You have placed your new flashy wordpress theme, you have added a few quality articles and you are a proud man now. You are sure there are some visitors reading your blog posts already but you want all the details and you are right. Visitor tracking and detailed statistics is a vital parameter you need to follow so your blog can grow and head towards the right direction. I can help you about this by recommending some tried and tested tools/plugins.
1) If you are running wordpress blog, chances are you have met Statspress plugin. It is a great real-time tool for counting daily and monthly visitors with all the small details like: browser, Operating System, Country, IP, and complete referring details also . It is very practical and detailed for a new blog, but once your blog starts getting more than 1000 unique visitors a day, it becomes quite a burden on your server with huge database load it causes with constant writing and queries to the database. The plugin’s database table (wp_statspress) gets so large, many hundreds of megabytes and the only solution I found around this is to empty the table each week, which is manual job and so boring.
Statspress plugin:
2) Statcounter.com is a great free tool, widely-used all across the world and it needs just a simple JavaScript code inserted in all pages of your website/ blog and provides you with simple real-time, easy-to-study stats information and referrers. it is worth mentioning that it is a web-based service and doesn’t take any of your server’s resources.
Statcounter:
3) Google Analytics – The best and most detailed free analytic tool coming directly from the King of the Search – Google! So much details here, you will be lost at first, but as time passes you will find it invaluable. Keep drilling at its options and sections, and keep reading this blog for more advanced coverage of Google Analytics.
Google Analytics:
Ok guys and gals, install those trackers and keep checking how is your blog improving and getting traction…