First Step to Improving SEO - Know Your Visitors
Tuesday, 22 April 2008 10:11
Many people I speak to are interested in increasing traffic to their website. My first question is 'where are you getting your traffic from now? Hello? Are you still there?' Then comes the response, 'how do I know that?'.
Before doing any kind of search engine optimization it is first necessary to do some analysis of your current website statistics. Most web hosting companies provide statistics packages at no additional charge. To find out if you have access to web statistics try logging into your web control panel. Poke around a little and see if you can find something. No? Well, the good news is you're not out of luck. There are a bunch of good free solutions out there.
AWStats
AWStats is installed by default with Web Host Manager/CPanel hosting software. That means it's already on my server. However, if it was not I could simply download it from the website at http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ and install it on my server. The installation can be a little complex if you are not an IT person. Don't fret, there's always another solution.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a great free program that is easy to use. First you have to signup. Go to http://google.com/analytics/. If you already have a Google account for anything else (including Gmail), all you have to do is login. If you don't have a Google account, click 'Sign Up Now'. After your create an account and login you will be walked through the process of adding a website profile.
The first screen is pretty straightforward, enter the URL of the website you would like to track statistics for, give it a name, and choose your timezone. Enter your contact info on the second screen. Accept the terms of service and you will be brought to a screen with two tabs. Click on the 'New Tracking Code' tab as this will allow you access to new features as Google adds them.
Highlight the code in the box and press Ctrl-C to copy the code. You will need to paste this code into the HTML of every page on your site. Paste the code somewhere before the </body> tag in each file.
Once you have added the code to every page on your site you can click the 'Check Status' button on the Google Analytics homepage. It can take a day or two for Google to realize that you have pasted the code into your website. Even after Google recognizes that you have uploaded the code to your site, it will take at least a couple of weeks if not a month, to get any meaningful data about your website visitors.
Please stay tuned for more information on what information you can find on Google Analytics.
