Spying On Google: 5 Ways to Use Log File Analysis To Reveal Invaluable SEO Insights

Hi everyone!

Marketers are always looking for ways to save advertising budget,?make PPC more effective, increase website conversion, etc. At the same time, powerful tools remain out of sight, although they are at hand and can really help. Do you want to know what I mean?

I'm talking about log files. Files with the .log extension are ordinary text documents. But they contain vital information. Server log files are the only reliable source that shows how search bots crawl your site and how it affects SEO. Using server log data, you can analyze the behavior of search robots and answer questions important to you. For instance:

• What page status codes are returned?
• What problems with the availability of site content were found during the crawl?
• What types of pages are rarely visited by search robots?
• What URLs are viewed most often?
• What types of content are viewed most often?
• What pages of the site search engines do not guess?
• Is the crawl budget of the site spent effectively?

How can you put this data into practice? Let's look at a few examples in more detail.

1?? Fight against page duplicates

Googlebot?can crawl many pages with repetitive content and skip some of these pages when indexing. It can be difficult to determine which duplicate pages are indexed and which are not. To get the data, you can parse the web server log files. Similar content and template may be the cause of the problem.

2?? Search for “bot traps”

Say the problem is multiple delays in re-indexing pages. This usually worsens the position of the site in the search results. Possible causes of the problem are ill-conceived navigation, site structure, and "bot traps". They force search robots to keep crawling pages in an endless loop.

3?? Accurate calculation of site traffic

Of course, a regular counter installed on each page can also provide data on the traffic. But log files allow you to analyze attendance in detail (Monthly / Daily / Hourly Statistics). This indicator lets you identify traffic surge hours (traffic peaks) and quiet hours, which is good to know when maintaining a site.

4?? Control Entry Pages and Exit Pages

Entry Pages are web pages from which users get started with the site. It is a piece of valuable information! For example, if 80% of visitors do not see your home page, is there any point in spending time and money to decorate and improve it? In addition, entry points show the most significant pages of your site. Entry points tend to correspond to the most popular pages on the site.

Exit Pages are web pages from which users leave your site. Information from the log files allows you to analyze the situation. If users found what they were looking for and therefore left satisfied, good. But what if it does not go like this? Then you need to act urgently!

5?? Working with abandoned and popular pages

Abandoned pages are web pages that the audience visits very infrequently. You may need a thorough analysis of the situation: maybe the pages are uninteresting or difficult to find on your site. For example, they are not listed on the sitemap or not linked to other pages on the site.

Popular pages are web pages that the audience visits most frequently. You can use them as a template when creating other pages. You can also direct users from these pages to other less popular or abandoned pages.

If you want more information on how to work with log files, please let me know in the comments! I can give you advice or prepare another article on the subject.

Good luck!