Blogger Style: Take A Dive into Pageviews

By Chamarya Roberts

 As I mentioned in my last post, several different web metrics can be used and analyzed. The metric that we will be unboxing is pageviews. Since we will be blogging for this term, most of us (if not all of us) will probably gather how many people are reading our posts each week. 


This is where pageviews come into play.


Before I dive into how pageviews will benefit us, what is a pageview? 

Our lesson defines pageviews as the number of times a page was viewed.

 

Since we are using Google programs in this class, I wanted to see how Google defines pageviews:

“A pageview (or pageview hit, page tracking hit) is an instance of a page being loaded (or reloaded) in a browser. Pageviews is a metric defined as the total number of pages viewed.”~Google


Analyzing pageviews for us is to see how well our content is engaging with our classmates. Although some don’t consider pageviews an essential metric to analyze, I think it will come in handy. 


Just like any other metric, pageviews have their pros and cons. 

Pros

  • Simple to measure and understand:

This may be the main advantage to some since you don’t have to worry about who or how to analyze pageviews because they all count. 


  • User privacy and Privacy Regulations:

It's easier to offer “users privacy and comply with privacy regulations” since tracking unique users is not a necessary factor to count pageviews. 


  • Real time optimization and feedback: 

You can see results immediately


Cons

  • User information:

Pageviews don’t express the types of users interacting on the page. For instance, there could be a small number of visitors who might find interesting posts, and the rest just don’t. There is no way of telling the difference, which is why multiple metrics are used and analyzed. 


  • User behavior:

It is hard to determine natural user behavior when just using pageview. For example, the data gathered from pageview can be challenging to analyze if a person goes back and forth between pages, leading to inaccurate results.


Case Study

Lauren Taylar is a website designer, SEO strategist, and blogger. Before becoming her own boss, she worked for an SEO agency for two years, but she was unhappy at her job. She ended up quitting her job in 2018 to start her own business. In the beginning, she focused more so on social media marketing and sprinkled in blogging here and there. Within a year, she was disappointed because she wasn’t getting the engagement on her Facebook and Instagram posts. So she decided to change her focus to blogging more. She was getting more clicks from Google, but it still wasn’t up to par. 


“I knew it was time to step it up.” ~Lauren Taylar


Lauren explains how she increased her blog’s pageview by almost 200 percent in one year in this case study. She said,” I went from 0 traffic to 5000+ pageviews a month. Specifically, I had 36,000 pageviews in the last year - a 192% increase from the year prior”( Taylar, 2021). She was able to accomplish this by combining blogging and SEO. 

The graph above is the results of her overall web traffic, but as you can see, in October of 2020, her pageviews were 36.7 thousand equalling an increase of 192.3 percent. 


Some may ask how did she get such a massive increase in traffic. Well, she shared her three tips in the case study: 

  1. Blogged more frequently

  2. Monitored analytics

  3. Get serious about keyword research


After seeing Lauren's tactics and results, do you think that pageviews are irrelevant or not?


Please don’t hesitate to answer the question above or leave a comment.





References


Taylar, L. (2021, November 8). Seo case study: ~200% increase in pageviews in the past year. Lauren Taylar. Retrieved January 23, 2022, from https://laurentaylar.com/blog/squarespace-seo-case-study-increase-in-pageviews

Eikenes, J. O. H. (2017, December 18). Users, visits or page views: Why the unit of Analysis Matters For Your News Site. Medium. Retrieved January 23, 2022, from https://medium.com/@jonolave/users-visits-or-page-views-why-the-unit-of-analysis-matters-for-your-news-site-d99446bffb66

Google. (n.d.). Pageview - analytics help. Google. Retrieved January 23, 2022, from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6086080?hl=en#:~:text=A%20pageview%20(or%20pageview%20hit,total%20number%20of%20pages%20viewed.

Reed College of Media. (n.d.). Week 1 Lesson: Introduction to Web Analytics, Basics of Web Analytics and Tool Introduction and Selection. Blackboard Learn. Retrieved January 23, 2022, from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_176477_1&content_id=_8897673_1&framesetWrapped=true

What is Page View - definition by insider. Insider. (2021, February 23). Retrieved January 23, 2022, from https://useinsider.com/glossary/page-view/

Comments

  1. Online Marketing with AlexaJanuary 23, 2022 at 2:53 PM

    Hello,

    In this case, I don't think page views are very relevant for this specific case study. Lauren wanted more traffic to her site therefore she probably wanted to focus on increasing the new visitor metric. According to Lesson 1, a new visitor measures, "number of unique visitors with activity including first- ever to a site during a reporting period" (Lesson 1, West Virginia University). Since Lauren focused on monitoring analytics, blogging more frequently, and keywords... she saw more success and gained more traffic to her website.

    Reference:
    West Virginia University. (2021). Lesson 1. https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_176477_1&content_id=_8897673_1&framesetWrapped=true

    ReplyDelete
  2. Marisa WatsonJanuary 24, 2022 at 1:29 PM

    Thanks for telling us a little bit more about Pageviews! I definitely agree that pageviews could come in handy for some! It is a great way to analyze exactly what page and the content on that page people are engaging with the most. According to Indeed (2021), high pageviews can be good in the broad scheme of things, as it allows you to see what pages are pulling in customers the most. From there you can review that material, call to actions, or images and then recreate those features on pages that may not have as high of pageviews. As you mentioned that some of the cons are user information and user behavior, what are some metrics that businesses could use to find user information and user behavior?

    Indeed Editorial Team. (2021, June 14). Pageviews vs. Page visits: What’s the difference? Indeed. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/page-views-vs-visits

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alexandra ElderJanuary 24, 2022 at 6:19 PM

    This was a really great analysis of pageviews! Your pros and cons list was really helpful. Every metric has some pro or con to it that makes other metrics necessary. In reality, they all work best together, not one by itself. I agree that pageviews is a great place to start analyzing your website because it gives a basis or foundation to build from. It also shows if your content is resonating with people or not. If it isn't, you obviously have a huge problem there and will need to adjust!

    ReplyDelete

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