Webmaster 101: Making Sense of Your Site Stats

Written by | Posted in Blogging | Posted on Date 07-09-2009 | Comments 8 Comments
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For those who already know how to harness the power of their site stats and how to adjust their site focus, this article will be a real breeze. For those who are just getting into blogging and finding their way, this might be handy.

Reading your site stats whether you use your StatPress plugin (for WordPress users), Google Analytics, Quantcast, Lijit or some other tool, your stats will tell you quite a few things:

1. How many people come to your site
2. Where your visitors entered your site
3. What your visitors were looking for
4. How long your visitors stayed on your site

Of course there are more, but the above are just some of the general ones. The goal is to retain some of those visitors and keep them coming back. Whether you apply nifty plugins like the Thank Me Later plugin (for WordPress users), or invite people to subscribe to your RSS feed, or have a few featured posts that are eyecatching, you are trying to achieve whatever goal you have set for your website. However, the hard work can be seen in your stats.

You can install as many plugins or try as many tricks, but your control over your content is very essential. The rate at which you publish your articles could harm your site. Although you could pump out many articles per day, it may not be ideal if you are the sole owner of the blog. You might run out of topics and into the proverbial ‘Writer’s Block.’ If the time between your articles leave your visitors feeling like they are pulling teeth just waiting for your next post, you may be hurting your site.

Your stats can help you come up with the perfect formula for your blog to not just regulate, but improve your site statistic. Here are a few pointers to make sense of your stats.

  • Always compare your stats on a day-to-day basis. Even this small of time can help you in the long run.
  • Make sure to check what people are searching for on your website. If you do not have it and it is relevant to your website, perhaps you should consider writing about the topic?
  • Check how long your visitors are staying and think about ways you might increase that time.
  • Check your referral links (where your visitors came from) and determine how effective those links have been.

What other suggestions would you have for others to help people make sense of their stats? How often do you check your stats?

Related posts:

  1. How To Analyze Your Site Stats
  2. The Truth About Blogging And Making Money
  3. How To Determine What Your Site Visitors Are Looking For

About Nile Flores

Nile is 30 year old female from Southern Illinois. Nile is a mother of 1 son. She is also a web and graphic designer, who exclusively designs using WordPress. She is currently a student working for a Bachelors in Business. She also blogs at WPAddict.net and FamousBloggers.net

Connect with Nile at: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Nile has written 601 articles at Blondish.net.

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Comments (8)

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  • Ben says:

    This relates closely to my mothership post. I check my google analytics everyday (as it has a 24 hour turn over on stats) and i have WordPress stats installed as well. As my blog has a lot to do with areas of internet usage, i have also been par-taking in some drafts of blog tutorials and blog sandboxes. Analytics has allowed me to taylor some of my posts to what the readers is searching for!

    This is a great post and I will be watching ur blog closely.

  • Dan says:

    You didn’t even mention Woopra?

  • Kimm says:

    I like statcounter but they don’t list if you get a visitor from a tweet but only from your twitter profile “/

  • Marcie says:

    Thank you for this. This happens to be one of the steps I miss with my blogging.

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