Website Statistic Trackers

When you create a website, the ultimate goal is for someone to view that site. If your website is for a business, chances are you will market that website, advertise it, find other sites to link to it, and do whatever you can to optimize the site in order to gain more page views. The more traffic, or page views, your site receives, the more likely you will be to convert that traffic into sales, to receive advertising clicks, or in short, to make money.

In order to drive traffic to your site, you will probably use a variety of marketing strategies, including article marketing, banner ads, other advertising, blogs, newsletters, contests, press releases, and many other methods to promote your site, increase your search engine placement, and in short - get as much traffic to your site as possible.

This marketing can be both time intensive and cost a pretty penny, and it's important for you to know whether or not your efforts are paying off. In other words, you want to know whether or not your marketing and advertising is actually bringing people to your website, and what efforts are bringing the most traffic.

That's where a website statistic tracker comes in handy.

A website statistic tracker might be know by other names such as: web tracker, traffic tracker, page hit counter, hit counter, traffic analyzer, site meter, site tracker, or any combination of these words.

Essentially, what a website statistic tracker does for your website will differ depending on what type of statistic tracker you use, but all tracker have the same basic layout. A website statistic tracker will be a snippet of code that you can add to the page code of your website and it will track certain aspects of your site's visitors.

A basic website statistic tracker is the one most people are probably familiar with, a hit counter. This is a very basic piece of code that simply counts the number of times the page that code is on is actually rendered by a browser. This is nothing more than a number that increases by one increment each time the page is rendered. Using a basic hit counter, you would be able to refresh your webpage and watch the counter increase by one number every time the page displays.

A slightly more complex hit counter might actually log only unique page views. This will look at certain aspects of your visitor, sometimes their IP address and sometimes by using a cookie that is placed on their computer, in order to recognize the viewer and remember them. This way, only page hits that come from unique viewers or unique sessions on your site will be counted. Using this type of tracker will only count one page hit, no matter how many times the age is refreshed.

Some site trackers are even more complex and can provide you a lot of varied information about the visitors to your site, such as their location, ISP, IP address, the total number of page views while they are on your site.

All of these types of site trackers and stat counters will help you understand the behavior of your website's viewers, so that you can better target your site for what your viewers look at the most. If you notice one of your pages doesn't get as many hits as others do, you can tweak that page and improve it and watch whether those hits increase or decrease, and really target your site to your viewer's desires.

The best type of site statistic tracker for your website though is the type that will show you the referring URL of all visitors to your site. This usually requires a Java-enabled code and site, but is still a very easy and small piece of code to add to your pages.

When you have a website statistic tracker that gives you the referring URL, you will be able to see exactly where the web surfer was before they came to your site. This will help you to determine which of your advertising campaigns are working the best and which are not sending any traffic to your site at all. This way, you can focus only on the marketing techniques that show proven results and not waste time and money on techniques that don't drive traffic to your site.

Lastly, a good site tracker will also show you something called 'out clicks'. This will help you see what links on your site your site's visitors click on the most. If you have advertising links or links to other sites, a good website statistic tracker will show you which links are getting attention and which are not, as well as showing you what draws interest from your visitors and causes them to leave your site.

As you can see, a good website statistic tracker is absolutely essential if you want to market and grow your website. There are many from which to choose, some free, some very inexpensive and some that cost a monthly or large flat rate, but include reports and other features you may like.

Most site statistic trackers have at least a free or inexpensive trial period in which you can play with the code and see how the statistic tracker works on your site and whether or not it gives you the information you require. Take the time to try out several before selecting one for your site that gives everything you need to track your site's statistics.