By now, it probably makes sense to you that you have to be able to know, at a glance, how much traffic you’re getting to your sites.  You HAVE to know the sheer number of visits, but, more importantly, you HAVE to know where they’re coming from, what pages of your site they go to, and what keywords they’re using to find your sites.

At first glance, that looks like a pretty tall order.  It REALLY isn’t!

When you were looking around the cpanel of your reseller hosting account, maybe you saw an icon that said “web stats”.  That can get you started on tracking your traffic, and it’s built right in for you to start using immediately!

Look for AWStats.  That’s the one that will give you the most useful information.  You DO have another web stats system in there.  Take a look at that one too.  I sometimes end up using both to compare the numbers.

Get used to using AWStats, it’s going to be one of your most precious tools!

AWStats is the most full featured of the two that are offered to you in most cpanels.  Take a look at the daily traffic section. 

Now, while this may look really exciting, the only thing it really tells you is that your techniques are working.

You can see which days are busiest for you, which may be a good indicator of when to send an email out to your list. You do remember that list, don’t you? 

What you REALLY need to know is what pages your visitors are looking at. You can do that by looking at the ENTRY URL list.

Now you can see how many visitors are looking at each page on your sites!  Obviously you want them to see the index page of each site, and especially the sales page, but this also lets you see which article is getting more traffic and how many people are landing on your mailing list signup page.

Another thing you want to keep track of is which search engines have crawled your site.  That will give you a GREAT idea of which technique is working the best for you.

You also want to know which keywords and phrases people are using to find you.

When you have this information, you can more accurately target your keywords to continue using the ones that are working for you and further refine the ones that aren’t.

BUT, by far the most important thing you want to look at is where the visitors are coming from.  That will tell you what’s working for you and what isn’t.  That’s VERY important.

In this view, you can see EXACTLY where your visitors are coming from.  How many people are typing in your URL or using a bookmark, how many people are coming from search engines, and which search engines they are using.  PLUS, you can see which sites are referring visitors to you.  You should be seeing some Squidoo, YouTube and the article directories in this list.

Those are the bare basics you should be looking at.  You need to know how many visitors your site gets each day, what pages they look at, how they got to your site, and which of your techniques is working best for you.

If you know all that, you’re a LOT more knowledgeable than the average website owner, and you’ll be a LOT more profitable if you make use of that information.

For those of you who want more information without spending any money, there’s Google Analytics  http://www.google.com/analytics/  This is a great way to see how long a visitor stays on your site and which interior pages they view the most PLUS a lot of other really good information that allows you to know EXACTLY what’s going on with your business.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT STATISTICS IS: don’t get so involved with them that you forget what your mission really is, and that’s to make money!

Your web stats can be fascinating and even fun once you know what you’re doing with them, but THEY’RE JUST A TOOL!  A tool that will tell you what’s working for you and what isn’t.  A tool that will tell you what you should be concentrating upon to grow your business.

AND, after you have a few sites up and running, which of those sites has the most potential to make you a LOT of money for the long term.

In the next post we will take that tracking information and use it to make your sites more profitable. 

That’s next!