Comparing Statistical Success From Month To Month

Because I have been with Wealthy Affiliates for about 50 days now, I have completed a full month of increase from nothing to something. During my second month, like most people, I wonder how I am doing.

More often, we check to see if our content was Indexed, or how many published pages were Ranked. Then we try hard to keep the flow of new and meaningful content flowing while we wait for the tipping point. Others might gage their progress by the amount of revenue they recieve and make adjustments after noticing a decline in sales or a drop in rankings.

I am a numbers man, which means in order to know how well I am doing I need to compare numbers. Because I do not have revenue to compare I have to use traffic. Google Analytics can help you track the status of your site.

We can learn a little bit about Google Analytics in the training, but how you track your site in an advanced way to monitor your traffic is not thoroughly reviewed. You can either review your overall traffic or specific types of traffic. More over, you can compare one time period to another within the specific rage of traffic you are tracking.

I created a few graphs to see what my numbers look like. I do not have 2 full months of data so I have to continue to track the trends every day. In spite of this, the graphs can show me the positive and negative sides of my progress. For example, within the same first two weeks time period, Overall Refferal Traffic increased 156% and New Refferal Traffic increased 147% New Organic Traffic for this month increased 200% Pages/Sessions Organic Traffic has reduced by 67% and New Direct traffic to the site is down 70% but Direct traffic to pages on the site is up 27%.

What does all this mean? Direct traffic goes straight to the site or a specific page on the site. Refferal traffic sends you to a specific page on your site from another page or site. We are all familure with Organic traffic. However, site traffic and specific page traffic are two different things with a new site.

Knowing what I know, seeing a 200% increase in organic traffic lets me know where I put my content is getting activity. Refferal traffic going up by 156% means they are looking through my content. On the other hand the 67% decline on page or session traffic means either the content is not as receptive where I post it or I do not have enough engaging content.

How do I fix this? If I have not been writing as much as I use to that could change the readership. I could try to write more content if I have time. Another way to fix this, because I did not set up a twitter account yet, I set a twitter account up today and posted all of my content.

Had I followed the training I would have a twiter account from days 2 but I am not very comfortable with social media. I am seeing increased traffic with my linkedin pinterst staykeen and facebook accounts respectfully. But that does not mean that my following is still interested in much of my content compared to last month. Starting with another social media platform I can begin engaging a new area of traffic. The delay could become in my favor.

Ultimately, as time goes on, one could graph how one's month did in comparison to another or how one quarter did in comparison to a previous quarter. You can do this do if you go to Google Analytics and look on the top right section of the overview tab. select compare and while you are in there select custom. Then select the dates you wish to compare and see how the numbers stack up to each other.

By knowing what you did or did not do, you are aware of how to improve. You can also change how or whre you produce your content and you can control your flow. Remember I am juggling numbers while only having 2 pages (2%) of my site ranked on Bing and Yahoo. These numbers will be more meaningful after 75% or more of my site is ranked in the top 5 of Google Yahoo and Bing.