Like any sales or financial report, your website analytics is another tool that every business owner should consider. One of the reports that you should be looking at, outside basic stats like sessions, bounce rate, and key phrases used to find your website, is the report that helps you determine your best performing landing pages.
It looks like this when viewing it from Search Engine searches, meaning these are the pages that are most popular from basic searches:
You can see how the first 3 listings are pages are blog posts. I can see that, most likely, my homepage gets the most traffic while a blog post, ‘How Your Website Drives Your Marketing Strategy,’ and our portfolio. Then it’s my post on the latest changes to Yoast plugin and a post on blogging, then 6th is the page about our web hosting services.
After this, I like to look at another set of landing page stats that shows me which pages and posts are getting ‘hits’ from all channels like referral pages, social media, or a direct link from a PDF or email, as well as searches.
If your website goals are falling flat, these are the stats you might want to look at. These pages can you tell what folks are most interested in learning more about. It can help drive your blogging strategy.
So let’s get to the reporting and what to look for on your landing page.
1. First, which landing page serves as a homepage?
Many of our web design clients spend so much time working on their homepage; the index page. But, the homepage maybe gets about 50 – 70% of your traffic. The rest go to interior pages or landing pages. So as yourself, “Does my landing page capture my audiences’ s attention?” Everything on that page needs to support the purpose of the page.
2. Then, are the landing pages performing?
This is important to decide after you’ve identified which pages are your top ten pages or posts. Bounce rates and whether a goal was accomplished can help figure out if a landing page needs some help. Some indicators include:
bounce rate
time spent on the page
percentage of new visitors
goal completion
3. Ask then how well is your SEO campaign is working?
These numbers are key if you are specifically advertising on different websites or working on certain key phrase sets. The landing page can tell you if either is working. For example, I can tell on my website that the phrase ‘houston web design’ is sending about 7% of my traffic while I have optimized my homepage for this phrase as well as worked hard on my blogs to send traffic to it. I’ve also included the phrase ‘web design firm’ in various websites that link back to me.
4. Finally, who or what is sending you traffic?
What is sending you traffic is just as important as who. The referral traffic from different websites as well as social media and email marketing can help you determine your landing page effectiveness while attached to a goal. For example, if you’re running a social media campaign, you’d expect to see more referral traffic from the social networks you used, like Facebook or Twitter. I can see the traffic from when I shared a blog post to fans. I can see the click-throughs to my landing pages and how long they stayed.
Since 1999, Christina has been designing and building exceptional websites partnering with small businesses to help them grow and increase revenue. With many years of experience in creating thousands of websites, she understands the need for continuing education in her field and, therefore, is constantly learning and teaching others about internet marketing and digital processes. In addition to her ability as a digital marketer, Christina serves as a coach and mentor with WPElevation to other digital marketing freelancers, helping them grow their businesses. She is a sponsor and co-leader of Houston's WordPress Meetup. Recently, she spearheaded the next
Houston WordCamp 2020 as its coordinator after a 10 year hiatus. She is currently President of the Houston Interactive Marketing Association.
