Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

Need Help In Google Analytics Statstics

Posted by Anonymous on 8/27/2009 at 2:21 AM ET 125 Points
Hi Everybody,

Recently we have created a website called collegekhabr.com.
Since then we are getting 500+ hits per day. Its a news portal targeting engineering and Managements students across the India colleges.

Can someone provide me the benchmark for a typical news portal like this . I know its very subjective question but just an idea will also be great like what should be the bounce rate of such typical website and other related analytic parameter.

Critiques and suggestions on website and SEO for it also requested .


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RESPONSES

  • Posted by igheorma on 8/28/2009 at 7:12 PM Accepted
    Rule of thumb for good website bounce rates: under 60%. If the bounce rates are higher it is not a good sign. Try to understand why:
    - are you driving the right traffic? (assess your traffic sources)
    - is the content relevant, engaging? (see the keywords driving traffic to your site either organic or paid; hit map, time on site, pageviews/visit, split bounce rate by new or returning visitors, by traffic source, etc)
    As Gkrehbiel said above, it is important to observe the trend rather than one isolated data point.
  • Posted by excellira on 8/28/2009 at 8:50 PM Accepted
    Traffic is all over the lot so it is difficult to determine the volume of traffic your site should be generating.

    I have read articles from analytics consultants that indicated that a 25% bounce rate was about the threshold of perfection. That it is extremely difficult to get below that number and that the ROI in doing so isn't there. That doesn't indicate that you can't achieve those numbers. It does mean that it may not be worth the effort in doing so. You could put more effort into other activities that will generate more traffic than the few percentage points of bounce rate that you knocked off.

    Bounce rates on most of the sites I see that aren't highly optimized is in the ~50 to 60% range. Clearly, as with most things, there is room for improvement and anything above that should be a red flag. Either your content isn't aligned with your visitor's interest or you're generating poorly qualified click-throughs with campaigns aimed at the wrong target audience.
  • Posted by excellira on 8/30/2009 at 1:11 PM Member
    Hits are a poor indicator of site traffic. The metric reports every URI request on every page load. So if you have twenty images, etc, on a page then one page load = 20 hits. Under this hypothetical scenario 500 hits divided by 20 = 25 visitors. That's not good performance.

    You'd be better off looking at "visitors" and "unique visitors" which are better indicators of site traffic and don't vary based upon the number of URI on a page.

    Also, there is no good answer. It depends upon your target audience size, the quality of the content on your site, the site's originality, your marketing budget (online and off), and myriad other variables.

    You'd have to do some market research (a/k/a keyword research from an SEO perspsective) and competition analysis before an approximation could be established. You also have to factor in how qualified your visitors are. Are they ready to purchase or are they tire kickers.

    There are simply too many variables.

    My guess however is that if you're asking the question that you aren't pleased with the results and you likely shouldn't be.
  • Posted on 8/31/2009 at 7:59 PM Accepted
    Hi Heman,

    You might try doing some competitive analysis with a tool like Compete or Quantcast. Using these tools can help you compare your sites traffic against similar sites in your niche. When comparing Competes data to my clients Google Analytics accounts, I've found it to be pretty darn close.

    I'm also going to echo excellira in saying that visitors isn't a way to measure the success of a website. Have you got about to setting better Key Peformance Indicators for your website? Perhaps visitors per conversion (i.e. On average how many visitors does it take for your website to get a person to submit a khabar?).
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