In your web analytics software Top Content or Top Pages refers to the most commonly viewed pages on your website. A quick look at your Top Content stats will confirm that your homepage is the most viewed – probably by a huge margin. This will likely always be the case: it’s the page most bookmarked, the one people get if they enter your URL directly, or if they search on your company name, it’s the page most likely to be ranked.

That being said, website owners place too much importance on their homepage. It shouldn’t be the workhorse.  The fact is, a website is not linear and any other page on your website has the potential to be the start of one user’s experience.

You should try to improve the ratio of visits to other pages on your website versus the homepage.

So what other pages should be in the Top Content list? One is conversion pages – “thank you for your purchase”, for example. While only a percentage of traffic converts and sees this page, it isn’t likely to make the top ten for an average website. However, working to increase that conversion rate and move it up the list of top pages should be a goal. (Setting up goals was discussed in last month’s Google Analytics column.)

Critical path pages are the ones you should focus on. These are the pages that visitors need to see in order to make a conversion decision. Product detail pages are a good example, as are pages at the start of a conversion funnel such as a registration page or shopping cart check out. Here are 3 ways to increase views of critical path pages.

1. Focus your search engine optimization efforts on them. These pages generally have very niche content and are easier to optimize for a set of keyword phrases. This provides a better opportunity for good rankings and more traffic.
2. Create more internal links to them. Do you have 3 or 4 pages that are consistently in the top 5 pages viewed on your website, or top entry pages? Place a link or call to action– either a lure in a sidebar or a contextually relevant link in the main copy – that persuades more people to your critical path pages. (Remember to create keyword rich links – not “learn more”!)
3. Refer traffic deeper. Check the links you get from referring sites. Likely most of them send people to your homepage. But is there a more relevant page deeper in your website that will get visitors closer to what they are looking for? Contact the referring website and ask them to update the hyperlink URL.

Then keep an eye on your Top Content stats. Getting more of your visitors to view your critical path pages will result in a more efficient, harder working website and ultimately more conversions.