Understanding your websites visitors statistics, logs, and gathered information is like asking someone to blindfold you while you are driving.

Those statistics arent really hiding, but a majority of webmasters dont use them because its just a bunch of overwhelming numbers, that really dont make sense to them. If you have a Cpanel based host, most of the statistics you will ever absolutely need is at your fingertips.

I know the first thing I go for once I get in my internet site statistics is referrers, and keywords. I want to understand where my visitors is coming from and from what keywords.

There are some things you want to see in your statistics, and some things you dont.

1.) "Stickiness"- You want to see many people staying on your page for more than a few seconds. If you have a ton of visitors and none of them stay on your website for more than a few seconds, you have a problem and its instant to address it. Figure out WHY they are leaving, contruct those changes and then reanalyze in a week.

2.) Most Requested Pages- Your statistics may tell you the most requested pages. Those are the pages that visitors go to the most. The least requested pages may require some work or content added to increase their popularity.

3.) Entry and Exit pages - These stats will tell you what pages your visitors enter on, and what pages build them leave. Sometimes this might cause a problem. Here is an example: A few weeks ago a client wrote me and said they werent getting any sales, although they had a lot of keywords based visitors . Well that keyword based visitors is a dazzling thing, and their site was well organized and professional. The first glance didnt reveal anything wrong. After a few minutes of looking through the statistics I found that the Terms of Service page was losing a large amount of the visitors. We found some huge spelling and language errors. He wrote me a few hours after fixing these to report that he had an order already.

4.) Referral URLs- Pages that backlink to you are the best way to increase visitors and increase search engine visitors . Your statistical code will tell you what URLs are sending you visitors . Its also a effective way to figure out if your linking partners are holding their finish of the bargain.

5.) Keywords- Its a workable idea to pay a lot of attention to this. If search engine visitors is the most common method for your traffic generation, its most definately your most important statistic.
Statistical programs tell you what keywords, and what keyword combinations brought visitors to your web page . Hopefully they we are keywords that are relevant to what you are trying to sell.