The statistics are provided by Google Analytics, which can be used on any site that accepts Java script (not just Blogger sites). Although Google Analytics is used a lot by businesses to review their web-marketing, it can really help teachers and students. Since 2004 I have been an Educational Technology Specialist. For those seven years I have helped a lot of school web masters and teachers set up and maintain web sites. The two most fundamental questions that they have to answer are:
- What is the purpose of my site?
- Who is my target audience?
If there is not a purpose and an intended audience, the web master's will disappears and the sites goes forever "frozen in time". However, even if you answer the two questions, how do you know you are accomplishing your goals? Asking for feedback via comments or surveys is one way. Another is by using a tool like Google Analytics. It will tell you how many visits your page(s) have gotten, where they were referred from, what search words visitors used to find the site, and what browsers visitors were using.
So, once you see your stats, how do you improve them? How do you drive traffic to your site? I just read a blog post by Liz B. Davis. Liz is the Director of Academic Technology at Belmont Hill School, an independent, all boys, grades 7-12 school outside of Boston, MA. One of her former students, Jacob, a teenage boy, has cancer and has created a blog to document his experiences. Jacob asked Liz how to increase traffic to his site. I think her advice is excellent.
Visit Jacob's "Teens with Cancer" blog and Liz's blog.
What do you think of Google's "Stats" feature? What recommendations do you have for increasing traffic to a web site/blog?
Totally useful, and a tad 1984-esque. While playing around with this, I found that you can adjust the settings so you're not counting your own blog views as page visits. I did this and immediately found that I'm the only one reading my blog. : )
ReplyDeleteBummer, jc. Now I'm afraid to adjust my settings! What I learned from looking at my blog's statistics is that Jerry probably owns a Mac running Safari!
ReplyDeleteIt's wild to see where your traffic is coming from and when it peaks. When we were in production for RENT, the musical, at DSA, I put up a bunch of posts (schedule, cast list, etc). So when someone googled RENT, my blog immediately appeared. Hence, the thousands of visitors from all over the world at this time!! Currently, I receive about 5/week . . . and they're all ME!!
ReplyDeleteChecking the stats every-so-often would help me to figure out what is drawing people to my blog and, perhaps, how to keep them coming back for more!