For Optimal Website Health Monitor These Metrics

Posted on the 29 May 2015 by Kharim Tomlinson @KharimTomlinson

There are countless websites on the Internet. If you do not implement the right tools, your website can easily get lost in the crowd. To help it stand out, you can use search engine optimization. Along with SEO, it is important to monitor your site regularly using automation testing tools and other methods. When you are reviewing your site, there are specific metrics that are important to notice.

Traffic

Successful marketing efforts often result in consistent visitors browsing the site. If this traffic decreases, you may need to tweak your strategy. Try to figure out what caused the decrease, and determine what areas on your site are underperforming. You can also compare the traffic on mobile devices and computers to see if one platform isn't working correctly. Once you know the reasons for the decrease, it will be easier to improve your marketing tactics.

There are also occasions when traffic increases. When you experience these results, try to figure out what you are doing right. Then, keep doing it so your traffic continues to improve.

Sessions

Websites that perform well have users that return regularly to visit the site. Various marketing tactics can be implemented to help increase the number of sessions on your site. If the number of sessions decline, then it may be a good idea to change your strategy.

Users

In addition to the number of sessions on your site, it is important to monitor the users that access the site. When you research the data from users, you will be able to determine if SEO is simply driving the traffic or if people are returning because they are engaged in what your site has to offer.

Page Load

If you notice that page load increases, then it may result negatively on your site. When the page load of your site is slow, you risk losing traffic. The conversions on your site are likely to drop as well. To make sure changes in page loads do not affect the health of your site, you can set up automatic alerts. It is a good idea to receive notifications when the page load speed increases by 10 percent or higher. This will allow you to rectify the problem quickly so your site does not suffer.

Crawl Errors

The crawl error report can provide you with a lot of helpful information about the health of your site. You can discover bugs on your site that are difficult to identify. The data can also help you recognize when redirects were missed or if someone is linking to your site with a bad URL. When you are evaluating these errors, pay particular attention to the number of pages crawled each day and the average time it takes to download pages. If you notice a decrease in the number of pages crawled per day or the time to download increases, it is likely that your site has performance issues.

These are just a few of the top metrics to monitor regularly to ensure that your site is performing. Try to evaluate this data regularly and set up automatic notifications so you are always aware of how your site is performing.