These types of external ranking factors are on par with SEF URLs and can probably yield larger SEO improvements than SEF URLs alone. For instance, by monitoring your top pages, you can decide to modify them and add links to other important areas of your site. You might also try a different link building method so that you don't get all your traffic from Google, but more from Bing, or more from referrals, etc... 

The problem is that you can't improve what you can't measure. So the next ‘big thing’ for sh404SEF® is to measure the important parameters for your web site SEO using on-site analytics.

Before the end of August, all existing subscribers will have access to sh404SEF® version 2.1 with a new analytics dashboard. In this upcoming release, the primary metrics from the Google Analytics dashboard will be integrated directly into sh404SEF®. These include:

• traffic sources breakdown
• bounce rate - the % of visitors going away from your site immediately, after viewing just one page
• average time spent on site
• percentage of new visitors vs. returning visitors
• your top 5 URLs : the pages that draw most of your visitors
• your top 5 referrers : who exactly is sending you the most traffic?

Anyone who has used Google Analytics can easily obtain this information. But in sh404SEF® v2.1, we have leveraged the intimate relationship between sh404SEF® and your web site to provide new data that is impossible (or near-impossible) to obtain with Google Analytics alone. For example:

• the time Joomla needed to create your pages - now that performance is an SEO factor, is your web server fast enough ?
• the memory required to create pages - would a server upgrade be appropriate
• the user type : how many of your pages are viewed by anonymous visitors versus registered, administrator, etc ? that's what you need to know for instance, when deciding to implement a cache system (cache are mostly effective for non-logged in users)

We’ll have a lot more to say about analytics in the coming weeks (including a seperate analytics extension that will provide even more power and information for web site administrators), so for now we’ll leave you with a few screenshots from sh404SEF® v2.1. Enjoy!