Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something that every online business owner needs to utilize effectively to gain a competitive advantage. With SEO, it is not a matter of beating Google’s system. Instead, it is about other businesses that a business owner is competing against.
Competition is about beating your competitors on specific keywords. Analyzing your competitors should help to shape your SEO strategy. Once you implement your strategy, you will also need to analyze the strategy’s effectiveness in delivering the results that you want for your business.
There are several tools that you can use for the purpose of analyzing website traffic to give you an idea of your strategy’s effectiveness. The tools are basically categorized into two: server side tools and external tools, which are also known as offsite tools. These analytical tools provide webmasters with authentic information, and this is important for business owners to gauge the success or failure of the newly implemented SEO strategies. In most cases, offsite analytical tools are provided by third parties while server side tools are embedded in the system being used.
cPanel, which is Unix-based, is a complex web-hosting control panel that offers automation tools designed to help simplify web hosting. cPanel offers server side tools, and Advanced Web Statistics (AWStats) is a good example of an analytical tool that displays information about those who access your website. The information displayed by this system is very detailed and is usually displayed in tables and graphs. The tables and graphs provide daily, monthly and hourly information. Details on visitors to the site are also provided.
Regarding all the details that are given by AWStats, they include HTTP error codes, operating system used by visitors, visitors’ country of origin, web browsers of choice and sites from which the visitors obtain the link from. Understanding your web traffic is instrumental to the success of your SEO strategy. Server side tools reveal more details than the ones provided by third party tools.
Some information is hidden to third party tools like Google Analytics. cPanel tools ensure that you get real-time and detailed visitor information. This information can help business owners to plan online advertising campaigns. For instance, blog posts can be posted when most of the visitors are expected to be online.
However, cPanel does not provide tools that can be used for site development. To overcome this shortfall, Google Analytics or any other third party tools can be used to fulfill this purpose. In establishing backlinks, the most important factor is the quality of the backlinks.
AWStats is a handy tool when it comes to analyzing the quality of links. Google Webmaster tools do not provide link-quality data. The standard interface that is offered by cPanel tools makes it relatively easy for users to utilize the tools included in the control panel. Finally, the bottom line is to have an established SEO strategy that can improve the rank of your business’s website.
