The Blog Doctor.

Prevent Google Analytics Tracking Your Visits.

Where is Site Traffic Coming From?

There are some 70 million blogs according to Technorati and 120,000 are being created everyday. The probability of anyone finding your blog in this number is somewhat like finding the eye of a needle in a haystack! You have to know from where your visitors are coming. Once you know the source of your traffic you can work on increasing it. This is where you can take the help of Google Analytics...........

First install the code for Google Analytics in your template. The procedure is the same even though it has been upgraded to Version 2. The sources for your traffic can be divided into three main categories :

1. DIRECT VISITORS : These are visitors who reach your site by typing the link in the address bar of the browser or clicking on the bookmark in their browser.

2. REFERRALS FROM OTHER SITES : These are visitors who find your site link on other sites. They click it and reach your site. Such links on other sites pointing to your site are also called as backlinks.

3. SEARCH ENGINE REFERRALS : Visitors clicking on links returned by search engine results for the searches they have typed in are included in this category. These are further classified into :

A. ORGANIC : These are unpaid search engine listed links.
B. PAID : These are paid advertised links you see on the right side of the organic links.

See the picture below :

To find out your traffic source login to your Google Analytics account. You will get a graph of the overview for visitors statistics in the last month . At the top click on the down arrow next to the date and select what time period you would like to see the traffic statistics for.

Then click on 'Traffic Sources' in the navigation sidebar at the left. You will get an overview of Top Traffic statistics. You can export this report as a pdf/csv/tsv/xl file or email it to anyone.

To compare two time periods check the compare box after clicking the down arrow next to the date range and select another date range to compare. You will get statistics for both the periods along with the percentage increase/decrease in traffic.

You can also see the Direct Traffic, Referring Sites Traffic and the Search Engine Traffic by clicking their links in the sidebar. The Search Engine Traffic is segmented into paid, non-paid and total. If you click on All Traffic Sources you can further see the Organic and the Referral mediums sending the traffic.

For each section in the sidebar you get a breakdown of Visits, Pages/Visit, Avg. Time on site, Percentage New Visits and the Bounce Rate. The Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors leaving the page they landed on without visiting any other page on your site.

After analyzing the data you can take steps to increase your traffic. For instance if you see in the Sites Referral section that you are not getting any visitors from social bookmarking sites you can add your blog to these sites. If you see that less visitors are coming from organic search engine referrals you should optimize your blog for the search engines.

Behold the New Google Analytics V2!

Find Most Popular Blog Posts.

If you have been blogging for some time now and have installed Google Analytics in your blog you can find out which of your blog posts attracts most visitors. You can also do this with Statcounter but it offers a limited log size. To get the full log you have to upgrade to premium version. With Google Analytics you get all information free.............

It is important to know which posts are popular for two reasons. One, if you know which topic interests your visitors the most you can write further on that topic and give more information to your visitors who will keep coming back to your blog. Secondly you can put up this list of Most Popular Posts in your sidebar so that new visitors can quickly scan the list and click on the links instead of having to search your blog.

Firstly install Google Analytics in your blog. Then after allowing some time for Google to collect data login to Google Analytics. The default page will open with a list of all your blogs which have Google Analytics installed in them. Click the down arrow next to View Reports and select your blog. In the sidebar at the bottom is a calendar with title 'Date Range'. Click the 'Enter Range' icon in the calendar bar and it will expand (see picture below )

Click on image to enlarge it.

You can change the dates in it by clicking on the arrow next to months. Enter the first date in the left calendar by clicking on date and the next date in the right calendar. Then click Apply Range at the bottom. The calendar will contract into the sidebar and the page will refresh with data between the two dates.

Then click on Arrow next to Content Optimization (under All Reports)in sidebar. It will expand down. Click on Plus sign next to Content Performance and click on Top Content in expanded column. See arrow 1 in picture below :

Click on image to enlarge it.

In the main column you will get a list of all your popular posts during the period along with their page views. If you click on the icons in the top right hand border of the main column (Arrow 2) you can download the list as a Excel, Tab separated text or XML file.

After getting the list of your Most Popular Posts you can put them in the sidebar in a Link-List or Html/Javascript Page Element.

How to Analyze Site Traffic with Google Analytics.

To analyze web site traffic with Google Analytics you will.....

first have to add the Analytics code to your blog template. To do this go to Google Analytics and register with your Google account. It is free and has no limitations. On the Analytics Settings page click on '+ Add Website Profile' link in the top frame of the Website Profiles box. This takes you to the ' Create New Website Profile' page.

Paste the URL of your blog/site in the text box under ' Add a Profile for a new domain '. Select the timezone of your country and click on Finish. A new page opens where you are presented with the code to be pasted in your template. Right click in the text box and Select All and then left click in the shaded section and select Copy. Go to Edit Html under Template tab in your blog after logging in to Dashboard and clicking on your blog name. Scroll down in Edit Template text box and paste the code copied from Google Analytics at the very end of the template just before the </body> tag. Save Template Changes. Republish.

Go back to Google Analytics main Settings page and you will find your site/blog listed. Click on the confirm link to confirm that you have added the code to your blog and Google Analytics will start receiving data.

To see the reports go to Google Analytics Settings page click the down arrow in the text box 'Click to select Website Profile' next to 'View Reports' in the orange bar running across the top of the page. Select the blog url for which you want to view reports. The default 'Executive Overview' page of Reports of your site opens. The page is divided into two main parts : A sidebar and a main column titled Executive Overview. Click the image alongside for a bigger view. The sidebar contains the Dashboards where youcan select the views you want to see, the All Reports section showing optimization for Marketing and for Content and lastlya Date Range section where you can select a date range for which to view reports.

The main column of Executive Overview is divided into four parts. The top left rectangle show Visits and Pageviews for the last week. The top right rectangle show how many visits were by New and how many by Returning visitors as a percentage of the total visits that week. The bottom left recangle shows a Geo Map Overlay showing the international distribution of your visitors that week. The bottom right shows the Visits by Source that week showing the sites your visitors came from.

Some other useful site counters can be found at :

www.statcounter.com
www,clustrmaps.com
http://sitemeter.sitetoolbox.com/
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/......Free