How Do I Know If My Website Is A Good Idea? Are Analytics The Only Way To Know?

by Stu48
49 replies
Hi Warriors,

So I've started my new website.

Since Oct. 24th, I've had the following...

- 1487 Users, 1326 New Users
- 4779 page views
- Avg Session Duration 3:19
- Bounce Rate 71.93%

I've been all over Twitter, Reddit (I don't think Reddit is really my target audience), and a bit of Facebook.

Is using Analytics as a metric the only way to know if my site is good or not?

I don't have any comments on my site, yet.

Any input?
#analytics #good #idea #website
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  • Profile picture of the author Brent Stangel
    What's the goal of the site?

    Is it meeting that goal?

    Brent
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    • Profile picture of the author Stu48
      My goal is to have 5000 visitors a day by June. That's the only goal I have set.

      Unfortunately, most of the traffic I have been receiving is from reddit, which doesn't seem to really be my target audience. My organic traffic is almost non existent for some reason (I've done all the seo stuff) and my facebook is even worse (organic).

      I know I have to persevere, that's not the problem...I just don't have a point of reference to know where I'm at.
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      • Profile picture of the author Frank Donovan
        Originally Posted by Stu48 View Post

        My goal is to have 5000 visitors a day by June.
        For what purpose? Are you selling a product? Are you an affiliate? Selling advertising? Do you just want the attention?

        Give us something to work with here.
        .
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        • Profile picture of the author Stu48
          Okay,

          It's a site for men. I have categories such as sports, fitness, success, history, and others that men will be interested in.

          Each post has a hand picked YouTube video (usually current and popular) or infographic. I title the post based on the video or infographic and then follow up with written advice related to the video or infographic.

          For example, I recently posted a video about NHL hockey comebacks. After the video, I wrote how you can come back from your personal adversities using examples and strategies. Sometimes, the video has a hidden message that I reveal in the advice I give.

          For now, I am trying to gt traffic. I am planning on using the Amazon Affiliate program and perhaps other programs. Maybe advertising. I guess I'll have to experiment.

          I want my site to get tons of traffic and make a lot of money. That's the purpose.
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          • Profile picture of the author LEE BYRON
            Your niche is a little it broad, obviously fitness and history are the two different niches
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  • Profile picture of the author Aurthur mike
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    • Profile picture of the author Stu48
      Like?

      I thought the only way to get organic traffic was through articles.
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      • Profile picture of the author Aurthur mike
        No, You can promote your website to targeted people
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        • Profile picture of the author Stu48
          Okay. How? I've pretty much explained my business model.

          Are you suggesting going on forums, guest posting..?
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  • Profile picture of the author Aurthur mike
    You can go on forums, guest posting also promote your website on social media platforms such as facebook, instagram,etc
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    • Profile picture of the author Stu48
      Doing the social media thing. Guest posting and forums doesn't fit what I'm doing.
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      • Profile picture of the author ishaq amin
        Originally Posted by Stu48 View Post

        Doing the social media thing. Guest posting and forums doesn't fit what I'm doing.
        You say you've done the SEO thing, but what do you mean by that?


        Sounds like you think you've got niche site but you haven't. You're targeting a lot of keywords a lot of which, will probably have high organic traffic due to them being sport and fitness related.

        Facebook is probably a good way to go, paid advertising. If people like the topics then they will probably save the site and pop back for entertainment.



        The whole point of guest posts and forums is to get good back links to help your site rank in search engines. No point saying it doesnt fit what you're doing. You cant just launch a website and expect to hit 5k visitors a day with such a broad information base and not wanting to maximise your SEO or outreach.
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        • Profile picture of the author Stu48
          I think the biggest problem I created for myself is the fact that I have about 15 niches on my site.

          It's not focused enough with regards to keywords and content.

          'Jack of all trades, master of nothing."

          Perhaps if I focused the site down to one niche that would help?

          For example, all the categories lead back to my advice that I relate back to the media content. Maybe, I should turn the site more into 'self development for men', I can reduce the categories to 'money', 'relationships', 'success', instead of what I already have (sports, history, science, dating, animals, cars, people, entertainment, hobbies, etc...).
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      • Profile picture of the author Aurthur mike
        But if you do social media promotion for your site you will get your accurate result
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  • Profile picture of the author Gambino
    You've said you've done all of the SEO stuff. What do you mean by that? I'm afraid there's no SEO checklist that you can do once and rank in the top 10 of search engines. If there was, every site would rank in the top 10.

    It's really impossible to say whether it's a profitable idea or not since you're not set up for profits. Why are you waiting to monetize the site? All it takes is one visitor to make a sale.

    I create branded ecommerce sites. And I always create the shop even when I don't have products (inventory is typically comparatively expensive). Once people start ordering, I buy the products and scale up.

    My advise is to start monetizing it, if your goal is to make money with it. It also probably isn't a terrible idea to scale down the site to a more narrow scope. You can always add new categories as you grow.
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    • Profile picture of the author Stu48
      Great suggestions Gambino.

      I will start on the monetization. I like your idea of scaling down the site, but I have tons of readily available content in all a variety of categories.

      Maybe I'll try to narrow the focus of the site and if that doesn't work, narrow down the categories.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jason Kanigan
    I would look into affiliate offers relevant to your target audience and the content you're creating. Integrate those into your posts.
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    • Profile picture of the author Stu48
      Actually Jason,

      That's what spurred on the idea for my site. My initial idea is to integrate affiliate offers by melding them into the categories.

      Good advice.
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Hayman
    I think you should choose the right set of keywords that actually targets the men category in sports and fitness as you stated above. Relevant content posting on various platforms actually works in the ranking of the website and gathering the appropriate traffic.
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  • If many people subscribe to your newsletter then your site is good. Another way to gauge the popularity is the amount of comments or shares or likes that your site have.
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  • Profile picture of the author ZacherySh
    In many of the websites users visit but leave your website from the landing page without browsing any further, it affects your website performance. So, Check the bounce rate and try to add more content and Q&A part in that.
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  • If you want to traffic on your website, so social media is the best for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author schwartz
    Try to add related content on the landing pages of your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author roberthull99
    I'm not an expert on all types of online business, but my personal opinion would be that it's a bad idea to try and build a business around getting lots of traffic to your site and trying to monetize it via the likes of affiliate programs.

    This was OK back in the day were free traffic was easy to get and reliable, and paid traffic was cheap.

    But nowadays free traffic is unpredictable as hell, and paid traffic is expensive as hell.

    I would advise finding a business model where you don't rely on free traffic at all, and you only focus on paid traffic. With paid traffic being so expensive, you need to have multiple high mark-up products, rather than affiliate offers where you make a coupla bucks per sale.
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    • Profile picture of the author Stu48
      Good point. Where is the middle ground?

      I wouldn't want to build up a website (property) and pump money into it only to sell someone else's products (i.e. affiliate). I want to build my own house on my own property, especially if I'm pumping money into it.
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      • Profile picture of the author Gambino
        Originally Posted by Stu48 View Post

        Good point. Where is the middle ground?

        I wouldn't want to build up a website (property) and pump money into it only to sell someone else's products (i.e. affiliate). I want to build my own house on my own property, especially if I'm pumping money into it.
        Personally, I start by building search engine traffic. Then, once I have free traffic coming in and it's generating a profit, I look to test and scale with paid traffic.

        When I add a new product, I usually start adding the content and working on SEO 6+ months before we actually have the product to sell.

        A lot of people learned a tough lesson when their traffic was dependent on search engine traffic and google changed their algorithm and pretty much knocked websites into complete irrelevance overnight. The best option is to have multiple streams of traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author karenwp
    You need to work on your SEO all the time. It is not something that you do once, and you are done with it. You should never stop working on it.
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  • Google is the most used search engine but it is extremely hard to get a good page ranking unless you spend lots on SEO or do a lot of research for the least competitive key words.


    To get traffic on facebook you need to be interacting with people because fb has programed their algorithm to use Signals That Heavily Favor Active Interactions such as comments and likes, so when you post on your facebook timeline, it doesnt matter whether you have 5 or 5000 friends, if no one has liked or commented on that post very few people will see it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Stu48
    So I checked my analytics.

    Since Oct 24, I've had almost 2000 new visitors and about 6000 page views.

    The bad news is that I only have 6.03% returning visitors.

    I think this is a metric that should concern me.

    Any thoughts?
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    • Profile picture of the author Gambino
      Originally Posted by Stu48 View Post

      The bad news is that I only have 6.03% returning visitors.

      I think this is a metric that should concern me.

      Any thoughts?
      Doesn't really concern me considering most of the traffic seems to be YouTube traffic, I assume.

      What page(s) are they viewing and have you retargeted them?
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      • Profile picture of the author Stu48
        It's not YouTube traffic.

        About 90% is social media, reddit and twitter.

        They are viewing a wide variety of pages. Out of the 148 posts, I have 12 that stand out.

        What do you me by retargeting them?
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        • Profile picture of the author Gambino
          Originally Posted by Stu48 View Post

          What do you me by retargeting them?
          I mean tracking them with some sort of pixel (Facebook, for example) and then remarketing to them with a discount to buy or a lead magnet to capture their email.

          https://www.abetterlemonadestand.com/facebook-retargeting-ads/

          But, I guess it doesn't really matter until you find what product(s) you're going to offer.
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          • Profile picture of the author Stu48
            Since my site contains articles from a variety of 'guy' categories, I will link to products in those categories.
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            • Profile picture of the author Gambino
              Originally Posted by Stu48 View Post

              Since my site contains articles from a variety of 'guy' categories, I will link to products in those categories.
              Just my guess here since I don't know your site or what products you're promoting. But, it doesn't really sound direct or profitable enough to make work with retargeting ads.

              I could be wrong, and it may be worth looking into.

              But basically, someone would have to visit your site, be retargeted, click that link, read your article and make a purchase. Then, you would only make some percentage of the product that you sell.

              So, really depends on your margins and I would try to figure out a more direct way to do it. Maybe capture their email with a retargeting ad and then send out offers and articles containing links.
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  • Profile picture of the author The Postman
    That's not sustainable. the business model is already flawed. How are you going to make money with this thing? I'd rethink the whole business model and start over.
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    • Profile picture of the author Hersh
      Why is that?

      Affiliate marketing can work if the social media marketing works.
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    • Profile picture of the author Stu48
      Yes, affiliate marketing was an option but not my first choice. This is something I've discussed in another thread here.

      I guess it might have to be ads and/or affiliate marketing.
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  • Profile picture of the author Volt
    Look at similar sites to yours and compare.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jamel Hassell
    Run a site speed test on pingdom to help you identify and sought out the buggs.

    Secondly make sure that your pages are easy to navigate and optimize .
    Thirdly ,document ,create value driven content ,share it to build up a buzz around your brand.Thirdly entice your readers to comment on your post.Make it fun .if You want people to comment on your post give them a good reason to do it .Remember it is like a transaction so there has to be value in the proposition whether it be content that solves their issue ,a prize a contest of some sought. Get creative !
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  • Profile picture of the author Suraj Ukarde
    Check the reviews of your site
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  • Profile picture of the author LEE BYRON
    In terms of your current traffic, I think Google Analytics is the best tool for you.
    As your traffic grows in future, you can try to use Crazyegg, this is the heat-map tools with helping you analyze what is the best content and what is the worst content for your visitors.
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    I am huge on trusting my gut Stu, to the exclusion of numbers on a screen. 1 click to my blog shows it kinda works If your site feels amazing, if it keeps you up at night with fun-passion, you will succeed as surely as night follows day. Same force drives each.
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  • Profile picture of the author ifmcinstitute
    First check seo of your site. Use all targeted keywords related to men, fitness, sports etc. in your site. Share your site to all social media groups. Share blog and articles of your site to forums, other groups and improve your off page seo. Ask people to do comment on your website.
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  • Profile picture of the author amuro
    No.

    Finding out what your readers and even email subscribers - if you have a list and landing page - are just as important.

    Because at the end of the day, you need people to see your content and buy your offer.

    In order for you to make money.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ela Balbuena
    Yes. SEO Analytics is the key. You can do it in SEOQuake, its free. Then analysize your website status and do a campaign plan to improve your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author Robert X
    You're website is like Sears, which tried to sell everything, now they're going outta business.

    Why? Because other stores began to laser focus on specific niches (i.e. Best Buy, Mattress stores,Starbucks)
    You should start with one category. It's way easier to target ONE niche topic and people interested in that one topic rather than trying to target all men.

    Who would your target market be anyway?

    Robert C
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  • Profile picture of the author jashon
    You can get organic traffic through guest posting, articles and press release.
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  • Profile picture of the author luciesmazanska
    The way to identify your website is a good idea is depend upon the kind of stuffs you are selling in case its a ecommerce website,what kind of contents you are publishing in case its a information website and yes the audience whom you are addressing play a big role, as these days youngsters access the internet more oftenly.
    Analytics is just a way to identify the bottlenecks and what kind of resposne you are getting on your website and from which geographical location people are accessing your contents, it can give you in depth details.
    To gain more insight about your website you can create a only form or survey and can ask people to vote or give reponse to that survey.
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    ★★★★★
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    Your website is a good idea if the goal for it is making money.

    If you're not making money over a significant period of time, and you tested and tweaked and did everything you could to make it successful... and it's still not profitable... then i would say you don't have a "good website".

    But some peoples' idea of a "good website" is based on non-monetary reasons. What are your reasons?
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