Blogging 101 : On site counters and site stats

One of the things that you might want to install in your blog is a site counter. Every since I started blogging, I always used SITEMETER. But there are other site counters out there. Its just I am more familiar with sitemeter. Hand in hand with sitemeter, I am also monitoring my blog’s performance via GOOGLE ANALYTICS. This tool by GOOGLE can tell a lot about your blog because it includes your blog’s BOUNCE RATE, SOURCE OF VISITS, UNIQUE VISITS etc.
But why do you need site counters? For me, except for the fact that I find joy in seeing that there are really people who came to visit my blog, I can analyzed my blog by the numbers my site counter gives me.

Example, in the past month I saw that there are a lot of Google searches for a certain article that I wrote in my blog. I got an idea of what keywords to use. I basked on the popularity of that keyword and now my other blog is averaging 100+ visits everyday. Following the lead from that word I was able to come up with succeeding articles that would appeal not only to my blogroll but to search engine as well.

Also there was a time when I saw a high bounce rate on my site due to search engines. I was thinking why it was happening, and then it came to me that maybe my blog is loading slowly. Putting myself in the shoes of those who search in search engine, I realized that people who used GOOGLE for example are in a rush and have no patience to wait for a blog to load. That’s the reason I changed my template into something that has not too many graphics and is simple. Because of this changed my bounce rate decrease.

You see if you know how to use the numbers your site counter is telling you, you can use it to your advantage.