Tools to Measure Your Mom Blog Traffic

Many analytics software options are available, but the industry standards are Google Analytics and FeedBurner. When choosing analytics software, you want the software to keep track of as much data as possible — but you also need it to present the data in a way you can understand.

Getting great analytics software on your blog can be expensive — really expensive. The good news is that you probably won’t need such robust tools until you make enough money to pay for them anyway. Fantastic free tools such as Google Analytics and Quantcast are easy to set up and use.

If you want to explore other options, Wikipedia maintains a list of current Web analytics software.

Google Analytics

The tracking software most widely used by bloggers is Google Analytics. The reason it’s so popular is that it’s comparable to some of the most expensive analytics solutions available — but it’s free! Google Analytics is also a very widely accepted tool to use when you’re reporting your traffic statistics to potential sponsors and advertisers.

Google Analytics will measure things such as the number of monthly unique visitors that read your blog, where your readers come from, how they find your site, and what content they’re most interested in reading. Other things that sponsors or PR firms may be interested in are your bounce rate, pages per visitor, and average time on site.

FeedBurner

Every blog generates what’s called an RSS feed. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. An RSS feed allows your blog visitors to follow your content in a feed reader, like Google Reader and My Yahoo!. When a blog visitor subscribes to your feed, they can read your blog posts in a feed reader instead of on your site.

This is a great benefit for your visitors, because it makes it easy for them to read all their favorite blogs in one place. Additionally, it offers some of the same benefits of e-mail newsletters, primarily by reminding your visitors to come back to your site more frequently.

Your blog’s feed statistics are just as important as your traffic statistics. Your RSS readers may not visit your site in order to read your blog posts, because they will be reading them in a feed reader. Google Analytics can’t track visitors unless they visit your blog’s Web page.

Using a service such as FeedBurner allows you to track all readers of your blog, whether they come to your site or read it in a feed reader.

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