How to PUMP UP Your Blog to Sell More Books - Pt III - Starting from Ground Zero - Tracking Your Visitors

Welcome back!

Today we'll be talking about tracking your visitors. Why should we care where our visitors are coming from?

For one thing, we need to know which search words are bringing them to our blog, and one of the ways you can do this is with a sitemeter (www.sitemeter.com), although there are various other site tracking devices. I choose to use sitemeter to illustrate this point simply because that is what I am familiar with, and have discovered how to use if effectively so that I can pass on the information to you.

Much of this everyone already knows, but for those who would like to be guided through the process, I'll show you how to do this step-by-step.

Log into www.sitemeter.com and you see where it says login? Ignore it. Go all the way down the page and to the left, it will say "sign up for a free meter." Click it.

The next page explains what Sitemeter is. Click "next."

The next page explains Sitemeter's policies. Click "next."

The next page, you will put in your blog url (for example, http://www.pumpupyouronlinebookpromotion.blogspot.com). Then, your site's name which for me would be "Pump Up Your Online Book Promotion." Then, your codename. Put anything related to what your blog is about. For example, I might put "pumpupblog."

Set your current time and hit "next."

The next page is all about you and is self-explanatory. Fill in all the fields and hit "next."

If you don't want enough spam to fill up twenty email boxes, skip the next page by hitting "next."

Check the next page over carefully in case you need to change anything. If so, hit "back." If you're good to go, hit "next."

Even though the next page says your signup is complete, it's really not. Hit "change the style of your site meter" and the next page will give you options as to how you want your site meter to look. Hit one of them, then "select," and then wait for your option to be saved.

Once the page reloads, look into the left hand sidbar and you'll see the words, "html code." Hit it.
The next page will give you directions as to how to apply your site meter onto your particular blog. If you know how to go into your template, you can simply scroll all the way down the page and hit "some help here," although if you have a blogger account such as this one, you can just hit "Adding sitemeter to a Blogger.com account" and follow directions which are pretty simple.

But, if you are still confused, and know how to add code into your template, hit "some help here" at the bottom of the page which I just mentioned.

Scroll all the way to the bottom of the next page and you'll see two html codes. My recommendation is to use the first one. Hit "copy as," then take it over to your template and add the code.

All there is to it.

Now, let me explain what I like about sitemeter and how I use it to track my visitors.

Self-explanatory, but your sitemeter will tell you what search words people are using to get to your blog. What you should do is carefully examine these words because these are those key search words we've been talking about. These are the words you have in the content of your blog, whether you intentionally put them or not. If the set of key search words you had in mind aren't showing up, then you aren't applying them frequently enough.

But, let's just say that people are using words in search that aren't even related to your blog and you want to know what you're doing wrong. You're not doing a thing wrong. The search engines' spiders have pulled these words out to give to this particular person a reason to land on your blog. It's all good, whether they have a thing to do with your blog or not.

I did a real fun experiment on my blog at www.overthehillchick.blogspot.com. There are certain search words that really do get a lot of hits. If you go right now to www.yahoo.com and look at the bottom right of the page, it will tell you what searches are getting the most hits.

At the time, "sex" was a pretty popular sex word (don't ask...I'm just the messenger).

For the experiment, I posted the word "sex" in the title of one of my posts, and watched the site meter. You would be surprised as to how many people visited my site on that day. What a surprise when they got there and it was all about a boomer chick, and not a wild one at that. If you want to see how I did this, you can visit Hot Sex and How to Do It and Sex, Sex, Sex.

So, this proved to me that titles are so very important.

Guess that's it for today. Add your site meter and watch where your visitors come from. They might just surprise you!

Tags: How to Pump UP Your Blog to Sell More Books, site meter, free book promotion workshop, sex