To STUDY - Technical - LMS
"Let's make something!"
SEO Tools - Hosting (cPanel) (1)
Translation
Draft
In
order to be able to really "pass" to "Step 1" we need a kind of
starting base represented by the server on which we have hosting
our site.
Hosting
provides, almost always, a real collection of software elements to
help in the administration of that hosting account (structure
itself, domain administration, file administration, mail,
databases, security, etc.), in the hosting facilities, represented
by SQL, PHP, their administration elements, preinstalled scripts,
etc.
As
for my effort to present the SEO tools that we can turn to in a
real battle to make our site as known as possible, the first (most
commonly used) software available is cPanel (data about this
software you can access from the official
cPanel site).
From
here we will have at our disposal the first statistical data that
we will correlate with SEO efforts and, of course, we will monitor
the real evolution of all parameters that are required by their
good management.
The
standard interface of cPanel shows all the software elements
"embedded" by it grouped into:
-
"Preferences" - where you will manage the basics of the hosting
account (speech, user manager, etc.) but also the interface of
cPanel;
-
"Mail address" - where you will find many mail account management
utilities that will belong to the domain/ domains/ subdomains you
will manage in that hosting account;
-
"Files" - where you will manage the files on that hosting account;
-
"Databases" - where you will find grouped database management
utilities that will keep them functioning of interests, the form
of development of applications that will form the whole of your
site;
-
"Domains" - where you will find the domain and subdomain
management utilities that will be hosted/developed in that hosting
account;
-
"Security" - where you will benefit from some basic software tools
regarding the security of that hosting account;
-
"Advanced" - in the sense of advanced software usage of hosting,
such as cron operations, indexes, administration of error pages,
etc.;
-
"Software" - meaning software tools for using applications such as
website optimization, MultiPHP manager, etc.;
-
"Pre-installed scripts" - where you will find numerous site-making
tools software and more.
The
descriptions of the above will be made at the development group to
which each of these "components" belongs. But what interests us
for SEO tools is represented by the group "Measurements".
Obviously
not all these "measurements". Here we have the interest focused on
"Visitors" and "Awstats".
VISITORS
This
feature is, in fact, a list of all hits made to the server that
serves the hosting account you have, so obviously the report of
all hits to your site/sites.
The
details are complete, represented by the IP from which the access
request was made, the requested URL, the date and time of access,
the size of the data transfer, the reference URL and the user
agent.
At
first glance it seems like a meaningless list, far too large when
you have hits that jump a figure of 1,000 hits daily, especially
since you can find and study the statistical average through the
data groups in Awstats.
Well,
over time I convinced myself that the summary study of at least
the first 3 groups of tables that make up their entire report
revealed to me that you can get real, concrete data about what is
accessed in real time.
Și
această percepție reală despre ceea ce se accesează în timp real
ne dă indicații majore despre cum putem interveni rapid în
direcționarea fluxurilor de pagini, în conformitate cu interesul
nostru.
De
exemplu, în cazul unui site de știri, intens accesat, putem sesiza
rapid dacă noua pagină web/ noua știre începe să aibă flux de
accesări.
From
the statistical data we can discover in Awstats you can't really
tell because it permanently provides statistically mediated data
and not "real-time" data. Furthermore, Awstats inserts statistical
elements into a kind of top of hits/references and thus we can
view over time the "penetrability" of our page/news.
The
link with identifying "Visitors" as an SEO tool is obvious, due to
the fact that it will allow us to immediately initiate SEO
analyses that will seek to identify the lack of penetrability and
correct any errors.
So
even if it can't be considered an SEO tool I recommend you don't
skip it.
AWSTATS
Well,
we got to the first tool how how SEO analysis we have available.
From my point of view it will form the basis of all analyses,
along with Google Search Console and/ or (recommend "and")
Microsoft Bing Webmasters Tools.
Awstats
is an open source software, distributed under a GNU general public
license, about which you can obtain full information by visiting the
official Awstats website.
We
are dealing, first of all, with a statistical reporting software
that will be useful to us in terms of SEO analyses that we will
combine as a kind of whole/whole.
So,
it presents, first of all, a summary report of the hits (Summary),
over a certain reporting period containing the number of unique
visitors, the number of visits, the number of pages accessed (with
statistical deduction of the number of pages per visit), the
number of hits (with statistical deduction of the number of hits
per visit) and the "quantity" of the data transfer.
It
should also be pointed out that Awstats differentiates between the
traffic viewed, the traffic requested by real users and the
unviewed traffic that is generated by "robots", "worms" or "folds
with special HTTP status codes".
The
particularly important "details" of this "Summary" are:
UNIQUE VISITORS
It
is effectively the number of actual hits to your site. So, going
through this report we will see that "X" IPs/unique visitors have
accessed our entire site as "viewed" traffic. Something like "X"
people or their viewing apps (browsers, etc. - I don't detail now)
visited our site during the reporting period specified in the
report header.
From
my point of view, even if the figure is questionable (because it
is about the whole site and not just the actual pages), it is the
most important landmark of all SEO efforts to come.
Yes,
this is the essence of the effort to have a site, that of having
as many unique IPs as possible. Only from here will all future
considerations related to any of our efforts in the direction of
SEO will leave.
NUMBER OF VISITS
Represents
the number of visits made by these unique visitors. Specifically
it comes to infer how many times those unique visitors recorded at
the first statistical evaluation have returned to our site.
So
we will have to deal with a number of "Y" visits which, in
relation to the number "X" of unique visitors (mathematically Y /X
- calculation that makes it automatically Awstats) will give us
"Number of visits per visitor".
So,
how many times, during the period of time underlying this
reporting, a visitor returned to our site.
If
the number of unique visitors is equal to the number of visits we
have to think about the fact that the visitor who arrives at our
site sees something specific and does not return. It's not an SEO
number, clearly... But it will give us some thought that we
urgently have to intervene in order for this number to be in line
with our interests.
For
example, if we have a news site, this equality is clearly linked
to lack of interest, possible "accidental" hits, or as a positive
side effect related to something like "we saw, we're done".
If
your site, your work, your money are watching this, everything is
OK. But if you're going to get into the madness of "making money"
on your site, there's the imperative that you have this number
("Y" - visits per visitor) as much as possible.
This
"as big as possible" should not be perceived at the size of
dozens! It would be absurd to think that users will return, on the
same day, more than 2, 3, let's 5 times to our site (as unique
IP). So a real goal to pass this figure by the value of 2 would be
a particularly useful achievement.
It
is enough to follow the report parameters for a period of one
month and thus benefit from the resulting figures, monitoring the
evolution of the site and adapting our intervention decisions
according to the set resulting from the use of SEO interventions.
PAGES (ACCESSED)
The
following statistical indicator is the number of pages accessed,
"Z", which immediately attracts the calculation of "number of
pages per visit" (mathematical Z / X).
Obviously,
this number must be as high as possible, regardless of the
rationale behind the effort invested in our site. This indicator
reveals the interest of visitors in the content of our site.
So
the higher this number, the greater the interest of visitors,
related to the content of the site pages. But, secondly, the
information that the user can't immediately find what they're
looking for can also appear.
And
so the correlation between the indicators occurs. If the ratio
between Z and Y (mathematically Y/Z) is not at least 2, we have
major problems with the structure, site materials, etc.
From
experience I can tell you that a "home" site should have this
number greater than 2, regardless of the "decimal" values after
the figure 2.
"Summary"
also presents data on "Accesses" and data traffic but, in terms of
SEO effort, is not very relevant.
To
make me clear, "Accesses" is the figure of all items accessed in
response to the visitor's request. And, certainly, the report
figure will also indicate secondary access elements, such as
images inserted into the page assembly, automation elements,
marketing inserts, blah, blah.
So
the more a website, a web page are designed to access as many
items as possible in response to a visitor's request, the greater
this number of hits will be. So irrelevant to SEO type effort.
It
has real value only for optimization calculations in terms of
server loading that provides hosting, loading that will attract
problems related to the response speed to visitor queries and, why
not, the size of the traffic to which this server is subjected.
For
example, if we find our site in the "cloud", the major upload
costs "as it should" and we will need to follow these parameters.
Then,
even if we have found the site on a dedicated (hosting) server, we
will have deducted 2 important parameters, represented by the
"number of hits per visit" and the "number of bytes per visit"
that will be necessary to manage them.
From
experience I would like to point out that a "start" site must keep
the "number of hits per visit" below 10 and the "number of bytes
per visit" as "around" the 500 KB/ visit figure.
Otherwise,
the speed of responding to user requests will increase to values
that exceed the patience of most of these visitors. Then, if the
reputation of your site increases, by increasing the number of
unique visitors, you will the server and have the same experience,
the visitor waits too long to see a page.
HISTORIAN
The
next statistical element of Awstats is represented by this
"historic" of the "summary". It is presented in the form of graphs
to which the data tables underlying the graphs presented are
added.
The
history is "sequenced" on "monthly history", "month days", "days
of the week", "hours (server time)". Everyone can consider as many
landmarks as they want but, from my point of view, SEO has only
"monthly history".
Attention,
the data presented are only for the current calendar year, the
transition to a new year attracting the resumption of statistical
data from scratch.
The
graph gives us a visual information that can quickly induce our
perception of the trend of the evolution of the parameters of our
site, in terms of the indicators presented above (unique visitors,
blah, blah).
So,
more importantly, is the data table. Here you will have
statistically "centralized" everything you need to have a starting
point in knowing the real parameters of your site, parameters that
will be the basis of considerations to correlate SEO efforts on a
particular interest.
If
you make a site like this, for the sake of creating a site, you
can follow these parameters and make the consequence decisions (or
none, it's the same thing).
But
if the idea of making the site passes the period of 1 or 2 years,
I recommend you to use a spreadsheet software and store this
data... They will provide you with more valuable SEO coordination
information than you would imagine.
And,
this spreadsheet program, that is Microsoft Office Excel, Open
Office Spreadsheet, Libre Office Calc, will help develop all
elements of calculation and coordination of SEO efforts (spoiler:
I will present in detail how to perform such a program).
Here,
already, we have come to a kind of systematization effort that
will be the basis of all our SEO gestures, although the parameters
"server" do not seem to have any connection with the search
engines.
We
will continue in the next part of this material (as well as in the
following materials)! That's enough for this material.
Dorin M - 19 June 2020