Tag: tracking

How to increase traffic on your blog

Now you have started your blog and are excited about the topics you are going to discuss. You want to increase the number of visitors and responses to your blog.

Here are a few tips that will help to increase your readership:

1.

Now you have started your blog and are excited about the topics you are going to discuss.  You want to increase the number of visitors and responses to your blog.

Here are a few tips that will help to increase your readership:

  1. Content and postings – make regular postings – at least once per week.
  2. Review your stats – the blog software includes a basic statistics on visitors to your blog.  However there is not a great level of detail.  I would recommend also adding some other statistics counter.  I use www.statcounter.com — you can get more details on where the visitors come from, what their path is, if they are first time or repeat visitors.   Your stats over time will show you which topics generated the most interest and continue to bring you visitors. Experiment with different titles and topics until you see a pattern of interest.
  3. Add “tags” and “categories” to your postings.  The tags are the most effective indexing words – and you should use tags that are words in your postings – as well as additional tags that you think people will be posting on.
  4. Add a link to your blog in your email signature, your facebook page, your linked in profile, your website, your twitter profile, your email newsletter, your online articles, and any other online profiles that you may have.
  5. Spend some time seeing how you can post in one place and have it appear via RSS feeds and widgets on the different locations. This way you will end up doing less work – always a good thing 🙂
  6. Read and comment on OTHER blogs and social networks. – and be sure that you are showing your blog in your signature.  Your participation brings people from their blog over to your blog for more information

These are just some of the ways that you can increase your blog readership. Send me your favorite methods for increasing your blog traffic and we will all grow.  Fill in the comment form to reply.

How to increase traffic to your website

Growing the number of first time visitors, and building return visits to your website can be done using several approaches. Here are a few methods that will help you to increase the traffic to your website.

Growing the number of first time visitors, and building return visits to your website can be done using several approaches.  Here are a few methods that will help you to increase the traffic to your website.

Website Keywords and Search Engines. Look at your website and check if the “title” “description” and “keywords” meta tags are added to your website pages. These are important in making sure your website is indexed by search engines like Google and Yahoo. In the text of your page – especially your home page – use the words that best describe you and the needs of your target audience as part of the body text. After all this is done – register the site with Google, Yahoo and other major search engines. All these have free submission forms but there is no guarantee how long it will take. Keep reviewing your statistics and you will see when you start getting traffic from search engines. Look at the keywords people are using to find your site and refine these keywords on your pages.

Email Newsletters and Announcements. Tell the people on your list(s) about your website and what they can find there and why they should visit. Add a signup form on the site and some incentive for people to sign up for your newsletter. Your newsletter and announcements will really build your RETURN visits to the website. Remember that people may visit thousands of websites and even if they like you on their first visit – they need to be reminded to return.

Links. Links from other websites to you build credibility and also improve your position in the search engines. These are called in-bound links. If you have a resource or links page on your site – you can link out to useful sites – and then contact the other website owner and ask them to link to you. If you have affiliates, partners, sponsors, or other relationships – send them the link to your website, your logo and a key phrase and ask if they will add your link to their website.

Signature File. Add your website address to your email signature file. Make this also an organization policy and have everyone create a standard signature file that includes the website link. Include the website address also in any paper correspondence, flyers, brochures, advertisements, articles and PR and of course your business card.

Online Social Networks. Create your own presence on the large social networking sites such as Facebook page and group and LinkedIN. Participate in the groups and discussion forums and include your website as part of your profile.

Using these methods you can increase the traffic to your website – but do remember that your website must be engaging and interesting to the person and have some appropriate calls to action – or your efforts will bring traffic but not help you in achieving your objectives.

Internet Strategies and Tips eNewsletter:
Signup for our Email Newsletter

Tracking your Website Activity – Statistics

Viewing and interpreting your website tracking statistics

Do you follow the traffic statistics on your website? Why should you care and how can it help you?

Web stats are a piece of the puzzle
Web stats are a piece of the puzzle

There are many different website tracking programs and the 2 that I like to use are Statcounter and Google Anaytics.  On each of these they are free to setup your account and configure.  You get a piece of coding that you or your web programmer will add to each page of the website.  Once you have this added you can login to the stat site to view the action.

Viewing the traffic

You can get different views of periods of times.

  • Visitors – look at numbers of first time and returning visitors.  If you have a lot of first time visitor but a low number of return visitors – look at your site and see if you are giving people good reasons to book mark you, add your RSS feed, sign up for something that will bring them back to the site on a regular basis. Does your email newsletter and blog lead people back to your website for more information?
  • Pages – what are the most popular pages on the website?  Look at the number of hits sorted by frequency. What pages are not visited?  Are people getting to your action pages – your sign up forms, contact pages?
  • Conversions – on Google Analytics you are able to setup specific GOALS. For example you could set as a goal the reply page from your contact for, or a download of a free report.  What is the conversion rate on your website – i.e. how many people that come to the site get to your goal.
  • Geographic – Where are your website visitors coming from?  You can see the information in a map or as a list of countries, states and cities.  This information can be valuable in looking for new business opportunities.  You may have a very local service – but if you have an international reach are there some information products or other things that you can consider that would be appropriate for the broader geographic interest?
  • Path – How many pages do your visitors look at and what path do they take through the site?  You can view specific visitor paths, and statistics on average number of pages per visit.  Reviewing this information gives you an idea of how “sticky” your site is and if people stay for a long time and browse or participate in some way.
  • Search Engines – What keywords are people using that get them to your site? Which search engines are sending you traffic?  Do these give you ideas for additional meta tags or search engine optimization?  Are there some major search engines that are not sending you traffic? Check that your site is registered with them to get indexed.  Check that your site includes good keywords and descriptions in the meta tags and particularly on the home page of your website that you use text in the body area the describes your key concepts.
  • Other sites – What other websites are sending you traffic.  This might be from your own blogs or from your related websites or alliance partners.  Look at the sites that are sending you traffic – can you help them in some way or are there other sites similar to them that you can build a relationship with?

These are just a few ideas on how to use your website traffic statistics to help you plan and continue to improve and build your website to be an effecitve part of your business or nonprofit.

Sign up for our email newsletter to receive additional tips and strategies and notice of upcoming teleseminars.