Analyzing Stats to get More Money and Traffic

magnifying_glass_01.pngMy last bout of traffic analysis resulted in two posts here (long tail searches and one on optimising Adsense positioning) and a bit of extra cash (which is always nice). It was also successful in two other ways, one of which should bring me a bit more traffic and the other a bit of extra income.

Remonetize Popular Content
Using Google Analytics it’s easy to see which of your pages are the most popular. I find you never really know which pages are going to become popular in the search engines but statistical analysis does sort of give you the benefit of hind sight. Once I see a page is bringing in a bit of traffic I’ll revisit it and see if there are any suitable affiliate programs I could promote. You know what people are searching for to find the page so if you can find them a suitable product everybody benefits.


My water slide post is currently getting about 100 visitors per day. Originally it linked out to a gadget store that was selling the featured slide, however as the post is a year old the the product was no longer available and the link just went to an error page. So I’m getting a 100 visitors a day looking for a water slide and I’m sending them off to another site that doesn’t help me or the visitor. Doing a quick search on Amazon came up with a load of results for the term water slide and as Amazon has a nice affiliate program it was just a case of editing the post and adding a link in to Amazon.

This water slide is currently discontinued but there is a whole range of inflatable water slides available from Amazon starting at $24.95.

I only added the link last week and so far I’ve sold a few slides and am giving my visitors what they actually want. As Amazon has such a huge product range it’s great for finding relevant products in many niches, another one to try (with an affiliate program of course) is eBay which probably has a product for sale to suit any site.

Improve SERPs for Popular Pages
When you find a page is getting traffic off the search engines what you want to do is to see if there is a way you could be getting more. Do the search your self and see where your site ranks, in the ideal world you’ll want a top 3 listing with an indented result.

If your page isn’t in the top 3 and you think the term has potential to bring in traffic you can now start optimising by building links to that specific page, both internally and externally. You could add a popular pages section to the side of your site and have a sitewide link to all the pages you want to improve the rankings of and if you own own multiple sites doing a bit of link dropping could certainly help (there is a reason I keep mentioning water slides :) ).

About Al Carlton

Al quit the 9 to 5 rat race in January of 2007, before then he was a software engineer and systems architect of financial system. Nowadays Al spends the days running his various businesses and experimenting with different ideas and opportunities.
Al can be found on twitter at AlCarlton.

Comments

  1. What can I say? you see an opportunity and capitalize on it. I also see the old chikita showing relevant ads which is nice too see too because it encourages the viewer to see other related options.

    Well Done

  2. I really appreciate the real world examples you include in your posts. It really helps to drive home the message. Self Made Minds is my new recomended must read blog.

  3. A network of sites would definitely help in link building. I’ve heard suggested that if you use Google Analytics for all the sites, Google will discount the value of intersite links. Any thoughts on that?

    • I’ve heard that rumor before, whether it be Analytics code or your Adsense ID. I’ve no idea if it’s true but I have found doing the odd relevant(ish) link between sites has given me a SERPs boost.

    • I would’ve thought that if its between two unreleated sites then Google will discount the value of intersite links. But as Al said, if they are related and infrequent then it would improve SERPS

      • Could be a difference in terminology…I’d heard links between two affiliated sites (sites owned by the same person) were discounted. Related sites (sites about the same topic) would certainly be counted higher.

      • I don’t know officially if links from another site owned by the same person are discounted but from experience I have not seen that. Last year a launched a totally unrelated site but dropped a few relevant keywords in a post on my gadget site and linked out to it, I definitely saw a boost in pages indexed and SERPS. Though it could of been coincidence as you never really know with the engines.

        • I find search engines to be quite unpredictable and I am never sure if one thing such as analytics code, or linking from another of my sites effects things. I just link if there is a need and if not I dont bother. I then just leave the search engines to do what they do :)

  4. Great reminder that success does not always come from a single killer idea, rather following up on something that is already working and helping it to work better.

  5. Another great post Al. Seems to me, that you and Scott are really good in what you’re doing. Keep in amazing work!

  6. Intresting post. I really like how you both guys coming with interesting posts.

  7. I like analyzing old pages to see what I could be missing out on. One example was a radio controlled toy which only had affiliate links for UK web sites. About 80 - 90% of my traffic was from the US and pretty much wasted. I tracked down an affiliate link for the US version of the product and that gave somemore great commission.

Trackbacks

  1. […] a lot to be gained from analysing stats but analysing and watching are two very different […]

  2. pligg.com says:

    Analyzing Stats to get More Money and Traffic » Self Made Minds…

    Using Google Analytics it’s easy to see which of your pages are the most popular. I find you never really know which pages are going to become popular in the search engines but statistical analysis does sort of give you the benefit of hind sight….

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