Website Statistics

This Wk This Mnth This Yr
Unique Visitors 129 474 482
Page Views 319 992 1024
Listing Views
Search Engine Referrals 118 363 371
Search Engine Indexing 2 2

ok so i had it fixed in the thing, but it didn't want to stay that way. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Depends, do you have the logging setup to filter out your IP, web developer's IP, etc so that those aren't included, while updating something developers have a tendency to check (double check, etc) contributing to some hits?

-J

maybe 10 at most are my own. that is since the site opened a little over a month ago.

Stats viewed in isolation are pretty much meaningless. You need to have an in-depth analysis of exactly where the traffic is coming from, what files are being requested, etc. and that requires access to the raw log files.

Stats are often presented selectively or wrongly in order to make it look like a site is getting lots of traffic so without seeing the stats in-depth - they really mean little.

In the past I often received emails from the clients of one template company wondering why their stats showed they were getting terrific traffic but their site could not be found in any search engine, they had no Alexa rank at all (back when people actually used Alexa), and they received no leads. The template company swears the stats are accurate but all the "signs" say they are not.

This happens a lot and not just with the one template company. Unless you have access to the raw log files I would not focus on the stats - focus on the results you are getting from your site as a measurement of success.

thanks doug! i don't have access to the raw log files. i do on my other site, but i like the look of that one better.

How do you rank with Google/Yahoo/DMOZ ?

-J

how do i figure that out?

Well do you have any results within them... for instance, go to google and type in site:www.buyfredericksburgrealestate.com and see what it comes up with, it will show the pages it has indexed of your site.

-J

hmmmm, nothing as of yet.

According to www.marketleap.com

You've got 18 different specific pages linking to your site.

You've got 1 page in google's index, and 9 in MSN's.

If you're really interested in getting some real useful statistics from your website I'd suggest a user tracking system like XAV's AXS (http://www.xav.com/axs) you put a little bit of HTML at the bottom of each page and you can find out where people are coming from, where they go and how long they stay on certain pages.

thanks realty, i just saw this today. gonna look into that program. can you tell the page ranking from that?

it won't install automatically, and i don't know how to do it otherwise......

I've never used anything but marketleaps online tools so I can't help you much in that respect. MarketLeap doesn't show page rank, but you can check that via numerous websites, search google for "pank rank calculator" or something similar.

edit: I think you're talking about AXS correct? What errors do you get during the automatic install?

Error: cannot complete FTP login.

When logging in to "ftp://www.buyfredericksburgrealestate.com:21" with username KWeisgable and password W******, the server returns the following error: 530 User KWeisgable cannot log in.

Here are the most common reasons for this error:

The username or password you provided is not correct. Usernames and passwords are usually case sensitive. You must provide us with the exact correct ones. (98% of cases)

Your username and password are correct, but you must use a special FTP server for authoring, rather than "www.buyfredericksburgrealestate.com". If this applies to you then your web hosting provider should have given you this special FTP address when you signed up for an account. (1% of cases)

Your web account cannot be authored by FTP. (1% of cases)

i just requested a custom install, so maybe the can do it.

It sounds like the username and password you entered in were incorrect. Does that username and password work for you? Are you sure there are not any errors?

i thought that was the problem too Realty, but i did it on my own, and i logged in. i put in a request for it to be done, it said it may take up to 3 to 4 days, so we will see what i did wrong.

Good luck, post up again if you've got any more questions or problems.

i haven't heard from them yet....gotta love how slow they are.

I've always done the automated install so I can't comment on the speed of service. Keep us posted!

I have been tweaking my site for the past few months and am averaging 2 to 3 calls a week from it. I set the search string to words most people in my area are not using so my site comes up in the top ten. I'm not a website pro by any means but the leads I get from it translate into a great website with a presence.

Mike
www.liveinvisalia.com

You seem to have plenty of website traffic, so the questions you might want to ask are the conversion questions:

Are you converting visitors into clients or subscribers? Are you harvesting contact information? Are you getting feedback and/or inquiries from visitors?

Try using webalizer. It's pretty comprehensive.

I wonder why so many people are interested in "conversion questions"? What does it matter?

If I collect 1,000 visitors email addresses (leads) and sell 1 home, is that better then collecting 100 leads and selling 2 homes, or is selling 2 homes from 10,000 leads better?

My question is... Why do people ask these questions??? Why do people care about conversion rates???

Conversion rates are meaningless! I can get ANYONE 10,000 leads to their website in one month, and I bet you will get NO business from it. But if I got you ONE lead that resulted in 1 closed transaction, wouldn't you like that better? Or lets look at it the other way, I got 100,000 leads to your website last month, and that resulted in 2 closed transactions resulting in $10,000 in commissions. But golly, you only got a .02% conversion rate... is that a bad thing??? or is that a good thing??? If I could accomplish one thing in life, that would be to never be asked again what conversion rate is, or what conversion rate they can expect.

We were gathering TONS of leads (email addresses) per day, but we had search engine optimized our website for the search term "Southern California Real Estate", which got a LOT of hits. But since we ONLY sell in Orange County, a ton of those leads were for areas an hour or more away. We spent too much time trying to contact these leads only to find out we didn't want to work them. (we also wasted too much time referring out dead-ends) When we started targeting ONLY the cities we wanted to work in, our hits went way down, but our business went way up. BUt to even more improve our "conversion rate", we could narrow down our lead collection to only those we KNOW would do business with us, se we could have a 100% conversion rate... but what would that really mean?

The bottom line is, target your website, collect as many targeted email addresses/leads as you can, have a GOOD follow-up program in place, and let the conversion rates fall where they may since they really are meaningless.

I like the free version of WebCeo to check my Keyword rankings

Greg,

Here's a short and simple answer to a long and convoluted question:

People ask conversion questions because they are directly related to the success and profitability of a website.

A true conversion means you've turned a website visitor into a client. It's as simple as that.

Saying "conversion rates are meaningless" is like saying "making money is meaningless."

Of course, your competitors would probably like it if you maintained that attitude (and I'm completely indifferent), so I say keep on trucking!

If that is in any way confusing, let me know and I'll break it down.

"People ask conversion questions because they are directly related to the success and profitability of a website."

of course coverting visitors to $ is the main reason of having a website, but asking conversion percentages, or asking how many covert is meaningless. As stated above, if I told you I have a 3% conversion percent, is that better or worse then you? I may have 2 visitors per month, so it would take me a LONG time to convert 3%. But if I get 400,000 visitors per day, a 3% conversion would be HUGE!

Of course you need to convert, but don't ask what the "norm" is... your conversion ratio really depends on how well your website is constructed to "convert" and how well you target your visitors.

Hello Kassie,
you should add a robots.txt file and block robots from indexing the file 'listingsearch.php'
The appended session-ID is only valid for the user ( in case of a search engine the robot ) and would not work for anyone clicking this indexed link.

Sincerely
Helmut P. Fleischhauer

Another issue that many people neglect to think about... a GREAT website will never, ever make a GREAT Realtor!

If your website is pulling in qualified leads, the REALTOR (and skill/ work ethic, etc) of that REALTOR is what is going to really determine 'conversion' rate. A good website can only provide a large quantity (hopefully) of qualified leads. It's the Realtor who is responsible for the conversion rate of those leads. Last time I looked... websites did not sell homes. People did.

I think many lazy/ inept/ inexperienced realtors think that a website is a magic bullet for business. It's not. A successful real estate website always has a successful realtor behind it.

And on that note I'll reiterate a comment I had made earlier which was so frowned on by the 'experts';

'conversion' is not a closed sale, it is the process of transforming quantity (visitors)into quality (callers). I agree, a website is incapable of making a sale, it can only comfort a visitor that they are making the right decisions in being there.

'Conversion' now has meaning, it's the ability of the site to move people forward in the process.