Web Traffic

Promote Website is a multi-step process
Each step needs to be managed well.

Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. It is a large portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country. There are many ways to monitor this traffic and the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential lack of bandwidth — not all web traffic is welcome.

Web traffic is measured to see the popularity of web sites and individual pages or sections within a site.

Web traffic can be analysed by viewing the traffic statistics found in the web server log file, an automatically-generated list of all the pages served. A hit is generated when any file is served. The page itself is considered a file, but images are also files, thus a page with 5 images could generate 6 hits (the 5 images and the page itself). A page view is generated when a visitor requests any page within the web site – a visitor will always generate at least one page view (the main page) but could generate many more.

Tracking applications external to the web site can record traffic by inserting a small piece of HTML code in every page of the web site.

The following types of information are often collated when monitoring web traffic:

• The number of visitors.
• The average number of page views per visitor – a high number would indicate that the average visitors go deep inside the site, possibly because they like it or find it useful.
• Average visit duration – the total length of a user's visit. As a rule the more time they spend the more they're interested in your company and are more prone to contact.
• Average page duration – how long a page is viewed for. The more pages viewed, the better it is for your company.
• Domain classes – all levels of the IP Addressing information required to deliver Webpages and content.
• Busy times – the most popular viewing time of the site would show when would be the best time to do promotional campaigns and when would be the most ideal to perform maintenance
• Most requested pages – the most popular pages
• Most requested entry pages – the entry page is the first page viewed by a visitor and shows which are the pages most attracting visitors
• Most requested exit pages – the most requested exit pages could help find bad pages, broken links or the exit pages may have a popular external link
• Top paths – a path is the sequence of pages viewed by visitors from entry to exit, with the top paths identifying the way most customers go through the site
• Referrers; The host can track the (apparent) source of the links and determine which sites are generating the most traffic for a particular page.

Web sites like Alexa Internet produce traffic rankings and statistics based on those people who access the sites while using the Alexa toolbar.

Controlling web traffic:
The amount of traffic seen by a web site is a measure of its popularity. By analysing the statistics of visitors it is possible to see shortcomings of the site and look to improve those areas. It is also possible to increase (or, in some cases decrease) the popularity of a site and the number of people that visit it.

Limiting access
It is sometimes important to protect some parts of a site by password, allowing only authorized people to visit particular sections or pages. Some site administrators have chosen to block their page to specific traffic, such as by geographic location.

Increase web site traffic
Web traffic can be increased by placement of a site in search engines and purchase of advertising, including bulk e-mail, pop-up ads, and in-page advertisements. Web traffic can also be increased by purchasing non-internet based advertising.

Organic traffic
Web traffic which comes from unpaid listing at search engines or directories is commonly known as "organic" traffic. Organic traffic can be generated or increased by including the web site in directories, search engines, guides (such as yellow pages and restaurant guides), software such as DigitalTrafficPuller and award sites.

Traffic overload:
Too much web traffic can dramatically slow down or even prevent all access to a web site. This is caused by more file requests going to the server than it can handle and may be an intentional attack on the site or simply caused by over-popularity. Large scale web sites with numerous servers can often cope with the traffic required and it is more likely that smaller services are affected by traffic overload.

Sudden popularity
A sudden burst of publicity may accidentally cause a web traffic overload. A news item in the media, a quickly propagating email, or a link from a popular site may cause such a boost in visitors (sometimes called Slashdot effect or Digg or Reddit Effect) that overwhelms the site.

Web sites have been forced to close after an unexpected mass increase of traffic, particularly those run by an individual leasing the bandwidth from an ISP or hosting site. Some sites backed by large companies running their own servers have also been caught out by the problems of overpopularity.

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