Track Visitors to Your Blogger Blog

A tracking and statistics program is a necessary tool for anyone wishing to build a profitable blog. It will show you useful information about how people found your blog, keywords they used to find it and how long they stayed.

There are a number of analytics programs that are available for use with your Blogger (Blogspot) blog. Three popular free options are:

Google Analytics (up to five million page views per month)
Site Meter (starting at 25K pageviews)
Stat Counter (up to 500 pageview log/250K pageviews/monthly)

While each of these have certain limitations any of these will give you access to invaluable data about traffic to your Blogger blog.

Advantages of Tracking Visitors to Your Site
There are a number of advantages of tracking visitors to your site.

Firstly you will get a clear understanding of the demographics of your site traffic including information like geographical location and length of visits. This kind of information is useful for targeting content to meet the specific needs of your visitors age groups, lifestyles etc. It will enable you to extend your reach and tap into a larger target audience.

Another advantage is that as your site grows you will have the ability to identify trends. An analytics program will provide a snapshot view of the results of different strategies you might employ, the success of posts and of additions like social bookmarking and networking, stumbles and diggs. You will be able to determine the rate of increase in traffic and identify areas where you could improve for instance by targeting specific keywords.

Without this kind of information it is difficult to gauge the performance of your site. If you are interested in growing your site and I am sure you are then you will find access to analytics invaluable in determining where to put your energies. If you decide to sell your site further down the track you will need hard evidence about the level of traffic your site receives.

How to Add Analytics to Your Blogger Blog?
To add a tracking and statistics to your Blogger blog you will need to place a code block in your template. This is a relatively straightforward process. For a step by step tutorial of how to add Google Analytics to Your Blogger blog see my previous article Add Google Analytics to Your Blogger Blog.

This article has covered the advantages and benefits of adding a statistics and tracking program to your Blogger blog. An analytics program will help you track visitors to your blog and understand traffic trends. Grow your Blogger (Blogspot)site today by adding a free tracking and statistics program such as Google Analytics, Site Meter or Stat Counter.

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Add Google Analytics to a Blogger Blog

If you are new to blogging at Blogger.com you might not be aware that tracking and statistics software can be linked to your site to give you details about your visitors. The process of adding a free tracking program such as Google Analytics is relatively straightforward. By following the simple steps below you will gain access to very useful data about the kind of traffic accessing your site. This will help you grow your site and target your content to meet the needs of your visitors.

Steps to Add Google Analytics to Your Blogger Blog

1. Login to Google Analytics
Login to Google Analytics at http://google.com/analytics with your Blogger.com login. If for some reason you wish to create a new account you can do so but be aware that you will lose the advantages of accessing other Google services such as Google Webmaster Tools and Google Adsense without having to log out.

2. Sign Up to Google Analytics
Click on the Sign Up button and you will be taken to the Analytics - New Account Signup page. Enter your blog URL, account name, country, and time zone on this page.

URL
The URL of this blog is blogknowhow.blogspot.com

You would enter nameofyourblog.blogspot.com

Account Name
It is a good idea to choose a general name such as Mike's Account because this will be the account name for anything from 1 to 100 websites.

Click on Continue.

In the next screen you will be prompted to enter your personal details: your name, phone number and country. Complete these and click on Continue.

The final sign up page is the Terms of Agreement screen. Once you agree to these your sign up is complete.

3. Copy the Code Block
After completing the signup process Google Analytics provides you with a code block of javascript to be added to your site.

To copy the code highlight the code block and use the command Ctrl + C to quickly copy the code to the clipboard of your computer. Leave the window open as you are going to return there.

4. Login to Blogger.com at http://www.blogger.com/
In a new window login to your site at Blogger.com and navigate from the Dashboard to the Layout tab.

5. Navigate to Edit HTML in the Layout Menu
From the Layout menu select the Edit HTML link (third from the left after Page Elements and Font and Colors). You are going to be adding a little bit of code to your template so care needs to be taken here not to overwrite any existing code. As a precaution it is advisable to backup your template at this point. You will see the option to do so.

6. Add Code Block to Your Blogger Template
To add the code block to your template you will need to locate the code that closes the body tag. This will be very near the bottom of the template. You will need to paste the code block immediately before the tag.


To paste the code block position the cursor in front of the tag and use the command Ctrl + V. Once the code is placed in your template and you are sure it is positioned correctly click on Save Template. All going well you have now successfully added Google Analytics to your Blogger blog.

7. Return to Google Analytics
Go back to the Google Analytics window. On the Overview page you will see details about your blog such as Reports, Status, Visits etc. If there is a tick in the status column your Analytics code is working correctly. The screen should look something like the one pictured below.



If the Status contains a yellow triangle symbol with an exclamation mark inside don't despair it just means that Google has not yet updated details of your site. Check back in 24 hours as it can take Google sometime from installing the code to actually providing reports.

Once Google Analytics is successfully receiving data about your site you can begin to make use of the wealth of information at your fingertips.

8. Troubleshooting
If after a day the status still displays a yellow triangle you may need to troubleshoot. A yellow triangle is displayed when the code is not detected or not verified.

Check your Blogger template to ensure the code block is pasted in the correct position.

Further help:
You will find excellent help from Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/support/analytics/.

For details about why Google Analytics is not able to track your site check out
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en_US&answer=57053&utm_id=ad