Alexa and Analytics: How to Use What You Learn
For SEO purposes, Alexa has been looked at askance for some time. People hate it, they love it, and they hate it again. But I have to say that over the years, Alexa.com has beefed up its stats, and if you check them for your website, you might be surprised about what you find.
Imagine my surprise when I see that this blog (relatively new because of the domain change) is ranked 43,333 in the U. S. for traffic. OK, so it’s not number one as far as websites go, but hey… I’m amazed that it’s that high already. And in fact, sad to say, I can’t grab much analytical stats info for this blog at Alexa just yet.
So, I typed in OVBlogger.com (the old domain) and wow! Tons of interesting stuff there. Check this out:
Here’s what I know about my readers just by checking Alexa:
- They’re largely Baby Boomers, which is cool. I’m guessing they can relate since I’m one, too.
But most my readers are over 45. - More women than men read my blog. Hello ladies, welcome. Pull up a comfy chair.
- They don’t have kids.
- They have some college, but no degree, or they haven’t been to college.
- They read my blog from home.
Interesting, right? It’s incredibly valuable information! I can see who my audience is. I can speak to them in a way that they can enjoy.
Alexa also tells you where most clicks are coming from and going to. This blog has lots of clicks coming from Google (78.38%), which is cool, but I also have lots of clicks going out to Google (71.43%). Does that mean they come from Google because they searched a term, found my blog, showed up and then decided to go back to the search results? I’m guessing yes. Alexa won’t tell me, but if I check Google Analytics, I can probably piece things together.
Google Analytics is telling me that my bounce rate is 64.88%. Yeah… pretty high. We have to improve that. But visitors are reading 1.6 pages. Better than 1, but well… Have to improve that, too. So, they probably are coming to my blog, not finding what they want (which is not good), but some of them are going, “Hey, I should check this out.” Those are the folks I may keep as subscribers. Nifty because 76.2% of my visitors are new. They’re just finding me, and figuring out who I am and what I might know.
Here’s something I was pleased to see. I got traffic from Google for 173 keywords. Do I significantly construct my posts to be SEO friendly, such as optimizing for a particular word or phrase?
No. In case you haven’t noticed.
What I do is to write about my niche, which is search marketing. The keywords that people are searching for are just showing up in what I write. I don’t get a ton of traffic from any ONE keyword, I get little bits of traffic from MANY keywords. Writing for your audience is still the most important thing to me, and this proves that creating content in a natural way still beats trying to create optimized crap.
Here are some keywords that brought some significant traffic to this blog:
- pat marcello (with and without quotes)
- fake testimonials
- marketing lenses
- video seo “blog comments powered by disqus”
- squeeze page seo
I don’t optimize for any of those keywords, but I do write posts that include them. I’ve only written ONE post about fake testimonials, and ONE post about marketing lenses at Squidoo. (Notice those swift little links back to those posts to boost their SEO. Already getting traffic from them. May as well help them, right?)
But wait… What does this prove? When you write about what interests your niche, Google will help the people interested in your niche to find you.
Anyway, just thought this stuff was fairly interesting and that if you’re into search marketing, you might be interested, too. Check out what Alexa has to say about your blog or website, and use the information to your benefit. Check on keywords that people are typing into Google to find you. Are you doing the right things to bring traffic?
I say that if you write in your blog regularly and if you write about things that interest YOUR audience in a voice they can relate to, you’ll get all the traffic you need. That’s really all it takes.
