Count It Up


The last few issues of my newsletter (sign up for it to the right) have been about SEO – search engine optimization methods for getting higher page rank, more traffic and better search engine results.

One of the best ways to measure the impact of your efforts is to keep a close eye on your website’s statistics. But many folks don’t know exactly what all the categories mean. So here’s a quick explanation of the terms I get questioned about most often.

Views – measures how many times each individual page is requested or shown.

Unique visits – measures how many different computers (IP addresses) have been to your site.

Hits – measures how many times each separate file is requested or shown. If you use a lot of images, each page view would count as several hits. For example, if a page has 4 pictures and a video on it,  it would count as 6 (or more) hits – but only one visit or page view.

Visits – measures how many times your site has been visited. When compared to unique visits this shows how much repeat traffic you’re getting.

Spiders or bots – shows when and/or which of the search engines last “crawled” your site.

Top pages – shows which are the most popular pages on your site.

Entry and exit pages – show how many times a page was the first one visitors saw, and how many times it was the last one before leaving.

Search terms – tells the words or phrases that folks were searching on most often when they came to your site.

Next time, I’ll have some ideas on how to use this information.