What are better visitors? Well, that all depends. What do you want your visitors to do? This month I have been working on increasing the average page views per visitor. So for me, right now, a better visitor would be one that generates more page views. I feel that this is currently a weak spot on my site, so I am doing whatever it takes to improve it.

Tweaking Isn’t Everything

I have already done a couple of small tweaks to this site that I think will help, but tweaking your site a little is not the fix all for all things. You could also say writing a  better post could help, or including more pictures. Yes, those are good ideas, but there is something else. It’s the visitors source.

For this site, my best visitors come from Bing and webmaster forums. They are not my leading sources of traffic, just the best sources. When visitors come from those sites they generate a lot of page views. Obviously, getting good traffic on a blog for webmasters from webmaster forums makes sense. Bing traffic relies on SEO and content, and there is only so much I can do about that.

Top Visitor Sources

Being a webmaster, I have built many sites, and have access to Google Analytics for many of those sites. Looking at the past year for 10 random ones, I logged all their top sources that generate high page views. I also made sure those top sources were at least in the top five for total traffic delivered to that site.  These sites varied in market and type, from furniture stores to auction sites, and I made sure that I had stats for at least one year for them. Here is what ranked well.

Top referring sources good for generating page views:

1. Google – When Google ranked best it averaged 5 page views per visitors. Google was best on 3 out of the 10 sites I checked.
2. Bing – Bing visitors actually averaged more page views than Google, 5.79, but it only did best on two sites.
3. Direct – Direct traffic was best for one of the sites averaging 7.84 per visitor.
4. Miscellaneous Sources - These are sources that simply linked to your site for whatever reason. On one of my sites these referring sites averaged 6.59 page views per visitor. Wouldn’t you like random incoming traffic like that?
5. Sister Sites – Basically, traffic coming from another site owned or related somehow. One site averaged 5.14 page views per visitor.
6. Wikipedia – A real estate site that I did averaged 4.75 pages views per visitor from Wikipedia. Seemed like a strange top source for them.
7. Yahoo – At the bottom of the list dragging in as a top source for another site I manage, averaged just 3.12 page views per visitor. This site targeted local community traffic.

Killer Content Does Work!

Looking at this list the top three sources for generating pages views are search engines, and direct traffic. All three of those sources are all influenced by site content. You cannot tell Google or Bing to put a link to your site (for free anyhow), like you can with a sister site. They will only link to you if your site is relevant. Proof that content really can be king, and why SEO is so important. This could then lead to the discussion of what kind of SEO is better, on site optimization or off site optimization. Either way, the more the visitor likes the content found on one page, the more likely they will look at a second page.

Sister Sites

Though I had only one site have its best source come from a sister site, I actually had three sites that do very well from these types of sources. When these links are given, know that they are not simple link exchanges, banner ads, or a direct text links. They are links with a real introductions to the site, an actual referral if you will. Maybe a better way to see these links is not by relation, but by their quality of reason. The better quality reason they visited one page, the more likely they will look at a second page. Hint for you CPA webmasters. This is a great way to increase your action. The better you introduce the product or service, the more likely the sale will occur.

A Good Target

Soaking it all in, what makes a good target? For me (because I am currently after increasing page views per person), a high quality referral link that is keyword rich, all leading to a killer post.

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