That is, tracking what happens when visitors arrive at and engage with your blog content. It really comes down to the purpose of your blog. Metrics for a blog that’s focused on making a web site more search engine friendly by adding crawlable content and attracting links is quite different than a blog that’s meant to build thought leadership or brand credibility.

Many of the metrics tools used for blogs are also used for basic web site analytics. That makes sense because many blog initiatives do not have the same kind of budget as web site marketing programs do. Therefore, the analytics employed tend to be low(er) or no cost.

Regardless of the purpose, I’ve assembled a list below of the various tools we use, or have tested to report onsite blog metrics. Pick the service or tool you like the most from the list below or something new for your unique purpose and please share in the comments. The list is in no particular order.

• 103bees – Free web stats (ad supported) up to 100k visits per month, then it’s $9
• Enquisite – Free, extremely detailed web stats
• Hittail – Provides suggested topics for your blog by keywords used in referral traffic
• Crazy Egg – Provides overlay, list and heat map web stats
• RobotReplay – Lets you record visitor actions on your site and play them back
• Clicky – Web stats plus feed and Feedburner stats
• Google Analytics – Web stats, not really the best for blogs but it’s free
• StatCounter – Free web stats
• Co.mments – Track comment threads starting on your blog and follow them elsewhere in a feed
• Blog Tracker – Free from IceRocket but limited functionality
• Performancing Metrics – Basic is Free, or $3.99 to $16.99 per month for more features
• Site Meter – Basic Free and Premium versions $6.95 and up
• Mint – Popular web stats with bloggers for $30 per site
• MyBlogLog – Basic blog visitor stats and social networking. Free and paid versions.
• Feedburner Stats – StandardStats Free, TotalStats $4.99/mo
• WordPress Stats – Free basic blog stats plugin for WordPress blogs
• Google Analytics and Feedburner Stats – Free plugin for WordPress blogs
• eXTReMe Tracking – Free web stats with a paid version for $4.50 per month
• Web Stat – Many web stats features for $5/mo
• TraceWatch – Free but you need access to your server which should be running PHP/MySQL

What are your favorite analytics tools for blogs?

Comments

One of our readers suggested trying HitTail, which is certainly not the same thing, but is very, very useful for anyone trying to learn something about a website’s visitors.  It is a long-tail keyword research tool.

While I am logging in to HitTail, I should explain that this requires placing a little snippet of code in the template of your website, to capture every visitor landing on every page of your site.  Now that I am logged in, let me describe to you what I see…

The first view “search hits” shows the last 15 visitors from the search engines and the exact date and time..real time coverage of the crowds moving through this website (except the blog; I just realized that I did not place the HitTail code in the blog template, so I will add that to my to-do list).  For each visit, the search URL is provided, clickable so that I can visit the actual search (to see where my website ranks for that search, for example).  Hmm…a search for SEO tips at Google and it appears we are #4.  Not bad!  Note that the keywords searched are actually highlighted so that it is ever so much easier to see than in regular log files.

I switch now to the “keywords” view, and the same information is provided in even easier to read  format, listing each keyword and the engine it comes from.  This time if you click on the keyword, you can move it into the “suggestion” view, for later consideration.

My favorite mode is to use the Excel option, so that I can manipulate the data, group some of the long tail search terms, and mark them in various ways.  From a practical perspective, it seems that a lot of people are getting to my site using queries with the words “hire” and “looking”.  So if those search terms are getting me traffic, and I am only in the top 20 somewhere for those search terms, maybe I could tweak my pages, build a few keyword-targeted links, and increase my traffic measurably. 

I should note that the account is free, but HitTail also offers paid subscription services for enterprise websites and those who want to crunch some serious numbers.  But for the average website owner, the free subscription will do fine.

Comments

Tag:

HitTail supposedly analyzes your queries with the intent of isolating which searches lead to your blog which you could easily rank for with well-written articles.

The reason HitTail works is this: picture your blogs index page. There are five or 6 or more entries on each page of the index. This mishmash of content is indexed by the search engines, leading to queries coming in which may use words taken from multiple seperate posts.

If searches are coming in based on multiple posts’ content, chances are the keywords used are related to the theme of your blog, and so would make easy targets to rank for. HitTail isolates which incoming searches would be easy to rank for.

So, when the posts which were together on the index page eventually drift off, you can maintain your ranking for that term by creating an article using that keyphrase.

So far, HitTail has only made one suggestion for me – ‘rails ajax radio’. With luck, and a couple days more traffic, HitTail will hopefully provide a few more suggestions I can work with. If you are a blogger, give it a try!

Comments

Tag:

Bookmark WebProNews:

Did you like this article? Keep up with Brian’s expert search optimization tips and tricks at http://www.caydel.com

He does make the distinction that one event does not make the rule and that the Search Engine Watch blog is included as trusted news source in Google news. There are about 7,000 site included in Google News, so this isn’t a situation you can test on your own. Or is it? I’ve written before about how to get into news search engines, including Google News.

However, I don’t think the Google News algorithm would trust a press release or an article posted on a site with less authority as it would one of the major publications or a source like Search Engine Watch blog. Who knows, maybe PRWeb’s move to filter out low quality news releases by eliminating their free service will improve how those documents rank in Google news search.

Of particular interest from Danny’s post is the breakout of long tail search phrases on Google News that drove traffic to the article. The cumulative number of phrases after the top ten represented a huge chunk of traffic. He was using Google Analytics for the graphs, but I’ve been using HitTail recently for tracking long tail phrase opportunities.

In the case of the blog post from Search Engine Watch blog that hit a Google news category, the sum of all news search phrases outside of the top ten generated far more traffic than you might expect. That’s the hidden value of the long tail.

For Online Marketing Blog, Hittail shows that the top ten keywords drive 13.2% of all regular search engine traffic and long tail keywords drive 86.8% with 3674 unique keywords logged. That’s a pretty big spread. Interestingly enough, we don’t focus much on Google news for promotion of this blog, so I don’t have any comparison to make there. Something we should change I think in light of the traffic numbers Danny reports.

For October 2006, just under 50% of the traffic to this blog came from search engines. A blog about SEO should rank well, right? What’s funny is many of them don’t.

Another interesting stat from October for this blog was that 25% of traffic came from Digg, a trend that is not slowing down despite the increased difficulty in getting to the Digg home page. Del.icio.us, Technorati, Stumble Upon and Techmeme were also top ten referrers for October. Part of the reason for that is optimization for social media.

There’s lots more insight in the “Digg vs Google News Traffic” post including Danny’s experience with the often fickle Digg community, so check it out.

Comments

Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Lee Odden is President and Founder of
TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog
marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search
marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and
The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs
with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing
expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering
daily news, interviews and best practices.