How to determine if your site receives good site visits

[aemam]

Hello,

I am looking for answers to determine if our site receives solid site visits.
my clients site is a educational portal for literature, digest, and culture.

We currently receive about 49,000 unique site visits a month. I have not been able to find stats that can tell me if this is average, good or bad.

Can any one guide me in the right direction on how to compare our site visits.

Thanks
ab

[I, Brian]

Well, how do you normally rate you success in terms of site visitors? :)

[aemam]

just site visits. site does not have a shopping cart or other means of purchase. just a free information non-for-profit portal that provides information on certain authors. so its hard to figure out success rate if you are basing it on conversions as it does not exist.

Thanks
ab

[seobook]

your server logs should tell you what terms you are being found under.

a few ways to tell if visitors are happy:
- # of pageviews / visitor (higher is better, although many blog or news type sites will have a low # and forum type sites will have a higher number)
- # of repeat vistors
- time on site / visit

also http://www.alexa.com has free competitive analysis data, but it is a bit sketchy due to limited toolbar distribution.

http://www.hitwise.com/ has higher quality competitive analysis data, but it costs a decent amount.

also these search volumes will be a bit off, but this tool
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
can give you an idea about the relative size of a search market...this of course does not account for direct link following traffic though, and does not account for the fact that most search queries are unique.

[tomslick]

How many pages does the average visitor look at? How long do they stay on the site? A web analytics tool can help you figure this out.