Website Marketing and Analytics

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Anonymous
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Hello,

I have no experience with website marketing and how to analyze activity, but I want to learn. I plan to create a travel blog with links to local businesses and booking sites. I want to be able to see how many people (not bots) are visiting, what sites they click, how many times, etc. I have looked at AW Stats and other cPanel metrics, but it'smysterious to me.

Suggestions about how to get started understanding all this would be great. I wish there was a Coursera class on the topic, and maybe there is . . . I just don't know what to call it.

Thanks for your advice.

Jim

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anonymous
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Hi, Jim! The information available from AWStats is pretty basic, but I've tried to do what I can to provide some useful information in this guide. You can get an estimate of bot traffic vs real traffic based on certain activity patterns, and (most helpfully) make sure that the bot traffic isn't putting undue strain on your server due to specific large files. Thinks like mod_security and cPHulk can help you deal with the negative effects of bot traffic, along with optimizing your robots.txt file. 

For more useful, practical information you'll probably want to look into one of the advanced toolsets like Google Analytics or SEMRush. I've linked to some of the classes they both offer and would recommend taking a few and exploring different platforms before you pay for one, just to get an idea of what would work best for you. Hope that helps!

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anonymous
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  • Answered

Hi, Jim! The information available from AWStats is pretty basic, but I've tried to do what I can to provide some useful information in this guide. You can get an estimate of bot traffic vs real traffic based on certain activity patterns, and (most helpfully) make sure that the bot traffic isn't putting undue strain on your server due to specific large files. Thinks like mod_security and cPHulk can help you deal with the negative effects of bot traffic, along with optimizing your robots.txt file. 

For more useful, practical information you'll probably want to look into one of the advanced toolsets like Google Analytics or SEMRush. I've linked to some of the classes they both offer and would recommend taking a few and exploring different platforms before you pay for one, just to get an idea of what would work best for you. Hope that helps!