Website Activity - No Cost Ways to Tell If Your Website is Being Viewed
Having a website for a small business is certainly a must now days and of course we all know that just because we have a site, it doesn't mean we've got traffic and traffic usually means more customers.
There are some very helpful no-cost tools available to see if your website is even being viewed and to see how many times you've gotten hits and even track from where is your traffic coming from.
With this knowledge, it then gives you a base from which to create and track traffic to your site.
The two tools I use for my small business website are a Site Meter from sitemeter.
com and website traffic comparisons from Alexa.
com Site Meter is pretty much what it says it is, a site meter.
The basic site meter is no cost when you add it to the front page of your website.
You receive a weekly report explaining how many views you had in a week and how many page views you received (or how many times a viewer actually clicked through to the other pages of your website).
I have found this particularly useful when I do any marketing campaigns to get an idea if anyone has even bothered to look at my site and how many pages they actually went through.
With the free service it is possible for a viewer to click on the Site Meter icon and see the statistics for your site but unless they are reading this article or have a Site Meter account, most people would never know to look.
Alexa is a cool little tool which you can even download onto your tool bar and every time you pull up a website you can see a graph at the bottom of your screen which tells you how popular a site is and how much traffic the site has had over a four month time period.
I am viewing the graph right now for Ezine Articles which does very well by the way and is ranked #261 on the world wide web by Alexa.
Ranking is based on overall views, how quickly a site shows up in Google and some other factors.
It is a fun little tool for comparing how your site is doing as well as seeing how your competition is rating.
It's really great to see your website go up in rank as you market and optimize your site for search engines.
You can also go directly to Alexa.
com and enter a website by name to see more details and facts about the site such as who owns it (if the owner has given the details), how it's done over a longer than four month period of time and if any other sites are linking into the searched website.
As you probably have heard, having other sites link to yours is helpful in search engine optimization or in internet popularity.
On Alexa, you can see if you have any other sites linking in and you can see if those sites who are linking in to your site are credible sites you want linking to yours.
For example, on one of my sites, I have an Ezine Article which another website picked up as a story and created a link to my site.
This is a great link and a great connection between my site, my Ezine Article and another credible website.
A questionable site linking in on the other hand is sometimes not so good for business or can bring you questionable customers so knowing who is promoting you can be a useful tool.
Ezine Articles has over 23,000 sites linking in to theirs - another reason this site does so well on the web.
Another quick link check is to go to Google, type in Link, colon, then type in your url.
Example "Link: http://www.
yoururl.
com".
Google gives you a quick look at who is linking in but if you want more detailed information, use Alexa.
For now, have some fun with a Site Meter and Alexa because it is interesting to know how your site is doing on the world wide web.
If you need any help at all getting your site optimized in the search engines or have any ideas or comments, please comment or check out my site.
I would love to hear your ideas and I would love to help you grow your small business.
There are some very helpful no-cost tools available to see if your website is even being viewed and to see how many times you've gotten hits and even track from where is your traffic coming from.
With this knowledge, it then gives you a base from which to create and track traffic to your site.
The two tools I use for my small business website are a Site Meter from sitemeter.
com and website traffic comparisons from Alexa.
com Site Meter is pretty much what it says it is, a site meter.
The basic site meter is no cost when you add it to the front page of your website.
You receive a weekly report explaining how many views you had in a week and how many page views you received (or how many times a viewer actually clicked through to the other pages of your website).
I have found this particularly useful when I do any marketing campaigns to get an idea if anyone has even bothered to look at my site and how many pages they actually went through.
With the free service it is possible for a viewer to click on the Site Meter icon and see the statistics for your site but unless they are reading this article or have a Site Meter account, most people would never know to look.
Alexa is a cool little tool which you can even download onto your tool bar and every time you pull up a website you can see a graph at the bottom of your screen which tells you how popular a site is and how much traffic the site has had over a four month time period.
I am viewing the graph right now for Ezine Articles which does very well by the way and is ranked #261 on the world wide web by Alexa.
Ranking is based on overall views, how quickly a site shows up in Google and some other factors.
It is a fun little tool for comparing how your site is doing as well as seeing how your competition is rating.
It's really great to see your website go up in rank as you market and optimize your site for search engines.
You can also go directly to Alexa.
com and enter a website by name to see more details and facts about the site such as who owns it (if the owner has given the details), how it's done over a longer than four month period of time and if any other sites are linking into the searched website.
As you probably have heard, having other sites link to yours is helpful in search engine optimization or in internet popularity.
On Alexa, you can see if you have any other sites linking in and you can see if those sites who are linking in to your site are credible sites you want linking to yours.
For example, on one of my sites, I have an Ezine Article which another website picked up as a story and created a link to my site.
This is a great link and a great connection between my site, my Ezine Article and another credible website.
A questionable site linking in on the other hand is sometimes not so good for business or can bring you questionable customers so knowing who is promoting you can be a useful tool.
Ezine Articles has over 23,000 sites linking in to theirs - another reason this site does so well on the web.
Another quick link check is to go to Google, type in Link, colon, then type in your url.
Example "Link: http://www.
yoururl.
com".
Google gives you a quick look at who is linking in but if you want more detailed information, use Alexa.
For now, have some fun with a Site Meter and Alexa because it is interesting to know how your site is doing on the world wide web.
If you need any help at all getting your site optimized in the search engines or have any ideas or comments, please comment or check out my site.
I would love to hear your ideas and I would love to help you grow your small business.
