If you’re doing business on the web, you need to watch your log files. This is something that a lot of people overlook. It’s also something a lot of people already know, but still don’t do. But you need to at least occassionally take a look at some software that will analyze your logs in detail. Here’s why:
- You’ll find negative keywords for your adwords campaign. Let’s say your are running ads for photo scanning services. Things are going well. Then you check your logs and realize that you’re getting (and paying for!) traffic on terms like ‘police scanners’. People looking for those radios that listen in on the cops. Do you want to pay for that? Heck no!. Just add the word ‘police’ to your adwords campaign as a negative keywords and not only will you not pay for that traffic anymore, but your click through rate on your existing ads will go up (which brings your prices down).
- You’ll find new search terms to target. Really, the stuff people search on is crazy. Find out what it is, and use those ideas to go after new terms, and to write new content.
- You’ll find new domain names. As I’ve mentioned before, .ca domains are still widely available. I just today registered the domain {my niche} prices.ca. Now if you do any SEO at all, you know that it’s dead easy to rank for a search term if you own the domain. So I’ve got an easy walk in the part to rank on any searches for “{my niche} prices”. And I know there are searches on that term - likely quite a few each month. A quick thrown together website with some prices, and I’m going to rank and get some more business.
I personally use clicktracks to analyze my traffic. I’m actually using a 5 year old version of it and I’m 50-50 on whether I’d recommend it. It works well, but not spectacularly, though yes, it is an old version. I hate their copy protection scheme, it’s very annoying. These days most people use Google Analytics to analyze their traffic. Personally I’m against it. But one way or another, you’ll find it very profitable to have an indepth look at your traffic.
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