Day 12: Stats
Keeping track of stats is one of the most important things you can do for your blog. Stats help you know how many people are coming to your website, what they are looking at while they are there, and how they are finding you. I use this information to tailor my site to my visitors and drop things that aren’t working. I don’t receive any money from the company I’m about to rave about, I just appreciate the service they’ve provided me. If you know me at all, you know that I very rarely give compliments, let alone am ecstatic about something, so this is a big deal. To keep track of my stats I use statcounter. It’s great because it is free. You can also see what keywords/paths people used to get to your blog, letting you know which of your keywords are working and which aren’t. Statcounter also gives you a pretty graph of how long people are spending on your site. Plus it shows you your most popular pages. The code is easy to install and invisible. The only drawback is that it only logs the last 100 visitors, but if this is a problem there is a paid version. Tracking stats is important and just plain neato. I love seeing that people all around the world are looking at my site, it’s a good excuse to celebrate by eating candy.