The days when websites would have counters in them to show how many people have visited that website that day are over. Only websites build by amateurs will have such counters. In the early days the term hit was used to indicate the number of people visiting the website over a period of time and web designers were very proud of the term. The term hit refers to the number of files your visitors have requested from your website.
Web servers keep an activity log for visitor’s information. When someone visits your site and browses sites, the web server keeps information such as the time he/she and even a bot has visited the site, file requests he or she made, the last page the person was before visiting your website, the operating system they are using, the screen resolution, the search terms that the person is using and many other crucial data that could be vital for a successful marketing.
Things to look for when analyzing the logs
As a webmaster keen on attracting traffic to your website, you need to consistently check the logs and analyze them to know exactly what is going on. You should look for the number of unique visitors that visit your website every day. Another activity that you ought to be looking at is the number of pages visited. This will give you an average statistics of how many pages each unique visitor is visiting. Many website hosting companies give bandwidth restrictions especially if you have a basic package.
To make sure your hosting provider does not shut down your website, you need to look at the bandwidth used every day, weekly and monthly usage from the logs. You should also analyze the statistics of how the visitors that came to yours site found their way there. Is it through other links from other sites or they did a search. You might be surprised at the statistics when you realize that many visitors do not enter your site through the main page but from the inner pages and other external links. You can get this information through analyzing the entry and exit points of your website.
Another piece of information that might interest you is the search terms your visitors use; this gives you an idea of what people are looking for in your site. The technical information e.g. the operating system they are using, the screen resolution etc. will help you optimize the sites using such information.
If you are looking to improve the number of visitors, page traffic and Google search rankings in order to attract more website traffic, you should look for an SEO Company.
