To most bloggers and webmasters, stat counters are tools that count your site’s visitors, page views, and other information regarding traffic. But there really is something more to those stats than just numbers: analysis and optimization. I can be going on and on about this simple topic, but I’m going to get right to the point.
Numbers Are For Analysis and Optimization
By now, you should already have some sort of stat counter for your site. Whether it’s Google Analytics or any other site meter, you know that the main reason for using it is to keep track of the traffic statistics for your site. But why do you think Google Analytics was called Google Analytics? Notice the word “analytics” within it? If you use Google Analytics just to see the number of visitors you get every minute/hour/day, then you are using it for the wrong reason. Yes, it is also useful when it comes to showing the traffic stats to your advertisers, but it’s really meant to be for an analysis of your site.
So how exactly can you analyze your stats? Well, here’s one thing you can do: check your content overview. In Google Analytics, there is a feature called Content Overview that shows you information about your site’s content, especially those that get the most page views and visits. What you can do is analyze which of your posts gets the most stable traffic then optimize it. How? Well, you’re probably using AdSense right? Plug-in a 300×250 ad in the post! If you have other things in mind, then go ahead and implement something else that will benefit you. Another way of figuring out which posts to optimize is by checking out which posts are getting the most visits from Google searches. Who knows, the Google user that came to your site through a search result might never know what AdSense is, and therefore ends up clicking on your ads.
Make Your Posts Useful
Optimization is really something you should always be doing. It’s not only for SEO, but also for something simple like what I have just went over. Like I said, I can go over this topic for as long as I can, but after getting you started with the basic idea, you should be set to go with what you can analyze and how. Your posts might be something of interest to your readers and visitors, but never forget to do something that will benefit you and your blog. A simple placement of a referral banner can make you more money than you ever have.
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I normally use StatCounter to check the visitors who recently came to my site. That gives me an idea of the referring sources and helps me to plan how much more traffic can I get from these sources.
Your post is useful and I would try to incorporate some AdSense into posts that regularly appear in search engines.
Thanks.
The other thing that you can do is which type of post is more popular and write more of them. Or you could rewrite or otherwise optimize the weaker posts.
To many people just look at stats to see how many hits they got and as you show here, it’s not just about hits.
Your post is useful and I would try to incorporate some AdSense into posts that regularly appear in search engines. I will use StatCounter to check the visitors who come to my site.
I have learned something today from this post. Being a newbie blogger, Finding site like this is feeling like finding a treasure.
Thank you Sir.
@ pmonchet - I’m glad you like what you see here. Don’t forget to subscribe!
Are you endorsing statcounter?? i don’t mind,cos i use it too. you could have used ‘web stat’ ’site statistics” ’site stat’ blah blah blah. never mind..
you are right, it’s for analyzing what pages/types of posts are attracting visitors. where they come from? which backlinks are important? etc
But, i used it for more than those reasons. I use it to catch the spammers, where is he/she from, bhammm.. block the IP. In wordpress, we can do it easily but since i’m in blogger, i’ve to do lots of hardwork and i don’t mind doing that hardwork. Sometimes, i also try to find what kind of browsers they are using. it’s interesting to read those stat.
anyway, nice article, i liked it
@ Navin - Actually I just looked for a word to use for a stat counter. So now, I am not endorsing Stat Counter in any way.
And you’re right with what you said. Analyzing your stats are much more than using it to learn to optimize ads. Those things you pointed out will surely make you a productive blogger as well.