When it comes to optimizing your web site for performance on the major search engines, there certainly is a fair bit of “art” that goes into accomplishing a first-page result.

But don’t ignore the science in the process. The statistics available to you that measure traffic and usage patterns on your site can help guide you in your optimization efforts.

You can use your traffic statistics first to determine whether Internet users are finding your site on the major search engines. Here are the most helpful reports in your SEO efforts:

Referring Sites
The “Referring Sites” report will show you not only which search engines have directed traffic to your site, but other web sites that are sending visitors your way.

The Referring Sites program also will tell you how many visitors you’re getting from the biggies like Google, Yahoo and MSN. You’ll want to document the number of visitors from these sites prior to embarking on your optimization project so that you have a benchmark for measuring the success of your efforts.

Keywords
The “Keywords” report will tell you what terminology site visitors used to find you. You’ll likely be surprised by some of the results. At the same time, you’ll want to document the terms that are missing from this list.

Entry Points
Most likely, your home page will be your site’s primary point of entry. That’s to be expected as most of the links to your site direct visitors right to your home page. But, search engines work differently. As they index content and then return results to search engine users, they will return the pages that best fit the user’s search parameters. So, having a well-optimized site should lead to many of your site’s pages being a strong entry point.

This report perhaps offers the best information when identifying potential optimization strategies. If your site has valuable product or technical content that site visitors aren’t finding through the search engines.

Page Views
This report tells you how often each page on your site has been viewed. It will help you determine the interest level of various kinds of content on your site. Also, take a look at how many times your contact form has been used. If you’re not getting the kind of conversion rate you’d expected, you may need a stronger call-to-action on your site.

Some of the analytics tools which help you get to know about your website

Google analytics
www.google.com/analytics/

Webstats
ww.statcounter.com

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