Step 15 - Reading Site Stats - plus other Statistics Tools
Last time, we learned how to set up the Subscription Box, and I was talking about how you can keep track of your reader's numbers. I also mentioned Site Stats (the spot where you can find all those numbers and your subscribers' emails). In this post, I wanted to talk more about Site Stats, as it is a great tool that will show you how many visitors, per day, visit your site, what they click on and more. Let me walk you through that tool now.
First things first, let's go to Site Stats under Jetpack. Again, very important note, you need to take care of installing Jetpack on your website first in order to have access to all of the extra features. If you have not installed Jetpack yet, read how to do that in my "Configuring Jetpack" Post.
Visitors
Now, when you go to Site Stats you are going to see a nice graph that shows you how many people visited your website "Today". It also shows "Best Ever" number of visitors per day as well as "All Time" views and comments. How cool is that? Also, because it displays that nice graph, you can compare different days by looking at the peaks and valleys on the graph.
Referrers
Below the graph, you will see Referrers and that tells you who, or what sites refer your readers to your particular website. It's always good to know where your readers come from, isn't it?
Top Posts & Pages
To the right of the Referrers column, you're going to see Top Posts & Pages, so obviously that tells you what Pages your readers visit most and what Posts they read during that one particular day.
Search Engine Terms
Below the Referrers column, you're going to see a Search Engine Terms column that is a very important statistic. Why? Because those are the keywords people type in their browsers that directs them to your site. If you know what people search for and what terms they type that bring them to your website, you can optimize your website with those particular keywords. We will talk more about SEO optimization in a later post.
Clicks
Next to the Search Engine Terms column, you have Clicks. Like the Top Posts & Pages that tells you what Posts and Pages are visited by your readers, Clicks will tell you what they click on on a given Page, or while reading your Posts. You will see exactly what links they click on here.
Subscription
And then the Subscriptions column, which as we mentioned in the previous post, gives an exact number of followers.
That is pretty much all there is to know about Site Stats. Even though it gives you a good amount of stats, it is still pretty basic. Besides that, it is good to install a different statistics tool. One of the most popular is Google Analytics. But, you can also try Crazy Egg, Spring Metrics, Woopra, and Mouse Flow to name just a few. Just go to their website, download the tool, and follow the instructions in order to get everything set up properly.