Analyzing Page Views per Visitor by Source
Posted on February 10, 2008 by
Adie 
Internet Marketing, Promotion 
24 Comments
I was doing my daily Analytics check this morning when I noticed something that reminded me of this post from about a month back. It analyzes the differences between getting Digg frontpaged and getting noticed by an A-list blogger. I decided to take a closer look at this idea using my own site as a reference for a sort of case study.
Amit makes a lot of good points in this article. Some of which are links from A-list bloggers generate more active and friendly users (check). Digg generates more overall traffic but results in a ton of Dig and leave visitors (check). Digg users click less ads (check, although they still click, just less).
Taking a Closer Look - Page Views by Source
I think one of the best ways to compare the quality of Digg traffic vs A-list blogging links (as well as other sources) would be to compare the Page Views per Visitor of each of my top 10 referrals.
This list is sorted from top to bottom by the number of overall referrals. Digg is my main referrer with over 60,000 unique referrals, yet it has almost the lowest Page Views per Visitor. That’s to be expected since most Diggers visit for one article and leave. Next on the list is direct (people who go straight to NBB from their browser) which has a slightly better PV/V, but not great. This can also be explained: many direct visitors are repeat visitors who have already seen much of the previous content. So most of them come just for the new updates which I show the full text of on my frontpage.
Another interesting thing is that visitors who found my site via Google really stuck around. The average Google visitor browsed at least 2 pages. But this isn’t really a surprise because we all know that organic traffic is the best kind of traffic - that’s webmastering 101. What is actually important to notice, however, is that the only other top 10 referrer that generated over 2 PV/V was John Chow. Most of my active referrals from John come from commenting on his blog, but I also did a guest appearance there yesterday which accounts for some of the traffic. I’m not sure if John is exactly “A-list” but he’s certainly well-known, and I’m sure he’s on someone’s list. We’ll call him an A minus blogger.
One last thing to point out is that StumbleUpon (another social bookmarkingish site) visitors averaged 1.8 PV/V. I was a little surprised at this especially since most of my SU traffic comes in 2-300 bursts over an hour or two at a time and then sputters out for a couple of days.
Conclusion
If you absolutely have to prioritize where you want your traffic to come from I’d have to say: 1) search engines, 2) A-listers, 3) social networking/media. But why be so cut and dry anyway? If you don’t learn anything from me, take this with you - all traffic is usually good traffic. Why settle for just a link on an A-list blog when you can get one on Digg too? Diversify your marketing plans and you will succeed. If you focus in and settle on one strategy, you’ll fail more often than not.
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Definitely had the same result when I commented quite a bit on John’s site in Jan. I missed out Feb, but will be back in March - John I hope you reset your counters :-)
I feel the same on Digg driven traffic.
Any pointers to people who say that Digg traffic works for them - yet to find even one posting on those lines :(
Digg traffic definitely works for me - just not as well as organic or direct link traffic.
I can’t agree with you more. It’s challenging trying to include your top 3 methods, but it is well worth your time. I spend probably about 4 hours of my day bookmarking, commenting, visiting new sites, and interacting with new bloggers. It’s helped get us this far.
I’ve never used stumble upon, but someone stumbled a post on one of my blogs and it brought a lot of visitors. I should sign up for an account to see how it works, but I assume links get shown to a lot of people based on some sort of preferences?
The only down side from signing up is that you have to download their toolbar. I’m still pretty new to it though. There might be a way to sign up without having to download it…dunno. I wan’t able to do it.
Shotgun approach - always worked for me.
A nice article, I’ve got a somewhat different question though; how did you generate that graph? When I go to Google Analytics, check out the ‘Referring Source’ page and select the ‘P/Visit’ column, I still see percentages in the graph, whereas you have nice pagevisits, would you might enlightening me? Thanks in advance.
It is amazing to see how much emphasis some people put into digg when they could be putting that emphasis into other blogs within their niche.
Nice. My digg and Google traffic has picked up as well (but at a smaller scale than yours). I’m starting to get the hang of SEO. I think my posts are a bit long, but I don’t think it scares anyone away (at least I hope not). And it looks like guest blogging helped you out nicely as well.
BTW, you have 666 subscribers. *evil*
I know, derrich. The funniest part is this isn’t the first time I’ve had 666 subscribers for a day -_-
Excellent post and yes, diversifying traffic is a must.
Analyzing Page Views per Visitor by Source…
I was doing my daily Analytics check this morning when I noticed something that reminded me of this post from about a month back. It analyzes the differences between getting Digg frontpaged and getting noticed by an A-list blogger. I decided to take a …
Some very good insight here. While I strive for organic traffic, lately I’ve been trying to get some links from other blogs in my niche, and it’s been working out pretty good so far.
That’s great to hear. It really is nice to hear bloggers networking with each other.
I believe that commenting on blogs can help as long as your comments are useful and not just SPAM type comments. If your not involved in the conversation or wanting to relay a question or comment that can help you or someone else then you are just wasting your time.
That’s very true. I’ve gotten up to an additional 100 uniques per day per blog when I consistently comment on larger blogs.
[…] Blog has a good post on using Google analytics to see what traffic sources bring the most […]
It is normal that search engine traffic is best. That is because it is more focused on what the user wants.
That’s true. Unfortunately it seems to be the hardest to get as well :)
[…] wrote about analyzing effect referrals a little while ago by analyzing page views per visitor by source. Today I’m going to talk about something else using analytics - increasing your […]
Very nice stats, lots of google organic traffic, keep good work.
I think its fair to call John Chow an A lister. His blog is very popular.
The traffic stats are very interesting. Digg users do seem to convert less, but the sheer volume still makes it a valuable resource.
My top referrer is Google, followed by Yahoo, with Social Media coming in third.
As for pageviews, i have yet to DEEPLY look at this. I should note that i’m referring to my main blog (Groovy Vegetarian) with the above data. I use GA for my stats, and am learning more about it everyday.
Nice case study . Search engine traffic or organic traffic is indeed the best when you are counting your visitors to stay on your site for a longer period . But only one source can not be relied on always . It is just like relying on one income source which is way to risky for your business .