Track Visitors To Your Website Or Blog With Analytics

Now that we have explored a few ways to promote your website or blog, you might be wondering if all of your hard work is really paying off. Well, if you aren't using any tracking software yet, my recommendation would be to use Google Analytics. It is very easy to use, and has more information about your visitors then you would ever dream. To get started you need to sign up for this FREE service. If you already have a google account you can use this to sign in or if not all you need is an e-mail address to get your Analytics account.


Once you have signed up you need to "create a website profile." Analytics will ask you for the URL (website address) of the site. For example, this site would be promotingyoursite.blogspot.com yours could be www.yoursite.com Once you have entered the address you will need to choose your location and time zone. Then you would click the "finish" button and wham, Google produces a little piece of HTML (website code) near the bottom of the screen. All you need to do now is copy and paste this HTML into your site.

If you are using blogger you need to go to your template and hit the edit HTML button. Then scroll down all the way to the bottom of the code... you should see < /body>. You want to paste the code directly before this < /body> and save the template.

Now back in Analytics hit the done button, this will bring you back to the main page. You should see your site listed here followed by "Tracking Not Install" and "Check Status." You want to click on the "check status" link. If you installed your HTML correctly Analytics will tell you that "Tracking has been installed" and "Waiting For Data." Congratulations, you will now be able to track every visitor to your site.

Please note you need to wait a couple hours before you will see results. So when you log back in just hit the view reports link and this will take you to all the information that has been collected from your visitors. This includes, but is not limited to the number of visitors, page views, new/returning, geo location (city/state/country), length and depth of visit, top entry/exit points, referring sources, what people are typing into search engines to find your site... I could go on and on, but that sounds like another post.

You can track up to 50 sites for free!!! What are you waiting for go sign-up here or you can read even more about Google Analytics here.