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See all the Traffic Statistics Posts
Everyone wants to improve the effectiveness of their real estate website. Improved effectiveness means more leads and higher revenue. There are many ways to figure out how to improve your website. One method that is often overlooked is analyzing your traffic statistics and making changes accordingly.
I think the main reason why analyzing traffic statistics isn’t popular is that many people don’t know all the things traffic statistics can do, or how to analyze the statistics. So, to help alleviate that problem, this series of posts will describe various types of statistics you need to have access to and what you should do with them.
Types of Traffic Statistics You Need
Notice I said “types of statistics you need to have access to”. If you have a real estate website, here are things to keep in mind:
- Don’t work with a vendor who doesn’t supply information-rich traffic statistics, or at least some way for you to install your own statistics on the website.
- Don’t work with a vendor if the only type of statistics you can use are server-side statistics. If you’re in this situation, you’ll recognize products like AWStats, and you’ll be familiar with a set of stats that are basic enough to be called primitive.
- If you have a Point2 website, the Ultra Stats are based on the same system that is used by Google Analytics. So, you don’t need to add something like Google Analytics unless you need some of the features such as tracking Ad Word campaigns or tracking Events.
- Take the time to learn about the statistics you’re using, and recognize that terminology differs from system to system. Don’t make an assumption until you are certain you’re looking at what you think you’re looking at.
Statistics and What To Do with Them
First, we’ll define different types of statistics, then discuss what you can do with them.
Overall Traffic Statistics: These statistics are related to the overall traffic on your website, and you can usually look at the stats by day, week, month, etc. For this example, we’ll assume you are looking at daily stats:
- Number of Visits, Visitors, or Unique Visitors – Different terminology is used to identify the people that land on your website. Read the definitions of the terminology for your system. Here are some tips:
- Visitors can often equal the number of times someone lands on a page of your website.
- Unique visitors usually equal the number of different people who land on your website. So, you might have 100 Visitors, but only 75 Unique Visitors. That would mean that 75 people landed on your site 100 times because some of those Unique Visitors stopped by more than once.
- Don’t use any stat named “Hits”. If you’re seeing that term, your stat package is outdated for one thing. A hit is anything that is displayed by your web page, simply stated. So, if you have a page with 7 photos, 2 videos, etc. each of those things will count as a hit. Opening one page could generate 16 hits. Obviously, this stat tells you nothing.
- Number of Page Views – This is usually just what it says. If 100 visitors looked at 2 pages during their visit, your page views for that day would be 200.
- Number of Pages per Visit – This is usually just what it says. If 100 people looked at 2 pages each time they landed on your site, the number of pages per visit would be 2.
- Bounce Rate – The bounce rate shows the percentage of visitors who land on one of your pages, then leave the site immediately without viewing any other pages on the site.
- Average Time on Site – This is usually just what it says. If 100 visitors spent 2 minutes on your website, your Average Time on Site would be 2 minutes.
- Percent New Visits – The traffic stats can tell if a visitor has been to your website before. If your Percent New Visits is 95%, that means that very few of the people who have been on your website ever return.
These are the most common overall traffic statistics. See Part 2 for information about what to make of these stats. Other posts in the series will talk about more specific Visitor Stats, Traffic Source and Content information.
Are the Search Engines Watching Your Videos?
· Comments.
Based on a lot of the things written about videos, you’d think the search engines were pausing during their crawls to fill themselves in on the content of your videos.
Of course, this isn’t true. For all the artificial intelligence that search engines are putting into their algorithms, the little darlings still can’t see – besides that, they can’t hear the voice over on a video to determine what it’s about.
Why Do So Many People Stress Website Videos?
Website visitors love videos. It gives theam a break from reading, and you can often communicate something much easier and more clearly on a video.
In addition, search engines like “seeing” videos on your website because it means that you are keeping up with technology, and offering your visitors a richer experience on your website.
While the engines can’t watch your video, they can see that it exists on a page because of the code required to display the video.
How to Make a Video as Useful as Possible
1. Don’t Talk too Long
People have very short attention spans and won’t sit still very long. A number often bandied about is less than 3 minutes. Of course, it depends on what the video is for. If you’re trying to explain how a short sale can avoid foreclosure, you may need 3 minutes. If you’re trying to get people to sign up for a special report, the shorter the better. That type of video is more like an advertisement.
If you can’t fit everything you want to say into a short video, you’re much better off doing multiple videos on the same topic. Just make sure people know how to get to the other videos in the series.
2. Use Your Video as a Marketing Tool
I know that if you’re making a video about how short sales can avoid foreclosure, at least part of your motivation (I hope) is to help some poor folks who are in a bind. The other part of your motivation should be to build your business. So, don’t forget to ask for the business at the appropriate time.
Maybe something like “We have managed 40 short sale transactions and have saved all 40 families from declaring bankruptcy or going through a foreclosure. If you are having problems with your mortgage payments, call us at 888-999-6666, or send an email to Us@Ourwebsite.com. We’d be glad to offer you a free consultation to identify the best way for you to proceed.”
3. Set Up Your Video to be Attractive to Search Engines
Since the search engines can’t see the video, they depend on the SEO-related characteristics of the video to determine value.
- Make Sure that You Use Keyword Phrases in the Title of the Video. If you’re uploading to YouTube, don’t ignore the description field, either. Make sure you write a concise description that highlights the key benefits of the video, including the use of your keyword phrases. Don’t overdo it and stuff keywords everywhere, though!
- Display the Video in as Many Places as You Can Find. You should always upload videos to YouTube. Done properly, they end up in a lot of Google searches. Create a channel for your business where you can send people to see all of your videos in one place.
Google also offers a service called “Video for Business”. There is a fee involved, $5.00/month for each user account. I haven’t heard of a lot of people using this service, and I haven’t seen a lot of videos from this service in search results. But, it’s not a bad idea to be aware of what Google is doing.
There are other places where videos can be displayed: on the appropriate page of your website and on the appropriate posts on your blog. And, don’t forget to announce new videos on your Facebook page, Twitter, Linkedin and any other social networks you participate in.
4. Use the Secret Weapon for Obtaining Reader and Search Engine Points.
I hate to admit it, but I’m one of what is probably a small number of people who generally don’t like videos.
I know, it sacrilegious. But, unless the subject is very technical, or I enjoy the speaking style of the presenter, or I’m bored (which practically never happens), I would much rather read a transcript of the video. Providing a transcript will help your visitors. Besides folks who would rather just read the transcript, there is another group who want to watch the video and read the transcript.
As for the search engines, they CAN read transcripts. So, if you really want your video to improve your SEO and end up in more search results, a transcript is definitely what you need.
There are a couple ways to get transcripts. Let’s assume that the video you’re creating is a bit more complex than the videos you see of people talking while driving in the car. If you really were doing a video about short sales, I would suggest that you put some thought into what you’re going to say and how.
In fact, writing a script, or at least a set of bullet points will go a long way toward making your video as professional as possible. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to read the script on the video, but you should be familiar enough with it so that information comes out in the right order, and you’re not skipping around, for example. You also don’t want to forget an important fact.
If you have a script, you practically have a transcript.
The other alternative is to hire a Virtual Assistant to create a transcript. You may already have a VA. You could also look into using a transcriptionist. Do a search for video transcriptionist. You’ll find a number of companies you can evaluate. The fees I saw were somewhere around $1.50-3 per minute of the recording.
What’s been your experience? Are you using videos?
If you’ve posted transcriptions with the video, how did you do in the search engines?
Are the Ranking Changes from Panda Complete?
· CommentsSee all the posts related to the Panda Update,
or click on the Panda tag at the bottom of each post.
Corrine Guest, who specializes in Barrington real estate, asked when everyone will see the changes Panda is making. Note: People who ask questions get a nice link!
The first Panda release was done in February of 2011. Almost immediately, there were changes in the result pages.
For example, article sites saw their rankings go down, such as AssociatedContent.com, FindArticles.com and EZineArticles.com. Interestingly, EZine was hit less, which some are attributing to the higher standards they set for articles on their website.
According to statistics published by SearchMetrics.com, some websites just got better. For example, YouTube increased its visibility. So, if you are doing videos and hosting them on YouTube, this should help you, also. Other winners include Zappos.com and WashingtonPost.com.
Zappos surprised me until I went and really looked at their website. For their type of site, they do a pretty good job of including interesting information on the product pages. From what I saw, there is a section devoted to product information, then much lower down on the page, you’ll find an “About” section.
That section includes more background and information about the product and/or the manufacturer, along with lots of links to other pages on the site. Their internal linking structure is pretty great. I also saw duplication on product pages. If the manufacturer was described, for example, that description is the same for all the products sold by that company. But, that must not be a big issue for Google.
Some of the more recent losers were PRNewsWire.com and Technorati.com.
Unfortunately, the answer to Corinne’s question is: nobody knows. There have been a number of updates since February. Will there be more? Possibly.
If you’ve put a lot of work into your website, and you’re fighting for position with a website that has no content or anything else to offer a visitor, and that website is winning, I don’t know what to tell you.
According to the objectives of Panda, that dull site should have dropped out of the rankings. Has Google adjusted every search term ever used? Just an opinion, but it seems like that might be happening over time since it’s such a huge task.
Are there factors about a website that could totally outweigh Panda rules? It doesn’t seem like there should be, but I’m not sure about that, either.
My advice to anyone in that situation is to just keep on building your website. Maybe you’ll never rank above that dull site, but the odds are you’ll rank higher than a lot of other folks.
P.S. Got questions about Panda or another real estate marketing issue? Leave a comment and I’ll try to answer them in an upcoming post. You, too, could get a nice link to your website like Dave’s on this post!
See all the posts related to the Panda Update,
or click on the Panda tag at the bottom of each post.
That’s an excellent question asked by Dave Kinkade who specializes in Tampa Leasing and Property Management. Hope you like the link here, Dave.
There were several mentions of the Panda rules leading us toward better looking sites in the other Panda posts on this blog. So, I thought I’d explain a bit more about what I was saying.
As you may recall, the Panda update was based on the feedback from quality raters – people who cruised the web and let Google folks know what they liked and didn’t like. The engineers at Google then created a set of metrics to describe that feedback.
So, Metrics Recognize Pretty Websites?
No, not really. A metric is a standard measure used to assess something. The question, then, is how can a metric measure beauty?
I think the key is that the metric isn’t assessing and probably couldn’t assess beauty. I know that very well because a design that one client loves, another client looks at and hates. So, that is a great illustration of the fact that it would be impossible for Google to judge beauty. Even people can’t agree on what’s beautiful!
What Kind of Ugly Can Google Assess?
When I said that ugly had to go, I wasn’t referring to the layout of the header or the color scheme. To me, an ugly site is one that has bad design, including these types of things:
- The fonts used are huge so it looks like the site is yelling at me.
- The color scheme makes the site hard to read. I mean not just a blue and green that I think look horrible together. I mean red lettering on a blue background that makes your eyes vibrate – and I’ve seen a site with that color scheme.
- There are 42 colors used on the site, so I can’t tell what is a link, what is important, etc.
- There are 4 areas of navigation. I need a roadmap to get back to a page I saw earlier.
- There are so many ads I can’t figure out what is content and which links will take me to a shady website I didn’t plan to visit.
- The website is so wide that I have to scroll sideways to see the whole thing.
- There is just writing on the page – no graphics to break it up so it becomes a chore to read.
- The line lengths are longer than they should be on a website and it is a chore to read.
Now, I don’t know if Goggle’s quality raters came up with any of those 8 things as they reviewed a bunch of websites. But, what if they had? Could Google interpret the code as it crawled a site and find those problems? Sure could.
All of those things are clearly set out in the code that Google is reading anyway. Ever heard that Google will penalize a site that has lettering (usually keywords) that can’t be seen by the human eye? Something like white letters on a white background? If Google can figure that out, it can surely look for the 8 things listed above.
And, I do believe that while you are fixing all of those problems, you need a professional look to your site. I have proof that it matters. More than one client has had an increase in the number of leads a site produced after a facelift. No additional SEO, it was just that the people who were already landing on the site were more likely to fill out a form.
So, don’t worry about coming up with the most ornate, expensive and beautiful design known to man. Just make sure that your site looks professional and provides a quality user experience!
P.S. Got questions about Panda or another real estate marketing issue? Leave a comment and I’ll try to answer them in an upcoming post. You, too, could get a nice link to your website like Dave’s on this post!
See all the posts related to the Panda Update,
or click on the Panda tag at the bottom of each post.
As you know if you’ve been following this series of posts, Google is trying to reduce rankings for low-quality sites with the Panda update, using machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence.
Some of the selection criteria Google may use with the Panda update were discussed previously, including design and content. The last part of the puzzle relates to the other criteria that we may not have been too concerned with in the past, but that deserve more attention now.
Pay Attention to the Visitors!
If your site visitors are happy, Google will be happy, too. So, how does Google figure out if your visitors are happy? There are a number of ways:
- Do visitors stay on your site? Look at your statistics for length of a visit. Google is doing the same thing. If your visitors are staying on your site for 5 seconds, Google may assume that your site isn’t attractive to your visitors so they don’t engage with the site.
- Do visitors engage with the site by visiting various pages? Look at your statistics for depth of visit, showing how many pages an average visitor views. If your visitors are looking at one page, then leaving, Google may assume that your site isn’t attractive to your visitors so they don’t engage with the site.
- Do visitors go back to search results to find another site? If a visitor hits your site, then returns to their previous search to find a better site, Google may assume your site has problems.
- Do visitors return to your site? Look at your loyalty statistics or reports that show new vs. returning visitors. If 99% of your visitors are on your site for the first time, Google may assume the site has a problem.
If Google thinks your site has a problem, the site may not fit into the new algorithm Panda uses to identify “good” websites. How can Google come up with all these statistics? In an example of perfect timing, Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz recently published a great graphic to explain how this works. The graphic is shown below and used with his permission.
A Panda Summary
- Google is using a type of new artificial intelligence to rank websites according to somewhat different criteria than before.
- Your real estate website now has to do more things right. Panda doesn’t mean that existing SEO efforts such as good content and incoming links are no longer important.
- Google has added criteria for ranking success such as:
- A professional, modern looking website
- No tolerance for low quality pages
- Content must not only be plentiful and original, it also must be interesting
- A visitor’s experience, as measured by statistics such as those discussed above, must be managed
All of the Panda changes lead to one conclusion: Webmasters and those of us who assist webmasters must think strategically, not tactically.
Plan Your Strategy
Luckily, we’ve always worked with clients from a strategic planning perspective. We don’t insist that a website needs a $5000 design to be successful, but we encourage clients to have a professional-looking site. Actually, in the past, it has been my experience that some very ugly websites have been very successful. I don’t think that will hold true in the future.
We have helped clients by writing interesting original content, not just paragraphs with strategically positioned keyword phrases. We’ve worked with them to add calls to action and to find compelling propositions that will keep visitors on the site and raising their hands for help.
The great thing now is that those things are no longer “nice to haves”. Google will demand that we all get on board. I think it will be a challenge, but I think it will move all of us in the right direction. We’ll be forced to create websites that aren’t set up just to get Google rankings – we’ll actually have to satisfy the visitor to be successful!
