Tag Archives: Google Analytics

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Capture Even More Traffic Data

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In my last post I set up Google Analytics and made sure I was not counting myself in the dataset. There is a lot more to do in Google Analytics, but there is another tool that captures traffic data using WordPress: Counterize.

Counterize is a free WordPress plugin that records traffic data to your WordPress database that you can view from your dashboard. This plugin is supported by several additional add-on plugins which are disabled by default. Most of my data research will take place in Google Analytics, but I like the idea of seeing specific traffic statistics right from my WordPress dashboard.

For this website I’ve enabled Pages, Keywords, Referrers and Traffic. From my WordPress dashboard I can see that one of my new pages has become somewhat popular even though I’m not marketing this website just yet. What happened?

By clicking on the recently-enabled Referrer link in the Counterize section I can see that a majority of the traffic is coming from Inbound.org, a very popular online marketing bookmarking website. I receive a chat on AIM (yep!) from my friend and coworker Bill Slawski with a link to his Inbound.org submission. Bingo.

I didn’t expect this website to get any links for quite some time and I wanted to go through that process with you. But I’m no fool and I’m very grateful for a link from a trusted source by a trusted SEO. And I’ll still go through the entire campaign step by step even though I’ve gotten a nice push early on.

And I had also planned on installing another plugin later, but since I’ve already got some links coming in and going out, it’s time to bring in Broken Link Checker.

Another free WordPress plugin, Broken Link Checker crawls the pages of your website and checks the integrity of outbound links. Aside from having potential negative implications from an SEO standpoint, I want to make sure I am providing the best possible user experience by not having broken links on my pages.

The image above shows that Broken Link Checker found 25 broken links one another website I run. Fixing these links using the Broken Link Checker plugin is as easy as finding them. Access the form, select all and repair!

 

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Capturing Traffic Data

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The changes I make to my campaign should be based on real, actionable data. Making any assumptions is bad for business, so I need the facts.

  • How many unique visitors did I have last week?
  • Where did they come from?
  • Did they do something when they got here?

This sounds like a job for, dun-di-duh, Google Analytics!

Setting Up Google Analytics

Becoming a Google Analytics Jedi Master can take years to accomplish, but installing GA on your website is easy – and it’s free.

Visit https://www.google.com/analytics/ and follow the directions. For starters, I’m just adding the default JavaScript to the <head> section of my website, but I’ll tailor it to my needs later. Many of the latest WordPress themes provide an area to add this code, but consult a web developer or SEO you trust to implement this if you’re unsure.

You can view the source code of this page by holding CTRL (control) and pressing the letter u. By default, I can see that this page is ready to start collecting data for my account, UA-35549968-1 and is tracking pageviews (traffic). Excellent!

However, if your website is brand new, you might be disappointed to see little to no traffic. But don’t get discouraged! I started this campaign on November 2, 2012, so my traffic numbers are really low and that’s OK.

Google Analytics Traffic

Your first order of business is to ensure that your website can collect data. You should work next to collect clean data. You want to exclude visits to your website that might distort your view of how your campaign is progressing. If you’re anything like me you’ll probably visit your own website several times a day. If we don’t filter out our own visits, traffic may appear higher than it actually is.

Google calls this an “Exclude internal traffic” filter and offers the following tutorial:

Exclude internal traffic

Instructions for creating filters are in Create Filters.

To exclude internal traffic from appearing in a report view, create a custom filter to exclude a specific IP address or a range of IP addresses.

Filter Type: Custom > Exclude

Filter Field: Visitor IP Address

Filter Pattern:

    • For example, if the single IP address is 176.168.1.1, then enter 176\.168\.1\.1.
    • For example, if the range of IP addresses is 176.168.1.1-25 and 10.0.0.1-14, then enter
      ^176\.168\.1\.([1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-5])$|^10\.0\.0\.([1-9]|1[0-4])$

Remember to use regular expressions to enter an IP address.

For help finding the correct expression for your range of IP addresses, use the IP Address Range Tool.

For an overview of profile filters, read About Filters.

Real World Example

I haven’t set up my own Exclude Internal Traffic filter yet, so I’ll do that now. I start by logging into my Google Analytics account and clicking on the admin button.

On the left, I select the account for this website, click the Filters tab and then click the New Filter button.

From the drop down menus, I’ll select the following options:

  • Exclude
  • traffic from the IP addresses
  • that are equal to

Next I’m prompted to add my IP address. Visit www.whatismyip.com to find yours.

Enter the full IP address and take a break! Repeat these steps at all other locations you or your team might access your website from to further scrub your data.