Web Analytics-Glossary of Terms | Content Writing.Blog
Commonly Used Terms For Web Analytics
In the field of digital marketing whether you are a marketing professional, SEO, or a small business owner, you are committed in the web analytics or audits. Therefore, you need to understand and possess the basic knowledge of terms in use. This list of web analytics Glossary of Terms will be, definitely of great help.
I have divided the glossary of terms into different parts as under:-
- Building blocks
- Site performance
- Search engine optimization
- Strategy
- On site analytics
- General Terms
Building blocks
For any online business your website is central for your visibility on internet. For that incorporate your website with social media, online content on other websites like posting guest blogs, your own blog and presence in the SERP. So as, your website presence is visible to the visitors across the globe, rather, not limit to your website only. You achieve all this task by building blocks. These are:-
Strategy:
Strategy is the part of development and for building a website you design the strategy for it. It is the blueprint or an outline to exchange information, between your organization and your customers. It is the clearly defined explanations as, HOW you will achieve the organizational goals, by following a set path and taking appropriate actions, as detailed in the plan.
Social media Presence:
Social media is not only a Facebook, rather, social media is any channel that enables you to foster real relationship online and be social able with your customers. It is to share your message, by using any of the social media i.e. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, LinkedIn, Xing, Renren, Google+, Disqus, LinkedIn pulses, Snapchat, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twoo, MyMFB, Instagram, Vine, what’sApp, Meeetup, Medium.
Website Plan:
In the plan, you make the direction in place, as provided in the strategy. Your website plan should answer following questions:-
- What do you want that your website to achieve? (Goals).
- Where and who all are your audience?
- Expectations of your customers, what they want from your website?
- How could your website make the life of your customer easier?
- Who all are your competitors in the industry?
- Is your plan simple, clear and actionable?
Website building:
To create the website that realizes and reflects the vision of your organization. To add further, an idea of what you are trying to achieve by building this website. Get the help of a professional.
Website Promotion:
It’s often thought that as the website is successfully launched and the job is over. In actual fact, the job has just begun. To get the organization online is one thing and getting it found is another. For that you have to promote your website using different channels.
Website Monitoring:
Your website is functional but to check whether you are right on the path of improvement. For that, you have to measure the progress. Use following:-
- Set the KPIs (key performance Indicators).
- Monitor your website performance: Google analytics is the best tool and free of cost. It will measure the range of metrics.
- Measure social media performance: It will help you to understand the reach and impact of your social media campaigns. Use the tools.
Site Performance
Page Rank:
It works by counting the number and quality links to a page to determine how important website is, it is the link analysis algorithms.
Load Time:
this is the time in seconds taken by the search engine to load a page from initiative (click on link) to completion of load of page in the browser window.
Site Audit:
To review the website and assessing its performance on various criteria, to fulfill the objectives. Types of site audit are, SEO audit, security audit and competitive audit or as asked by the stake holder.
Up-time:
It is the measure of website view able and usable time. Downtime on a site is taken as poor customer experience, as well as loss of revenue
Search Engine Optimization
Anchor Text:
It is the highlighted text in a hyper link that is used to click and open a webpage linked in the hyperlink. To improve the search performance always use keywords rich anchor text. As the search engines use the anchor text to decide what the linked page is about.
Broken Link:
Any hyperlink that is not pointing to its original destination is taken as a broken link. Broken links present a poor UX (user experience) and waste of resources of crawlers. As a result, it will affect the website’s placement in search engine ranking.
Cookie:
Website directs a small text file on a visitor’s computer while they are browsing a website. These are used to track returning/repeat visitors.
Crawlers/Spiders/bots:
These are the programs, those continuously visit website, read their pages and information to create the index into the search engine server.
Crawlers Error:
When crawlers is unable to view or index the website for any technical reason.
Dead End Page:
Dead end page presents a poor experience to the visitor, as that page includes no links, so the visitor has to click back button to stay on a website. It makes the navigation difficult for the visitor and consequently, visitor may abandon the site.
Duplicate Content:
When multiple URLs serve the same content across different URLs on a website. It leads to poor placement in search result because these waste search engine resources in collecting and processing the information.
Low word Count:
A page with little or no text. It also receive poor placement by the search engine.
Meta Tags:
It is the coding statement in the HTML that describes some sort of content of the web page i.e. Title tag, Meta description, H1, H2.
Redirects:
It is the process where one page is available under more than one URL address but search engine visits the page only redirected. Any way too many redirects may be avoided. As it results in lower search engine performance.
Robot.txt:
Is the text file linked in the HTML code if the website and uploaded to a website director. It contains the instructions to the crawlers and spiders to crawl the website or restrict crawlers to your entire website or portion of the website. With this you can prevent the website from indexing, find duplicate content or any other pages that should not be indexed which may affect the performance of a website.
Search Engine Optimization:
It is the process to put on-page, off-page and technical structure in order as required by the webmaster, Instructions in Google and by other search engines. If the site is structured in line with the webmaster instructions, it will attract more number of visitors to a particular website hence website appears high on the list of SERP.
Server Errors:
It indicates major problems with the content of your site and the server is unable to sand the requested page in the browser.
Strategy
Benchmark:
It is the performance metric which presents the comparison between yours’s and competitor’s to achieve the higher results.
Reach-ability:
The metric to measure the easiness for visitors and search engine crawlers to find the information they are looking for. A well-structured and well linked site has great reach-ability; search engine will evaluate it as important for the visitors.
Stickiness:
It is term used to describe the ability of website, to retain the visitor. It is measured as:-
- Number of pages visited in one session.
- Time spent on the website by the visitor.
It can be achieved by the relevant, unique and quality content which is valuable to the visitors. It must have well-structured pages and appropriately linked.
Competitive Intelligence:
To make the strategic marketing decisions to have advantage over your competitors. You used to gather, analyze and distribute the competitor’s business data, this is called competitive intelligence.
Onsite Analytics
Click Through:
It is click on a link which leads to the page of your site or some other website.
Click through Rate:
Is the percentage of people who access a hyperlink (usually an ad) online. The click through rate is calculate by taking the number of clicks your link/ad receives divided by the number of times your link/ad was shown (impression).
Direct Referral:
Visit by the visitors to the website, directly typing the URL into the browser. Links saved as bookmarks or un-tagged links within the emails if clicked, will be termed as direct referral.
Entry Page:
The first page that a visitor arrives on a website from another domain.
Exit Page:
The last page that a visitor accesses during a visit before leaving the website.
Landing Page:
Landing page refers to as a page designed for a single objective and intended to identify the beginning of user experience as a result of defined marketing effort.
Link Referrals:
Number of all referrals from the links, referred from other website (not by the search engine or social media) during a selected time period.
Time on Site:
The average length of visit to a website during a selected time period.
Related Links:
Other sites that are related to the site you are searching for. Related sites may be receiving the traffic from similar keywords, have a similar audience or are frequently cited together on web pages.
Session:
A record of single visitor browsing a website during a particular time period. This may include multiple page views, events, eCommerce, and transactions. Once session was initiated it ends after 30 minutes of inactivity for example; if the in activity was for 29 minutes and you again started interacting then this will be counted as same single session.
Social Referral:
Number of all referrals from social networks in a selected period of time.
Top Viewed Pages:
All pages that were most viewed during a selected time period.
Visits by Country:
Visits to a Website over a period of time, broken down into by the country of the visitor.
General Terms
Bounce Rate:
The percentage of visitors who abandons from the site after viewing only one page in a particular website.
Conversion:
An activity or response to a Call-to-Action where visitor fulfills the desired outcome. (i.e. Purchase, Subscribe to a newsletter).
Hit (Page Hit):
It is the retrieval of image or text from a web server.
Impression:
The number of times a piece of content is presented to visitor and viewed by him (like an online advertisement).
Keyword:
Is a particular word or phrase that describes the content of a web page. Keywords are the queries or clues asked by the visitors from the search engine to search relevant information or content for him.
New Visitor:
Any Visitor reaching the website first time.
Organic Reach:
Search results generated, not through the paid advertisements.
Page Views:
It is an activity of internet user, to visit a particular page on a site.
Page View per Visit:
The average number of pages viewed by the visitor over a certain period of time.
Returning Visitor:
A visitor who visits the site for multiple of time.
Unique Visitor:
A unique visitor refers to the number of distinct individuals requesting pages from website during a given period, regardless of how often they visit. (Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_user
Web analytics:
The measurements, collection of data for the purpose of understanding and optimizing web page. It is the study of web usage behavior.
References: https://blog.alexa.com/full-glossary-web-analytics-terms-know/