Bookmarking signal? web analytics question

[my little opihi]

Hi Everyone,

Question (I'm a bit new to web analytics) ....

Typically a website home page would rank highest in "Most requested pages" reports.

However in our case (www.tcsurf.com) a sub-page ranks higher. That page houses our surfbaoards information. Does this mean that users have bookmarked that page and are skipping directly to it?


/boards.cfm (15,000 page views)
/home_fla.cfm (11,000 page views)
/ (10,000 page views)
/flash/home3.swf (9,000 page views)
/flash/bttm_flash_box.swf (8,000 page views)

I looked at our Google searchword report and ran searches based on the most popular terms. Google doesn't push users to the boards section of the site.

Can I interpret that as a bookmarked page?

Thank you!
Michelle

[Corey Bryant]

Well is the boards.cfm you main page to your forums or something? CFM is a server side language so (like this one shows showthread.php) and depending on your stats, it might just show the page - which will probably have higher stats than other pages.

If the boards.cfm contains your most updated content, then people might have bookmarked that one

[my little opihi]

No, that Cold Fusion page is just a sub-section on the site, not a link to forums.

I could understand it ranking high in a "Most Visited Pages" report, but I don't know how to interpret visitor behavior based on the "top entry page" being a sub-page on our site. You can't get there without going to the main page first - so you'd imagine they'd at least be equal?

[felgall]

Any page on a web site can be accessed directly if it is listed in the search engines. For many sites searches are more likely to find internal pages rather than the home page. With my site I have several pages with number one rankings on Google but my home page is ranked so far down the list that I am surprised that anyone finds it at all unless they have already found my site through another page.

[ray326]

It's because that single page serves up all the board content dynamically. It means people are browsing your board info. Your analysis would be much easier without all the frames.

[my little opihi]

This is not an easy task ... picking up on a site that was built three years ago, mainly for branding purposes. All that Flash and framing is a real challenge.

Don't those features also make it less-than ideal for SEO as well?

Michelle

[ray326]

Don't those features also make it less-than ideal for SEO as well?Yes, not to mention general accessibility.