I bet you use the number of comments, right? More comments mean more readers. Or at least that's a popular myth. In fact, there are several highly read blogs that have very few comments. If those bloggers used comments to judge their success, they'd have quit.
If you use counters, you are doing slightly better but not much. Now you have this really ugly counter on your blog and the whole world can see it. Plus, you don't get any intelligent readings that way. Can you counter answer a few simple questions.
- How many readers return to read you again?
- Where are they finding your blog? Aren't you even curious to know how they found you?
- How many pages do they read each visit?
- Where in the world is Carmen the Reader?
Enter Google Analytics
Task - Install Analytics on Your Blog
I know this is scary, mucking around with code. It's easy squeezy. First take a stiff drink of an adult beverage and plow forward. Instead of me burning page space regurgitating the instruction like a mother hen, check out this excellent article on how to do it (http://www.eblogtemplates.com/how-to-install-google-analytics-on-blogger/). You can use your favorite search engine to find tutorials on other blog software like Wordpress.
Now one final drink from your adult beverage. Navigate to your blog to make sure you didn't screw the pooch by drinking so much while attempting blog surgery.
Report 1 - Visits
This is the one you want most. Visits measure the number of times your site is visited during the day. These seems simple except when you compare that number to visitors and they don't match. Someone may visit your site multiple times, so that's why visits and visitors don't match. Only focus on visits.
Here's a hint, November, December and January are slow months for garden web traffic as are July and August. It's too cold and too hot.
Report 2 - Traffic Sources
This is the second most important because you can see how your visitors arrived at your site. I'll let you poke around on this one on your own, but keep an eye on those incoming links. If you see any from link farms, demand they remove your links lest you end up punished by Google for hanging with a bad crowd. (A link farm is a site that has no content, only rows and rows of links). I'll show you how to better search for bad links another day.
Hopefully, you'll see people arriving at your site from lots of other sites. If not, check out the SEO post again and start asking people to link to your blog. Just keep it clean.
Report 3 - The Map
Now this report isn't essential, but it's affirmation. When you see that you are being read by someone on the other side of the world, it sinks in that this is a very small planet. To get to the Map Overly, go to Visitors -> Map Overlay in the left side navigation.
This is a fun one to explore so go exploring.
The Other Reports
As a blogger, a lot of the other reports are irrelevant. For example, if someone regularly follows your blog, they are only going to view the latest page, so you aren't interested in a lot of Pageviews or people leaving your site after they read one page (Bounce Rate). Even though you aren't interested in all of the other reports, feel free to poke around and send me a message if you want clarification on any.
Feedburner For those Pesky RSS Stats
If you've paid attention at all, you'd know that some of your readers are following your RSS through Google Reader. How in the hell do you find out how many folks are doing that? By publishing your RSS feed through Feedburner (http://www.feedburner.com). I admit that for a long time, I had no use for Feedburner. However, as I started making more content available to garden publishers, I found that I needed a way to track who was subscribed to my feeds.
Now Feedburner could be it's own post (and may be someday), but I'm going to give you 4 things to do for now. I'm ignoring signing in with your Google Reader account (seriously, you better have one by now).
Number 1 - Burn your feed. One the first page, copy and paste your RSS feed into the box and click next. Select all options asking you if you want additional stats or more information on your visitors. I'm not going through this step by step, but if in doubt, you want it. If you don't need it, you won't mess anything up.
Number 2 - Replace your RSS feed on your blog. Most blog software has a way for you to replace your RSS feed with another one. One Blogger it's under Settings -> Site Feed -> "Post Feed Redirect URL" box half way down that page. Put your new Feedburner address in there. Save those settings. (Note that other software has different settings and I can't cover everything here. If you need help, contact me.)
Number 3 - Post a Blog Entry. Ask your readers to use the new Feedburner RSS address. Please don't forget to post the new feed URL for them in parenthesis somewhere close to the first sentence. If you make them hunt, they won't do it. It doesn't hurt to post it on your Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Number 4 - Wait. It will take a day or two for your stats to start showing up. As your readers move over to the new URL (uniform resource locator), your subscriptions and reach will change.
There are other things you can do with Feedburner, so check it out. As always, if you want me to cover a specific topic, let me know. I'll try to explain it.
Monday Morning Quarterbacking
Now set one day per week to check your stats. ONE DAY ONLY. Why only one day per week? These analytic tools only update once per day. You'd be tempted to follow them daily, but like the stock market, you become subject to the delirious highs and the depressing lows by following every single day (just ask those around me). So first thing each Monday morning over your cup of coffee (laced with your favorite adult beverage), check your traffic. Now you can see what people are reading, where they are coming from and how they are discovering your blog.
Comment and let me know how many readers you have and how you know.
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