Blog Traffic Tracking – Tools For Knowledge

Do you write a blog and hope that no one will read it? I know I don’t! I want people to read what I have to write. Part of it is ego. The other is that I really do spend my time writing because I have a desire to help people. It is hard to feel like I have done that if no one is reading, right?

Well – that is where the need for Blog Traffic Tracking comes in. There are a number of tools available for blog traffic tracking – but I want to point out my 2 favorites.

Google Analytics

It is truly a great tool and it is free. They provide the code that you need to post into your web page to track the incoming traffic, source of traffic, destination, and so much more.

For wordpress users – there are a number of easy ways of adding Google Analytics to your blog. If you use the Thesis Theme, there is a built-in option with the theme to add your Google Analytics code. Doesn’t get much easier than that.

For others – you can add it to your footer.php page of your template. If you want to do it using custom functions, you can add the following code to your wordpress theme functions. This is my recommended method for non-thesis-theme-users. Not sure how to add custom functions to your theme. Here is a post on Adding Custom Functions To Wordpress Themes

Adding Google Analytics To Wordpress Using Hooks

[code language='php']

function mycustom_google_analytics() {
global $post;
?>
{Copy And Paste Google Analytics Code Here}
}

add_action(wp_footer, mycustom_google_analytics);

[/code]

As long as your theme has a place that calls the wp-footer action - your code will be added just fine. You can always add the segment above, view the source of your page, and make sure it is working just fine.

Alternative to Google Analytics

As an alternative to Google Analytics - one that is free and offers real time stats, you could try out Open Web Analytics. I personally love and hate it! Not sure why - read about why I Hate Web Analytics. I know - this post is about how great they are, but still...there is a draw back.

Back to OWA - OWA has a wordpress plug-in that makes it easy to setup and install. It does not work with the built in installer in wordpress 2.7. You have to FTP it up to your wp-content/plugins directory. If you use a web host that has cpanel, you can upload it in the .tar compressed format using the file manager. Then, select the file and extract it to the plugins directory. It is all stored in its own folder 'OWA'.

Once you have extracted it, go to your Wordpress dashboard and activate the plug-in. Enjoy getting real-time stats. It is fun, but addictive, so be careful.

Coming Soon...

It is great to have stats - but what do they mean and how should they affect your work online? Or should they at all? In the next week I will work up a post on how to dig into the stats and make some decisions about your website based on the stats you are seeing.