Greetings.
I want to remind everyone that the newsletters are also online at
http://www.CCFDesign.com/asp/webdesign/newsletters/.
There is also a link at the bottom of my home page (almost hidden), so you can find it there. I might remove
that link and just put links in your admin areas -- because in some ways, I want to keep this section hidden,
because it does give away a lot of trade secrets.
I would like to start by recognizing the newest sites to the CCFDesign Community.
This month's Agenda:
1. Site Stats
I want to remind everyone that your site comes with statistics. If you do not have a link to your site stats
page, let me know and I can send it to you. I have sites on a number of different hosts, so I cannot just
put one generic link here for you to use (and insert your domain name). I also have moved some sites to different
hosts recently, so if you had a link before, please check it and see if it is still accurate.
Also, since the different hosts use different stats programs, I cannot give you specific information about
the ways to interpret the stats, but I will give you some general information to look at on your site stats.
Below is a list of definitions I have come up with for some of the most common terms. I have
added some comments into some of the definitions.
Hits represent the total number of requests made to the server during the given time period
(month, day, hour etc...).
Comment: Most people have heard of hits and think they are the number of people who have visited
your site. In fact, that is not an accurate definition. If you have a page that has 10 pictures on
it, when someone comes to your site, your stats will show 11 hits (one for each picture and one for
the page) - so hits are not the same as visits
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Unique visitors is the number of unique IP addresses/hostnames that made requests to the
server. A unique visitor is logged when some remote site makes a request for a page on your server
for the first time. As long as the same site keeps making requests within a given timeout period, they will
all be considered part of the same Visit. Since only pages will trigger a visit, remotes sites that
link to graphic and other non- page URLs will not be counted in the visit totals, reducing the number of
false visits. I use this one as the most important metric (because it cancels out the times that someone
makes multiple visits to the site). In many cases, you will receive a large percentage of your actual page
viewing from two sources -- me and you. This unique visitors only counts us once. In fact, one of the fundamental
problems with most "hit counters" you see on a site, is that every time the owner visits the site,
the count goes up one more. That is why the stats are a more reliable place to see what your true traffic
is.
Number of Visits are a stat used to see how many different times you site was visited.
If the site makes a request to your server, and the length of time since the last request is greater than
the specified timeout period (default is 30 minutes), a new Visit is started and counted, and the sequence
repeats.
Pages are those URLs that would be considered the actual page being requested, and not
all of the individual items that make it up (such as graphics and audio clips). Some people call this metric
page views or page impressions, and defaults to any URL that has an extension of .htm, .html or .asp.
The stats page has a bunch of other metrics, some more interesting than others. I pay attention to the search
engine information - to see how your site is indexed on the engines and to get an idea of what direction
I need to move to get greater results from the search engines.
If you have any questions about the stats page, let me know.
2. Recommended Reading
I have added a new page to my articles section, and I wanted to point it out in my newsletter. The page
has links to books and magazines that I have deemed as recommended reading for Goat breeders. I know what
you are saying, "How can he know what is best to read? He doesn't have any goats". OK, good question. Over the past three years, a number of people
have browsed our recommended reading page and have gone to Amazon to buy the books. On my list, I have analyzed which books were purchased the most often
-- which gives some indication that the books listed are credible.
I am notifying you through this newsletter for three reasons. First, I want to give each of you the opportunity
to peruse the list and perhaps increase your library. Second, I would like recommendations from you of other
books that ought to be considered, so if you see something on Amazon, please let me know.
Thirdly, over the past couple of months, I have noticed that when forms are filled out on the sites, there
are a number of inquiries from people just starting out in the Goat business. If you receive a contact form
from someone new in the goat business, perhaps you can send them to my recommended reading list and that
will help them out.
To see the list, please follow the link below.
http://www.ccfdesign.com/...Recommended-Reading-for-Goat-Breeders.asp
Also, there is a link on my home page (partway down the page in a white box), so if you lose this newsletter,
you can find it there. 3. Inbound Links
Are you doing everything you can? |
In my April Newsletter, I put out a list of places to get links. I am going to use this page to
show who has gone out and received the links. Note: in the April Newsletter, I mentioned a couple of
other sites that are either no longer online or do not appear to be accepting links from unknown sites.
Also, at the time of publishing this newsletter, only one of the listings is a paid listing (the BoerGoats.com
one -- which I can offer a discount on). There are other places that are paid listings, and I might
add them to the next publication (but use a color other than red to indicate that someone is not listed. Obviously, I cannot tell who has made requests that are either being processed or were denied, but
I hope this table gives you a checklist with goals to achieve (and perhaps provide some motivation).
Also, if you notice a mistake, please let me know. I will probably republish this list every 6 months.
There is a key below that will connect the column numbers with the sites (or click on the "Y" or
"N" to see the site) |
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