Blog statistics is an important facet of your day to day blogging. It is imperative that you are constantly aware of your statistics and are making an effort to tweak and adjust various blog segments in order to optimize and maximize your blog traffic.
Of course every blogger likes to look at their blog stats from time to time not only to satisfy a basic curiosity but also so they can better determine the type of traffic their blog receives and the parts of their blog they need to improve in order to get more traffic.
Or to better understand what I’m trying to say… Let us say a large percentage of your visitors are referred by a single site. You can see what page they saw that referred them to your site and you can look at the information and see how to duplicate or improve it. If, for instance much of your traffic came from a social networking site such Twitter, you know this is working and you can post more links or try to improve the quality of whatever you are linking to your Twitter account etc.
Fortunately, there are a number of blog analytic tools available to bloggers to help analyze the metrics of their blog. The list is in no particular order.
1. MyBlogLog. The statistics provided by MyBlogLog are not as robust as those provided by most of the other stat trackers available. Basic blog visitor stats and social networking. Free and paid versions.
2. StatCounter. It’s important to note that the free version of StatCounter only counts up to 100 visitors at a time then resets and starts counting again. That means only the last 100 visitors to a website are included in the statistics displayed. Advanced functionality is available for a fee. Most of the metrics a typical blogger needs are included in the free package though. So it’s still good.
3. eXTReMe Tracking. Extremely detailed tracking of visitors, where they came from, how long they stayed and so forth. All of the reports are simple and easy to read. Free web stats with a paid version for a couple of $ per month.
4. Google Analytics. It is absolutely free. It is considered as one of the most comprehensive website tracking tools. Users can set up custom reports, which come in handy for bloggers who like to track specific advertising campaigns.
5. SiteMeter. Offers a decent amount of metrics for free that enable typical bloggers to get a basic understanding of the type of traffic they’re getting on their blogs. Just like StatCounter, advanced functionality is available for a fee, but most of the information typical bloggers need is available through the free package. Also only counts up to 100 visitors at a time then resets and starts counting again.
