7 Tips and Tools for Monitoring Your Site Visits

What do Amazon, eBay, and BestBuy all have in common? They all rank in the list of top 10 successful sites based on visitors. Another important aspect to consider is that they’re all eCommerce sites.

This shows that monitoring the website traffic is fundamental in tracking your business’ growth.

The information can give you valuable insights into your current strategy. You can learn more about your audiences, such as their activities and interests. It also allows you to implement new strategies as you see fit.

There are many reasons why it can increase or decrease. But how will you know which factors drive your website’s growth?

There are plenty of tools online that can give you data, but you need to know how to read them. Read on to find out the ways you can monitor your site visits.

Know Your Competitors

You can gauge your site’s performance better when you compare it with other websites.

Don’t compare it to every random website you know. You have to figure out first who your competitors are.

Your competitors should be those in the same industry as you. To find out which ones are your biggest threats, search for the top keywords that lead visitors to your site. Then, pay attention to the top results.

Try this out using different keywords. The most common websites that appear in the top results are your competition. These companies are the ones you should observe.

Check Your Competitors’ Websites

Now it’s time to visit those websites.

You want to see how the website looks, how fast the pages load, and what kind of content it produces. If the website ranks higher than your company’s website, check how it is different from yours.

Does it have a better user interface? Does the site display better on mobile phones? Do they publish content more often?

Look for common factors amongst the sites you observe. Once you’ve determined these factors, you may apply these to your website.

You may have to publish more engaging articles. You may have to redesign your site’s navigation. With over 2.53 billion smartphone users worldwide, does your site feature a responsive design?

Compare Websites Using Alexa

Alexa is a free online tool that gives you a website’s ranking worldwide and in the United States. You can use it to gauge how your website fares against your competitors.

But Alexa is more than a ranking tool. You can now get various information about a website, such as the engagement rates, visitors’ countries, the visitors’ metrics, and such.

You’ll see the top keywords that send traffic to the site. And you’ll also know what percentage of its traffic comes from search engines.

If you subscribe to its plans, you get access to a whole lot more data and services. You can use their SEO tools, Site Comparison tool, and Competitive Analysis Tools.

Similarly, you can use these on your own website as well.

Research Organic Keywords

Ahrefs is a good tool for researching organic keywords. You can use it to determine keywords for your website or to analyze your competitors’ keywords.

It can list keywords that a website ranks for. And it also shows which phrases have high potential to get your web pages to rank high on search engines.

Aside from keyword research, it also has useful tools for comparing websites.

The Content Gap tool allows you to put your competitors and apply filters. With it, you can learn about which keywords your competitors rank for, but you don’t.

You can see what keywords rank high for any/at least two/all of the targets but not for you. With these filters, you might find new keywords to use in your articles.

Use Google Analytics to Analyze Site Visits

Google Analytics is a popular tool for analyzing your own website’s traffic. It has several tools you can use to have more accurate data on how your website is performing.

You can track your users’ activity on your website and even where they’re coming from. See how much time they spend on your site and which pages they usually visit.

Everything you need to learn about your site visits, you’ll find on Google Analytics. You can use the data to see which campaigns are effective and which topics interest the visitors the most.

Use SimilarWeb for Your Competitors

You can’t use Google Analytics to analyze your competitor’s websites. That’s where SimilarWeb comes in. It’s simple to use, yet it provides a large data set.

It’s similar to Alexa, but it has more advantages. It provides detailed insights about other websites’ site visits, such as the bounce rate, average time on site, and more.

You can see compare up to 3 different websites in one go (more if you have the Pro version). You’ll see the engagement rate, traffic sources, rankings, and more.

Subscribe to Newsletters and Social Media

Make sure you continually observe your competitors and their efforts. Besides checking their websites’ data, you can subscribe to their newsletters. Make a new email account solely for this reason so you won’t have to get clutters on your personal email.

Using this method keeps you updated on their marketing tactics for getting more site visits. It also alerts you to any topics that your target audience may also enjoy.

You should also monitor their social media accounts if they have any. Check how active they are and how many followers they have. And see how they engage with their audience.

These can also alert you to any changes to their strategy or to the company itself. You may have to come up with a new approach to compete.

Learn New Materials

As with any other businesses, you have to keep up with new things to learn. You can’t have a good strategy without considering every factor. And one strategy doesn’t work forever.

Visit our blog to learn more about measuring important metrics. There is also other useful knowledge for increasing traffic, implementing SEO strategies, monetizing your website, and more.

Don’t limit yourself to what you currently know. Keep learning new trends to help your website grow and increase your site visits.