I log into my Google Analytics account several times a week and log into my server to review my stats just as frequently. I look at several things to help me focus my attention on getting high quality traffic. To determine this I look at how many visitors the sources send me, the percentage of new visitors, the page views and the bounce rate. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that visit your site then immediately leave. Anything with a bounce rate of 50% or higher should be a source you should not waste time on. Focus your effort on Google and other sources that have a low bounce rate and a high percentage of new visitors that stay on your site.

I will again use my largest site Sports Card Forum as the example since it gets so much traffic. For the past 30 days the site got 194,000+ visits and provides a long list of traffic sources. Here are a list of sites that I get a lot of traffic from, but also have very high bounce rates.

1. Stumble Upon - This should not seem as a surprise. Stumble Upon is my #21 traffic source and got me 473 visitors. Almost everyone that visited my site was new (99%). That would be great if the bounce rate wasn’t at 87%! That means that nearly 9 out of 10 visitors from Stumble Upon left right away. The only way that can be good is if they clicked on a CPC ad like Google AdSense!
2. Google Images - I’ve discussed this in the past. When people are searching for images and find your site the bounce rate will be very high. Visitors will either take the image or hotlink to it. In the case of Sports Card Forum the bounce rate was 55%.
3. Link Exchanges with irrelevant sites - This should be a no brainer. You will not get a lot of quality traffic if your site is linked on sites that have nothing to do with your content. Focus your effort on similar interest sites.

These three examples should give you an idea of sources that may give you a lot of traffic, but the traffic quality is low. You want sources that send you a lot of new visitors, have a low bounce rate and the members stay on your site for a long time. Let’s look at some of the better ones.

1. Direct Traffic - Obviously if people are typing in your domain name directly or bookmarking your site these are visitors you want. Get your visitors to subscribe to your site. Provide great, original content and users will come back for more! In the case of Sports Card Forum direct traffic accounted for most of the traffic or 100,000+ visits with a bounce rate of 13%. The average visitor stayed on the site for 16 minutes and accounted for an average of 19 page views!
2. Google - If you are not optimizing your site for Google then you are not optimizing your site. Google accounted for 41,000+ visits with a moderate bounce rate around 30%. This means that 2 to 1 visitors are finding Sports Card Forum via Google and spending some quality time on the site. The average visitor stayed on the site for 12 minutes.
3. E-mail - If your users/visitors have subscribed to your site’s content you will get a lot of traffic with a low bounce rate. Obviously, these visitors were interested enough to subscribe. The average bounce rate was around 7% and as low as 1%. This is the traffic you are after and where you should focus much of your effort! If you don’t have a way for users to subscribe, then spend some time adding it.
4. Digg.com - If you write content you should be submitting it to Digg. It does have a higher bounce rate than most, but at a 39% bounce rate it is twice as good as Stumble Upon. While Stumble Upon got me more traffic, more users stayed on my site when they came from Digg.com. 43% of my visitors were new and they stayed on my site for 40 minutes accounting for 38 page views per visit! That is nearly three times the rate of my direct visitors. Digg your content for great traffic and Stumble only if you have time!
5. Partner Websites with the same theme - If you have link exchanges with relevant websites that traffic likely to generate better results compares to sites that have nothing to do with your website. If you run a tech blog don’t waste your time getting your links on non-tech/gadget sites. The bounce rate will be through the roof or the traffic will be marginal.

Spend some qulaity time in your server stats and on Google Analytics! See what sites have the lowest bounce rate, highest percentage of new visitors and the ones that generate the most page views. This is the traffic you want and should focus your energy on!

Other posts that you might find interesting:

• Google Trends Tool - Finding the Hot Keywords!
• Google Adsense For Search Changes
• Google Analytics Basics