Google Analytics

[sandynn]

When I go to Google Analytics it tell how many hits we have had, how long of a time frame are we talking. I must be missing it somewhere. I don't know if it is for a week or month or day. Hope this is not a stupid question.
sandynn

 

[Morticia]

At the top of the chart it shows you what you have it set for. You should see markers with dates on them. You can change that date frame by clicking on the calendar or the 'week' 'month' 'year' links. If you just set it up, it is probably set for the date range of when you started until now. If you've had it for a few months, look for the dates on the calendar to the right or on the chart itself.

 

[Proud Texan]

Will some who understands this stuff better than me please go to my home page and tell me why my bounce rate is consistently about 50%?
I've tweaked and tweaked my meta tags, content, layout etc., but still no improvement.

http://www.oakcreekbnb.com

 

[EmptyNest]

You shouldn't be seeing HITS from GA...they don't show that. It has no meaning.

 

[EmptyNest]

Will some who understands this stuff better than me please go to my home page and tell me why my bounce rate is consistently about 50%?
I've tweaked and tweaked my meta tags, content, layout etc., but still no improvement.

http://www.oakcreekbnb.com.

Keyword meta tags are out of date now..search engines don't even use them. In my mind, bounce rate has to do with the appeal of the page. This is what Google Says:
Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.
Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors.
The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.
You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run.
Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

 

[Morticia]

Will some who understands this stuff better than me please go to my home page and tell me why my bounce rate is consistently about 50%?
I've tweaked and tweaked my meta tags, content, layout etc., but still no improvement.

http://www.oakcreekbnb.com.

Will some who understands this stuff better than me please go to my home page and tell me why my bounce rate is consistently about 50%?
I've tweaked and tweaked my meta tags, content, layout etc., but still no improvement.

http://www.oakcreekbnb.com

What would help you make that determination is to know what keywords are being used to find your home page. Maybe there is a keyword on your home page that is attracting the wrong viewer. Wrong in that they are interested in, say, fishing, vs staying at your place. So, they arrive expecting a fishing website and find a B&B website instead.
Conversely, if you are on a lot of directories and those are the people who are bouncing away, is there a difference between what is stated on the directory and what the guest finds on your home page?
Or, do you have outgoing links to other sites on your home page that guest finds more interesting?

 

[swirt]

Will some who understands this stuff better than me please go to my home page and tell me why my bounce rate is consistently about 50%?
I've tweaked and tweaked my meta tags, content, layout etc., but still no improvement.

http://www.oakcreekbnb.com.

A high bounce rate for a site is not as big a concern as a high bounce rate for a home page
See this page and scroll down to the bounce rate explanation.

 

[briarrosebb]

Will some who understands this stuff better than me please go to my home page and tell me why my bounce rate is consistently about 50%?
I've tweaked and tweaked my meta tags, content, layout etc., but still no improvement.

http://www.oakcreekbnb.com.

Hi, Texas...
When you quote a single bounce rate (i.e., 50%) for your website, you are talking about an average. This means some referrers will be above that, some below. Who are the really bad referrers? If the bad referrers are search engines, what keywords are they bouncing on?
I suspect this is more misunderstanding than a business or technology problem, because your website is well done.
If your referrals from BB.com or your B&B keyword referrals from google are bouncing at 50%, then you have a problem.
The misunderstanding would be that low quality traffic is not a problem. It's better than having that traffic disappear. We have lots of low quality traffic.
If you want more high-quality traffic why not get the cheap BBonline.com listing?
One could nitpick about your SEO, but it may do you a disservice because it may put your attention in the wrong place, but since you ask:
Why all the SEO weight on:

• "Athens,Texas accommodations"
• "A Little Slice of Heaven in the Country"

and little or no SEO weight on these location and lodging keywords:

• Bed and Breakfast
• Cabins
• Cottage
• East Texas Post Oak Savannah
• Lodging

"Accommodations" is a lame lodging keyword that travellers rarely query. One final note: having the lodging keyword isolated in the body is not enough for your PRIMARY keyword targets. The text needs to be connected to location (e.g., "East Texas Cabins") and emphasized by placement in the title, meta description, and header tags.
Based on your homepage, I would think you would optimize for "Athens Texas Bed and Breakfast" and nowhere is that string to be found. (Google does not look at the keywords meta tag.)

 

[Proud Texan]

Will some who understands this stuff better than me please go to my home page and tell me why my bounce rate is consistently about 50%?
I've tweaked and tweaked my meta tags, content, layout etc., but still no improvement.

http://www.oakcreekbnb.com.

Hi, Texas...
When you quote a single bounce rate (i.e., 50%) for your website, you are talking about an average. This means some referrers will be above that, some below. Who are the really bad referrers? If the bad referrers are search engines, what keywords are they bouncing on?
I suspect this is more misunderstanding than a business or technology problem, because your website is well done.
If your referrals from BB.com or your B&B keyword referrals from google are bouncing at 50%, then you have a problem.
The misunderstanding would be that low quality traffic is not a problem. It's better than having that traffic disappear. We have lots of low quality traffic.
If you want more high-quality traffic why not get the cheap BBonline.com listing?
One could nitpick about your SEO, but it may do you a disservice because it may put your attention in the wrong place, but since you ask:
Why all the SEO weight on:

• "Athens,Texas accommodations"
• "A Little Slice of Heaven in the Country"

and little or no SEO weight on these location and lodging keywords:

• Bed and Breakfast
• Cabins
• Cottage
• East Texas Post Oak Savannah
• Lodging

"Accommodations" is a lame lodging keyword that travellers rarely query. One final note: having the lodging keyword isolated in the body is not enough for your PRIMARY keyword targets. The text needs to be connected to location (e.g., "East Texas Cabins") and emphasized by placement in the title, meta description, and header tags.
Based on your homepage, I would think you would optimize for "Athens Texas Bed and Breakfast" and nowhere is that string to be found. (Google does not look at the keywords meta tag.)
.

Good advise all! I'll try another tweak and see if there is any improvement. Thanks.

 

[Proud Texan]

You shouldn't be seeing HITS from GA...they don't show that. It has no meaning..

I shouldn't be getting hits from "Post Oak Savannah" or "Little Slice of Heaven" as these are both .gif files. (apologies to Swirt)
I get most of my hits from Google and slightly less from BedandBreakfast.com.

 

[Morticia]

You shouldn't be seeing HITS from GA...they don't show that. It has no meaning..

I shouldn't be getting hits from "Post Oak Savannah" or "Little Slice of Heaven" as these are both .gif files. (apologies to Swirt)
I get most of my hits from Google and slightly less from BedandBreakfast.com.
.

I shouldn't be getting hits from "Post Oak Savannah" or "Little Slice of Heaven" as these are both .gif files. (apologies to Swirt)
I get most of my hits from Google and slightly less from BedandBreakfast.com.

So, what keywords on Google get you the most bounces? Which ones get you the most 'good' traffic? I used to get tons of traffic from people looking for renovation information when I put up a new page about a renovation here. 90% bounce rate. They looked at the pictures, read the text and then moved on to what they really wanted, which was a renovation directions page, not a B&B.
I didn't do any research on your site. You have all the info in GA that will tell you what words are getting you the traffic you don't want. Now, if those words are 'athens, tx, B&B' then you have an issue. If those words are 'athens B&B' you need to narrow the guest's search down because they may have wanted Athens, GA or Athens, Greece! So, be glad they realized where you are before they booked!

 

[EmptyNest]

You shouldn't be seeing HITS from GA...they don't show that. It has no meaning..

I shouldn't be getting hits from "Post Oak Savannah" or "Little Slice of Heaven" as these are both .gif files. (apologies to Swirt)
I get most of my hits from Google and slightly less from BedandBreakfast.com.
.

Sorry for my impertinence..but why do you refer to HITS...hits are not anything... As per SWIRT: "Hits: is a worthless term that has many meanings but is often a count of every time a file (page, image, graphic, sound...) is sent out by your server, so viewing one page could count for lots of hits due to all the other items that go with the page. Thankfully, Google Analytics does not look at hits. If your tracker reports hits, make sure you know what it is actually counting."
You get referrers from Bedandbreakfast.com not hits. We need to learn to ban that word from our vocabularies.
If you have alt text tags on those images, then they will show up in your stats.

 

[JBloggs]

Right. You can have thousands of hits that do not actuate into bookings. Most are from China or overseas.

 

[Proud Texan]

Right. You can have thousands of hits that do not actuate into bookings. Most are from China or overseas..

I stand corrected.

 

[briarrosebb]

You shouldn't be seeing HITS from GA...they don't show that. It has no meaning..

I shouldn't be getting hits from "Post Oak Savannah" or "Little Slice of Heaven" as these are both .gif files. (apologies to Swirt)
I get most of my hits from Google and slightly less from BedandBreakfast.com.
.

The "Little Slice of Heaven" is text in a Corsiva font. It is not an image.
You have two things to offer: location and lodging (by that or some other name). East Texas is an image and not text... why?

 

[swirt]

You shouldn't be seeing HITS from GA...they don't show that. It has no meaning..

I shouldn't be getting hits from "Post Oak Savannah" or "Little Slice of Heaven" as these are both .gif files. (apologies to Swirt)
I get most of my hits from Google and slightly less from BedandBreakfast.com.
.

I shouldn't be getting hits from "Post Oak Savannah" or "Little Slice of Heaven" as these are both .gif files. (apologies to Swirt)

No apologies to me needed. You may show up for searches for these terms because you have the phrase used in an alt attibute attached to the image of those words. This is as it should be if you have images of text, they should have decent alt attributes.
Now what is likely though is that a referral for "a slice of heaven" came from google image search as someone found your image that way. This kind of search is not likely to result in further perusal of your site. These are the kinds of things that result in high bounce rates for sites (not pages).
alt attibutes can be tuned (though avoid stuffing them). For example, the porch photo with "relax on the porch" could be better tuned as " relax on the porch in Athens Texas" or better yet "relax in Athens Texas"