I’m new to Matomo and have recently started using it to analyze my website
I’ve noticed that my page views are significantly higher than my unique visitors, and I’m trying to understand whether this is expected behavior or if I might have configured something incorrectly.
I’m also interested in knowing:
Which Matomo reports do you check most often for SEO insights?
How do you identify pages with a high bounce rate?
Are there any recommended dashboards or plugins for monitoring visitor behavior?
I’d appreciate any advice or best practices from those who have been using Matomo for a while.
This kind of post is directly relevant to the forum, uses your website only as context, and aligns much better with the community’s expectations than posting primarily to obtain a backlink.
A higher number of page views than unique visitors is usually expected because one visitor can view multiple pages during a single session. If the difference suddenly becomes much larger than usual, I’d also check for duplicate tracking code, SPA page tracking, or bots that may be inflating page views. Comparing the trend over a longer period can also help identify whether it’s normal behavior or a recent change.
Yes, that’s completely normal. One visitor can view multiple pages, so page views will usually be higher than unique visitors. For SEO, I’d mainly watch landing pages, bounce/engagement rate, and visitor behavior to see which pages actually perform well.
No, it is a bug in the Dashboard Page View Widget, because it counts Events as Page Views.
Check the Page Views in the report over the side bar menu and set the right settings in the report box, and also set the right settings in the config.ini.php.
I am also interested in learning more about Matomo for SEO analysis. Understanding visitor behavior, bounce rates, and the difference between page views and unique visitors can really help us make better decisions. Looking forward to learning from the community’s experience!
Welcome to Matomo. This is completely normal, not a tracking problem.
Why the numbers differ: a unique visitor is counted once per period, no matter how many pages they open. Page views count every page load. So if one person visits five pages, that is 1 unique visitor and 5 page views. A big gap usually just means your visitors browse several pages per visit, which is a good sign of engagement.
On your other questions:
For SEO insights, check the Referrers menu, especially Search Engines and Keywords, to see where organic traffic comes from. The Behaviour section (Pages and Entry Pages) shows which content actually attracts visitors, which is where your SEO work pays off.
For high bounce rate pages, go to Behaviour, then Pages or Entry Pages, and make sure the bounce rate column is shown. Sort by it to find pages where visitors leave without interacting. Those are the first pages worth improving.
For dashboards, you can customize your main dashboard by adding widgets for visits, pages, and referrers. For deeper visitor behavior, the Visitors menu (Visitor Log and the Real-time view) lets you follow individual journeys through the site.
One tip: unique visitors are counted per period, so day, week, and month totals are not directly comparable. Always compare the same date range and period type when you look at these reports.
That’s completely normal. Page views count every page loaded, while unique visitors count people, so one visitor reading three pages gives you three page views and one visitor. A big gap usually just means people are browsing more than one page, which is a good sign.
For SEO, I check the Entry pages report most, since it shows which pages people land on from search, and you can sort it by bounce rate to find pages that aren’t holding attention. The Channel Type and Search Engines reports are also useful for seeing how much traffic comes from organic search.
If page views look suspiciously high, make sure the tracking code isn’t installed twice on the same page, which would double count every visit.
Higher pageviews than unique visitors is normal because one visitor can view multiple pages or revisit the same page. For SEO, I’d regularly check Landing Pages, search engine traffic, and engagement metrics in Matomo. To investigate bounce rates, compare pages with similar traffic sources and review whether visitors are finding what they need. A high bounce rate isn’t always a problem if the page answers the visitor’s question quickly.
I think this is an important distinction when analyzing website performance. Page views can be higher than unique visitors because one person may visit several pages during a single session or return to the same page multiple times. Looking at both metrics together gives a clearer picture of how visitors interact with a website and which pages attract the most attention.