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 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.