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Once you’ve accepted the importance of analytics, the question becomes how best to begin gathering data.
Fundamentally this comes down to installing tracking code on every page of your site. Yes, every single page.
The Trouble With Static Sites
This quickly reveals a major flaw with static websites. On a typical static site, every page is maintained manually, so any structural changes to a page have to be done individually.
This means if you haven’t installed tracking code yet, or you want to change what you’ve got, you’ll probably need to go into every page, one by one, change the code, and hope you don’t miss anything.
For all but the simplest of sites, this is a real pain.
With A Blog, Analytics Are Easy
With a blog, you copy and paste the analytics tracking code in one location, and it is immediately placed in every page of your site, and in all future pages, automatically.
This allows you to move quickly beyond the technical aspects of setting up your site, and focus on creating content and using the data you collect to improve your business.
Action Item:
Take a few minutes to check out Google Analytics, and read a little about the information it will provide you… for free.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Just goes to show one of the many advantages of having a blog, the greatest one being able to converse with your visitors, especially important if you’re running a business blog.
If I could make a suggestion, it would be most advantageous to you if you were to install a reply to comment plugin so people could be notified when more comments have been added to a post they’ve subscribed to
Thanks for the suggestion! I’m not sure how I overlooked that one.
I’ve used this “Google Analytic” tool to track my sites. This tool is really helpful. Everything related to visitor is shown there. I think bloggers or site owners need to use this tool to optimize their blogs.
I’ve looked at a number of paid analytics options to see what I’m missing, and nothing has made me want to go through the extra hassle when I can get so much for free with Google.
Here’s a good tip for anyone that is about to develop or re-develop their website : if your website is Template-based, you can apply a single template design to all your pages, then when you add Google Analytics you only have to add it to the Template and it will apply it to the rest! Template based websites are also great becuse when your site needs layout updates, like adding a navigation link or changing the design whether it be colors or graphics, you again only have to apply the changes to the Template file. Eric is right about simplicity – it makes life a lot simpler (and saves you time and money)!