Build-A-Blog Workshop Day 9: Configuring Your Blog's Site Statistic Trackers
Author: Jim | Filed under: 30-Day Blogging
How are you guys hanging in there? We are almost done the first 1/3 of the Workshop, and already we have a site up and running with a freshly configured Feedburner RSS feed account. Before we get any further, it’s about time we start analyzing who is coming to our website, how they ended up there and what they want!
Why Stat Counters Work!
Nowadays, there are tons of programs that you can install to run in the background of your blog and tell you everything from how many hits you are getting per day, to what percentage of your viewers are from Ireland. It is important to have the ability to analyze everything that you can get your arms around when it comes to your website. Perhaps the biggest advantage? Advertisers crave them! Users can fudge the numbers and say how popular their website is by tampering with their RSS feeds… but statistics never lie. Because of this, things like “unique visitors per day” are going standards in this industry… and if you don’t have the numbers on you, you won’t get any business!
The Top Stat-Serving Scripts for WordPress
I recommend that you install and use these three plugins on your website/blog and EVERY website/blog that you ever make from here on out! 
1. Google Analytics
If you use nothing else, use Google Analytics. With Google’s new tracking device, you can literally see EVERYTHING that goes on in your website… things like search engine keywords and even a user’s city and state. It’s almost scary how much information Google Analytics gives you, but because of this dominance it has easily become the standard in stat tracking ability. You need to use Google Analytics!
2. Alexa.com Widget
Alexa is one of the biggest internet tracking services, and literally has a database of billions of websites all around the net. As much as people argue that the tracking is no good, advertisers use Alexa to get a quick reading of how popular a website really is. Because of this, we need to 
install the Alexa.com widget on our website to ensure that we are maximizing our reading from the Alexa.com servers. Yes, having this plugin installed on your blog does indeed (in my experience) yield a higher Alexa ranking!
3. Quantcast (Quantifier)
Another popular online stat tracking service, much like Alexa.com, is called QuantCast. This service is really built for those more established blogs, so you might not see much show up for your website when you first get started. However, installing their tracking script is very important if you hope to see their results as soon as you can. The “Quantcast Quantifier” plugin makes it easy for you to do this on a WordPress blog. Go ahead and download the plugin and install it through WordPress’ plugin area in your admin panel. If you don’t quite know how to do this, don’t you worry! We will be covering plugins shortly so you can keep this one downloaded and ready to go. Most bloggers wouldn’t recommend Quantcast, but it is a very nice tool for seeing things that you wouldn’t otherwise… such as your users’ income levels and education status. 
I am not going to cover how to install each of these three tracking devices. Instead, I will give you links to good tutorials on how to do this in case you get stuck.
- Installing Google Analytics on WordPress
- Installing Alexa.com’s Plugin on WordPress
- Installing the Quantcast Quantifier on WordPress
Remember, if you need help… don’t hesitate to ask. We are using Google Analytics to track real-time stats like user hits, Alexa.com to bump our rankings and Quantcast to break into user demographics. The three together make for a powerful combination!
-Jimvesting
Related Posts
- The Importance of Tracking Traffic Stats on Your Blog (or Website)
- Build-A-Blog Workshop Day 7: Purchasing and Installing Your Theme
- Build-A-Blog Workshop Day 8: Setting Up Your RSS Feed with Feedburner
- Day 21: Installing and Adding Plugins to your WordPress Blog
- Build-A-Blog Workshop Day 5: Downloading and Installing WordPress Blogging Software
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great post. I really did not know that we would get better results from adding the Alexa widget. Something I will have to do ASAP. Thanks for opening my eyes on this!
I did notice a big difference in Alexa ranking after installing this on my website and i mean great results.
what kind of results did you get?
well i did go from a ranking of 10 million to just below 700,000 within 3 months which by the way was brand new
I use Google Analytics to check the traffic on my blog. I really like Google Analytics it works great.
Got them all done except Quantcast I got the plugin but I couldn’t sign up it kept saying “the site is in read only mode. I got my first email subscriber today, my girlfriend it was cool when I logged into feedburner and saw a change in the stats. And Jim, Thanks again for the workshop.
i was using quantcast but i decided to not use it anymore since it wasn’t very accurate on ranking my site
thank you for reminding me to install all those… Great post, interesting info.
Twitter: @motorbeam
May 6, 2009 at 2:31 am #
First time hearing about Quantcast. Just downloading it.
I have used Quantcast on my site but its not a whole lot accurate as opposed to Alexa and Compete.com
Great post, I didn’t know about Quantcast, thanks for the info
well it is pretty cool such as the fact that it can show you how many women and men come to your site, amount of visits and etc. but it does rank websites terribly considering my alexa is pretty high for a 3 month blog and they ranking me incredibly low
Onother great post. I’m enjoying the series. I had the Alexa widget on my site early on but the numbers were too high to display. I’ll add it again now that I’m getting a better rating.
I’ve been using SEO for Firefox to check stats and it works well.
Are there any tools out there that tell you traffic for site other then ours?
Having alexa plugin on a blog is tricky because it keeps you ahead against those who dont have the plugin, LOL…
well if anything its great because it gives you an advantage over the others that don’t use it
I use Google Analytics and Quantcast. They provide quite accurate data.
I also use sitemeter just to keep myself more correct
In my opinion, Google Analytics is right choice for blogger.
What about sitemeter.com? It’s quite good and useful, isn’t it?
I love love love all th info I get form Google Analytics! I don’t sue sitemeter, tho.. should I add it too?
I usually use Google Analytics and counter from http://www.quantcast.com/
i enjoyed reading your post it was very informative and do dislike quantcast it fails to accurately measure a newer website
Thank you for the pointers and the guides. I use google analytics in my blogs and websites and its really practical and helpful for me in determining my traffic.
thanks
Jason
Thank you for the pointers, I’m new to the world of blogging and have successfully added Google and Quantcast to my blog site, I am having some issues with the alexia widget installation. I suppose I will have to read up some to fully understand how install widgets into wordpress.