8 Ways To Track Your Website and Blog's Traffic

Before we get to today's post, I have a couple of quick announcements. 1st, after a week's delay due to my past computer issues, I am happy to report that chapter 12 in my award winning novel, The Samson Effect, has been released on the serial release site. If you have not started this novel that NY Times best selling author Clive Cussler calls a "first rate thriller brimming with intrigue and adventure", then you can visit the Table of Contents to start from the beginning. While there, check out the announcement of the novel being acquired by a major Hollywood film producer.

The 2nd announcement is to let you know about a contest going on hosted by book marketing expert Dana Lynn Smith. She has put together a great prize package for the winner. Check it out at her contest page.

Now, on to today's post.

It's important to know who's visiting our blog and web pages. The numbers can help us identify whether our blog is growing, remaining stagnant, or dying. By having this info, we can make subtle, or abrupt changes in our marketing to make sure we are finding new readers and subscribers. Traffic numbers can also help us know what's working and what's not working. You don't know how many times what I thought was a brilliant addition to the website was actually received with mediocre reception. Conversely, some of the things I almost nixed turned out to be huge viral pulls for my site. By knowing this information, I was able to craft new additions (content, features, videos, etc...) to my site that help keep the life trend growing.

There two basic types of traffic you can monitor. Hard numbers measured by a program that monitors and counts clicks to your site and a more subjective measurement such as the increase in comments to your posts, retweeting activity and the like. By getting a feel at your overall traffic picture, you can know what's working and what's not.

Here are some places you can go to get a feel for your traffic numbers. Before we look at these resources, remember this: There is no perfect traffic measuring tool. If there were, everyone would be using it and it alone. Even my favorite, Google Analytics is not perfect. Also, When you start to look at your traffic, don't worry too much about the numbers you are seeing. Use them as a benchmark and work to see them grow over time. My final bit of advice will only be followed by a fraction of people reading this, I assume, but here it is anyway. Don't let your time be consumed with following your traffic numbers. It's easy to spend way too much time looking at numbers and not enough time creating good content. Weekly or even monthly traffic evaluations can be enough.

That said, here are some tools you can use to keep an eye on the traffic and activity of your blogs and websites:

1. Google Analytics- This is one of the most comprehensive, free tools out there for tracking your blogs and website. It's owned by Google and gives you info such as the number of visitors and page views to your site. You can see what country, state, and even city your visitors are coming from. You can see what pages are the most popular, and which ones most people are on when they leave your site. This is just a small portion of what you can get with this free tool. I frequently add Google Analytics tips on my free Video Marketing Tips For Authors Newsletter, so you may want to subscribe to get these videos when they come out to learn more about Google Analytics.
   
   
2. Alexa- Alexa is a site owned by Amazon.com that measures how many people who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser visits your site. Enough people have this toolbar that you can get a decent snapshot of your website's traffic trend. It measure your site by ranking it in order from the most visited site (ranked #1) to the least (ranked in the millions). It also has other interesting measurement, though you need to know that it has been strongly claimed that Alexa has a technology bent to it since the people who download the Alexa toolbar are often technology oriented. Never-the-less, some advertisers will pay based on the Alexa rank a site has.
   
   
3. Compete- Similar to Alexa, Compete gives a snapshot of your site's traffic trend. It is a free tool with premium reports you can pay for.
   
   
4. SEMrush- For those who want to get into your site a little more, here is a neat tool that's also a mix of free and premium services. SEMrush give you a snapshot of the search engine traffic coming your way along with the theoretical values of the visitors who visit via organic search terms. You can even get the PPC value of the search terms that people are using to find your site organically. If any of this makes a lick of sense to you, you may want to check this site out. Otherwise, tuck this site away until later to play with.
   
   
5. Major Search Engines- You can check out your favorite search engines and do advances searches to get the number of sites linking into yours. This data can be helpful because it shows you if more and more people find your content useful enough to link to. Go ahead and visit your favorite search engine and give it a try!
   
   
6. Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicius, others- These sites are driven by visitors who think enough of your page to want to share it with others. It may be hard to break into the circle of die-hard users, but once you do, it can have a tremendous effect on your traffic.
   
   
7. FeedBurner- If you set up a FeedBurner account, you can measure the number of people who see your blog posts. You can even offer an e-mail subscription to your feed and see how many people sign up to read your posts directly from your e-mail. This is a tremendous tool to use to check on the number of people who get your content that may otherwise me missed by other traffic monitoring services.
   
   
8. Technorati- Here is another free site that allows you to claim your blog and then monitor the number of other blogs linking to it. Many people use this, though I have found it to be terribly inaccurate. Even Technorati has had so many problems getting the correct data on my site, that they effectively have given up trying. That said, I include it because it is still a popular site for bloggers and perhaps my problems are unique to me.
   
   This should be enough to get you started. As you can see, it can be tempting to spend way too much time following your traffic to the detriment of creating good content, but the information you do have can help you with your marketing decisions relating to your website and blog. If you have a favorite traffic monitoring tool not listed here, please share it in comments below. Enjoy!
   
   Tony Eldridge