Top 5 Web Site Statistics to Monitor

When you have a web site of any size or shape, you come to realize that statistics, in various forms, are important to watch.  They let you know how well you are doing, and what type of content seems to be the most popular.  With all the different types of statistics to watch, I thought I would go through the top five that you should keep you eye on the most.

Here are the top five web site statistics to keep your eye on:

1. Visitors – This might be the most important ‘bit of information you get on your web site.  You always want to know how many visitors your web site is getting, plain and simple.
2. Most Popular Pages and Posts – Which web pages on your web site are getting the most hits, and which are not doing so well?  Look at popular pages and their traffic sources to figure out what your doing right and how to best repeat your success.
3. Who Links to You? – Which web sites out there on the Web are sending you the most traffic?  Is it Google? Digg? Delicious? If you notice it is another like-minded web site, you might even try to partner up with them for more link exchanges in the future.
4. Keyword Based Traffic – Looking over your search engine traffic, what keywords seem to be coming up most often?  Are they the keywords you are targeting or something different?  This will give you a good idea of the type of keywords you should be targeting too.
5. Bounce Rate – The bounce rate of a web site tells you the percentage of initial visitors who move on to a new web site, leaving yours.  In a perfect world, you want that number to be as low as possible.  The reason for this is that the lower your bounce rate is, the longer people are staying on your web site and not going elsewhere.

I hope this help to both explain these statistics a little better, and helps you know what type of analytical data you need to monitor on a daily or weekly basis. Know of any other data that it is important to keep an eye on?  Leave your thoughts on the comments.