Setting Up SiteMeter to Track Visitors

In a previous post, I mentioned using SiteMeter to track your visitors. Here are a few tips and tricks to using SiteMeter that will help you get the most use out of their free traffic tracking gadget.

The first thing you will want to do is click "HTML Code" from the left hand side of the screen, using the green navigational links. Copy and paste the tracking code from their website to an area you are able to edit your sidebars. (If you are using Blogger, this would be your "Add Page Elements" link from your "Dashboard". Once you have installed the code on your website or blog, you'll be ready to track your next visitor!

• "Statistics" link on top of page - that's where you can see how many visitors have been on your site, and some information about how they found your site and stuff like that. You should see a list with black headings and green links.
• "Manager" link on top of page - the green links on the left will provide different options on this page. One of those options is "Stats by Email" - click that link. From here, you choose how often you want your stats sent to your email. I chose every day because then I can view my stats in an email - and hardly ever have to visit the site to log in just to see your overall traffic stats.
  
• From the same screen, click the link on the left side that says "Ignore Visits". This is where you can either have the counter "count" your visits to the site - or ignore your own visits to your site (and "count" all other visitors in your statistics).
  
• From the same screen again, you can also use the left green links to change your password to something you can remember easily, and a few other useful things.
  

Poke around in the SiteMeter website, and see what other tools could be useful for you. You can use the reports to see what region your readers are visiting your site from, and their browser details as well. Pages they have clicked, total time they spent on your site, and where they came into your site, as well as what page they were on when they decided to leave. Best of all, it's a free program, worth every penny - and more!

Tracking Your Visitors Once You Start Blogging

Most new bloggers want to know one things - how many visitors they have have today. This is not unusual, and you can easily track this information and more. While there are a lot of different ways to track visitors on your blog or website, some of them are better than others. Some of the best have one thing in common - they are free.

You can actually accomplish one other important step by taking the following route, which will not only get you started in tracking visitors, but also push your blog closer to the top of search engine results pages.

• Start off by going to SiteMeter and signing up for an account. SiteMeter is an extremely useful tool for tracking the number of visitors that come to your site. You can also view the entry pages (which page they "landed" on when they first got to your site), exit pages (which page they were on when they left your site), and many more details about your visitors. You can even predict the growth of your traffic based on previous daily, weekly, and monthly stats.
• Visit Ping-O-Matic for an easy route to both of the above goals.
• You'll see a list of sites to "ping" (which basically tells the site that you have updated your blog recently, and to check for changes.). Among the listed choices are IceRocket, Technorati. Sign up for both of these websites - both of them will show you information about your visitors, and who's linking to your site.
• AFTER you have signed up for as many of the sites on Ping-O-Matic that apply to your blog, and submitted your blog - head back to the Ping-O-Matic website. Enter your blog information (don't worry if you don't yet have an RSS or Atom feed, you can leave that blank). Then check mark all of the boxes next to the sites you submitted to earlier, scroll down, and press "Send Pings". Repeat the ping each time you update your site, or set a time each week or month to do this. It is an important part of letting the search engines know that you keep your site up to date, and where readers can find you!

Don't neglect to keep writing fresh content on your blog - it can be really distracting on the web at times, and you don't want to forget your overall goals!