere trickle. Why? Could you bribe
the Webmaster of the second magazine to give you a more
prominent link? Could you offer to break his or her leg if
they don't give you a more positive review? Could it be that
their magazine just doesn't get much traffic anyway, so you
needn't waste your time with them?
By following links to pages that have links to you, you can
often turn up scads of other promising places to solicit
links. If a "links page" has a link to me, they may also
have links to other links pages that should also link to me,
and those links pages probably have links to other links
pages... and on and on until the sun comes up.
This leads to one of the most important points of this
article. There are a trillion things you could do to improve
your traffic, but you can't possibly do them all. Careful
analysis of your log files over time can tell you what yields
results and what doesn't. Use your imagination, but above
all, use your judgment. Spend the bulk of your time on areas
that yield the bulk of your hits.
So, happy hit-hunting, Webmasters! If you've found another
way to glean wisdom from your log files, drop me a line and
let me know. Better yet, visit my Web site, and rack up a few
page impressions while you search for my email address!
Further Reading
Where are they coming from?
There's gold in them there log files!
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