How to See How Many Visitors Your Website Has
So you have launched a new website, product or blog. Congrats! Now comes the hard part—getting people to actually come to your site, read your articles and like your stuff. You’ve got a few options but they all depend on you, the admin of the website (or blog). The good news is that even if you’re just starting out, you can already tell how many people visit your site thanks to free analytics from Google.
If you’re not familiar, Google Analytics is a free tool from Google that many websites use to track traffic and performance metrics like visits, page views, time on site, articles shared, and so much more. With this tool, you can easily see how many people are visiting your site, how often they come back, and whether or not they’re finding what they’re looking for. This is especially helpful for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes, which we will get to in a bit.
Before we get started, make sure you have an account with Google Analytics.
Check It Once, Then Check It Again
The first step in getting started with Google Analytics is to visit the dashboard to make sure everything is set up correctly. When you first visit the tool, you’ll see a small Google Analytics menu at the top right, as shown in the screenshot below.
You can click this to see a tutorial on how to use the tool effectively. Once you’re familiar with the basics, you can navigate to the dashboard by clicking the small blue icon in the upper right corner of your screen.
The dashboard will display various metrics and stats from your site. In addition to visits, the dashboard shows stats on page views, time on site, content sharing (i.e. social media sharing, such as Facebook likes), and even the countries that visit your site, as shown in the image below.
This last one is interesting because you can see that more people from Indonesia, Indonesia, are visiting your site than any other country. It would appear that there is a lot of interest in Asian cooking on the blogosphere. (If you’re curious, the top countries are: Indonesia, United States, Turkey, and Canada.)
Since we’re interested in getting people to come back to our site, let’s check out some of the best ways to do that.
Create Attention-Grabbing Headlines And Sub-Headings
The most effective and interesting way to get people to come back to your site is to create compelling headlines and sub-headings—short phrases or sentences that appear in bold text at the top of web pages, articles, or blog posts. These are the bits of text that people will either read or skip over, depending on their interests. But since people are often skimmers, meaning they only skim the headlines before diving into the text, your job is to pull them back in with your irresistible headline and sub-headings.
You have 280 characters to play with, so go wild! We recommend using headlines over 60 characters to ensure that your readers have enough room to breathe. In addition, you should avoid using all caps because it causes your text to be displayed in all caps on a small screen.
Make Use of Images And Icons
Images and icons are very important on a website. They add life to pages and allow for more interesting typography, while keeping things simple and easy to understand. But to maximize the amount of people that see your work, make sure that images and icons are relevant to the content that you are presenting. Meaning, if you are writing about food, don’t just throw in a picture of someone cooking—feature a few recipes or a step-by-step guide to creating your very own spaghetti sauce.
The same goes for icons. If you have an article about fashion, don’t just show a generic stylized fashion beat—feature a few top fashion bloggers’ work and don’t forget to put your own spin on the subject matter.
Offer An Experienced Take On Common Topics
If you’re writing an article on a popular topic that many people are searching for online, there is an option for you to provide expert information on the subject. This is usually done through a list of experts that provide qualified and reliable content on the subject matter. While many people may visit your site for the recipes, they will also be searching for tips on how to get the most out of their new TV or computer. So by including this type of content in your site, you’re effectively targeting two groups of people: those searching for the answers you have and those who want to find the answers you provide.
Keep in mind: if you go this route, make sure that you are an expert in your field. Have a look at your Google Analytics and see if there are any topics that people are searching for that you can cover in depth. Then, you can establish yourself as an expert in that field and even offer your services to businesses that are on the look-out for content like this.
Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) To Increase Visits To Your Site
SEO is a method of getting traffic to your site using keywords and creating appealing content that will make your audience click through to your site. When you have a large amount of content on your site, it is a good idea to use a tool like Google Keyword Planner to find the words and phrases that people use most often to find products and services like yours. (You can also use SEO tools like BuzzSumo, SEMrush, and more to find these keywords).
Once you have a list of keywords, you can enter these terms in the Google Keyword Planner and see how many monthly searches there are for each one. You can then choose the ones that you think are the most relevant to your product or service.
Once you’ve picked out a few relevant keywords, you can enter them in the Google Keyword Tool and see how many keywords you’ve got paired with advertisements that are relevant to your product or service. (You can also enter the name of your website and see all the related keywords that have been used to find it online.)
The above steps will help you find the right keywords quickly and easily. Don’t worry—even if you’ve never done SEO before, it’s a fairly easy process. Once you get started, the keywords will start to appear in your Google Analytics, showing you the results of your efforts.
Get Social
This last tip may not seem like it has anything to do with attracting potential customers to your site but getting social is essential in today’s digital world. When someone shares your content on social media, it often leads to many others sharing it as well, which eventually results in more traffic to your site.
To get started, simply connect your site to as many social media platforms as possible. For example, if you’ve written an article about fashion, make sure that you connect your website to Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Then, whenever possible, post regularly on social platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. If you’ve written an article about food, make sure that you connect your website to sites like Yelp, Google, and Facebook to get the word out about your delicious recipes.
By regularly posting on social media, you’ll start to see your articles shared by others, which eventually leads to more people visiting your site. And when they come back, hopefully, they’ll be hungry enough to check out your recipes.