Ever wondered how many people visited your site last week? Would you believe you can find out information like that for absolutely free? Google offers a tremendous product called Analytics that you can use to keep track of visitors. You simply sign up at analytics.google.com and they will provide you with some code for your site and you’re ready to get started.
First you will need to get the code onto your site. Joost de Valk has created a simple plugin that does just that called Google Analytics for WordPress. Simply install the plugin and enter your id number into the field and Google will begin tracking information about all your visitors.
When I first began using WordPress, this was one of the first things I did for my sites and those of my clients, but there was always a big drawback–you couldn’t find out about your visitors without going to Google. I did everything else inside of WordPress, but I couldn’t find out my stats without leaving my site altogether. Thankfully that has changed.
Now the online newsletter company, Mail Chimp, has commissioned a great plugin called analytics 360 that brings the best of Google’s details right into my WordPress admin. Now you can see from right inside WordPress how many visitors you’ve had, where they came from, what they looked at, how long they stayed and so on. If you are a Mail Chimp user, they also plot the growth of your subscription list.
One unique feature analytics 360 adds by integrating into WordPress is showing the relationship between your posts and your visitors. Of course you could figure out that inside of Google, but they won’t plot it for you.
So if you haven’t tried Google Analytics, sign up for a free account today and then install analytics 360. Your blog will thank you.