If you have a web site, one of the most important questions you can ask is, “How much traffic am I getting?” No matter the purpose you had for starting a web site, this is generally a question that would interest you. Even if the purpose of your site or Blog is just to inform and entertain your audience, knowing how many are in the audience ought to at least pique your interest. In this post, I will mention a few helpful gadgets, sites, and tools that I have found interesting and helpful.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an analytical solution that gives you insights into your site traffic and how effective your marketing has been. The Google Analytics dashboard provides easy to use features that let you see and analyze your web site’s traffic. With Google Analytics, you’re more informed of the source of your traffic and the keywords that brought that traffic to your web site. Even if you’re not marketing a product, Google Analytics can just be a fun tool to use to see who is visiting your site.
Use of Google Analytics is free and signing up for it is easy. The only problem you may encounter is adding the tracking code to your site. In order to track every page on your site, you will need to add the code to every page. That is very easy if you use something like a server side include that automatically appears on all your site’s pages. You can just add the tracking code to the “include” and it appears on all your pages. When you sign up for Google Analytics, the code is generated by Google for you to add to your site. Add the code, then log in to your dashboard and see all kinds of facts about your traffic; how many, from which region, which browser they use, what keyword brought them to your site, Their screen resolution, the type browser they use, and even what color socks they are wearing are all answered in the Google Analytics dashboard. Well, all except the sock color, I just threw that in to see if you were paying attention.
To sign up for Google Analytics, just Google, “Google Analytics”. You will get a link on the search page that will take you to where you can sign up for it.
Google Toolbar
Another Google product that is very helpful is a Google Toolbar. (Google is going to take over the world). The Google Toolbar has several features including a search field built right in so you do not have to visit Google to begin your search. There are lots of other cool features I won’t get into, but one feature of the Google Toolbar that I use a lot is the page rank indicator. Google assigns a page rank from one to ten of how important Google feels a web page is. Of course Google.com gets a page rank of 10. Any new site will start out at a page rank of 0 and usually not move up for several weeks until Google has indexed the site and believes it has relevant content.
Along with the page rank indicator is a drop down arrow that shows all the back links to the page you are viewing that Google has indexed. You can also get this information by typing
into a Google search box. (replace “mydomain” with your domain name, of course). The drop down arrow beside the page rank indicator just makes it faster to look at the backward links to a page. You can even use this to look at links to your competitor’s page. You may see a directory or other site you could contact about getting your site linked to. There are lots of other buttons and tools on a Google Toolbar, like the one that shares the page you are viewing with Facebook friends, but I will leave you to do a little exploring.
To get the Google Tool bar, just Google, “Google toolbar”.
Site Meter
Another useful tool I found was a traffic counter. I’m sure there are lots of fine products out there that track the traffic coming to your site. One I like is site meter. It is very unobtrusive on your site even if you use the free version. I have not used the paid version so I can’t really comment on the value you get for using site meter in the paid version.
With site meter, you get about the same information as you get from Google Analytics but in real time. Quite frankly, I like the cool logo added to your page when you add the tracking code. It’s not nearly as conspicuous as traffic counters I see on some web pages displaying a running total of visitors. Visitors to your site can click the logo and see how many visitors and page views you get on your site. Of course this can be a positive or a negative depending on whether you are pleased with the number of visitors to your site.
To get site meter, visit: http://www.sitemeter.com/
Mike’s Search Engine Rankings
I use this site quite a lot. The feature I like is the ability to compare how your site ranks for certain keywords across multiple search engines. You simply type your domain name into one field, then type the keyword in which you have an interest in another field. Hit the enter key, and you get results on how your site ranks for the entered keyword on 8 different search engines. I realize there are programs like Web CEO that will do this for even multiple keywords. I like the simplicity of accessing online and not have to take a lot of time for a program to initialize. I also like the fact that it is free to use.
The site that has this page rank tool, is called Mike’s Marketing Tools. Mike offers several advertisements on the site for all sorts of SEO tools and web hosting. I have not used any of the products advertised on the site. I’m sure Mike won’t be happy about hearing that in case he Google’s his own site and finds this post. You may find some tool or service there that you like and maybe if you do, I will have done my part to help Mike, since his ranking tool has been so beneficial to me.
You can find the free page ranking tool at: http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/ranking-reports/
I hope you find at least one of the tools mentioned in this article helpful. I welcome comments about other tools or gadgets you have found useful for your web site.
Contributor’s Note
Just as a principle of full disclosure: I have no financial interest in any of the products or web sites mentioned. I don’t receive ad revenue nor do I do affiliate marketing for any site mentioned. Use your own judgment as to the suitability of any products you may choose to use off any of these sites. I have only used the free versions and have no advise one way or the other as to how the premium or paid versions work