I decided I better get a new post up on this site, life has been good to me and I’ve had a great vacation but now it is time to get back to work! Really a vacation for me is working 10 hours a day instead of 18, but it felt great to cut down some. I did launch a great new site which is still under construction called Online Poker Rakeback. Anyway, let’s get down to business and chat about a subject I’ve has quite a few requests to cover; Checking Stats and Expanding You Website

First off, if you are not collecting good stats, then you need to start now. This may seem silly to some webmasters, but I’m always amazed when I’m speaking with a webmaster and they are not collecting data via Woopra, google analytics, or some other stat program. If you are not collecting and review your traffic stats, then you are failing at your job!

Imagine owning a store and completely ignoring customers when they enter a store. They look around and maybe they are looking for something specific, can’t find it right away and leave to go to another store. What happens then is they find my store, and I give then attention and show them exactly what they are looking for. Essentially websites work the same way.

Almost every stat tracking program allows you to get custom reports right into your email. So there is no excuse to not have this data. So, what kind of things should you be looking at? Let’s take a minute and go over a few very important things you must know about your website.

1. Search Queries – How Customers (Visitors) found your website

This is essential, if you don’t understand how they found you and what they were looking for, then how do you know if you HAVE what they are looking for? Most webmaster focus too much attention to their main keywords, when in the reality of 2009 search savvy user, they use actual phrases to find what they want. Now I’m not saying 2-3 letter KW’s are not important, but longtail keywords pay the bills just as well.

Assignment #1 – When you are ready to take this step, you need to compile a list of search queries hitting your website. Pay close attention to these phrases and think of ways to expand on each of them. Example – On one of my websites I get a lot of searches for phrases like “How Do I get out of running bad at poker” This is a popular search for my site and depending on the exact phrasing my visitors will land on one of 3-4 strategy articles or forum posts that discuss this topic.

I first saw this search about two years ago, and at that time I have a strategy article that focused mainly on “Staying off tilt”. After I saw this search a few times, I added a full 1000 word article discussing “Tips for running bad” and articles of that nature, and we also started a discussion in the forum about this topic. So as you can see I expanded on this topic to cover my bases. I gave my visitors several options to choose form and made sure they found what they cam for. I also interlinks these articles to make sure they had more than one resource. I gave them what they came for! I would have missed the extra 25-30 daily visits if I had not been checking my stats and thinking of ways to improve my visitors experience.

This simple strategy can be used over and over again until you get into the habit of doing it to find new ideas for content on your website. this cannot be a one time thing, or again you will start ignoring the customers when they walk in the door. there is never a shortage of data to check out, longtail phrases, simple keyword searches, and even organic backlinks all tell you a story of how people are finding your website. Do nto let this information go unused. Because if you do, someone like me will find a way to take those visitors/customers form you and you will eventually go out of business.