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10 Essential Website Tracking Tools

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As a website owner, keeping track of your website’s traffic and search engine rankings is crucial to understand how your website is performing and make informed decisions to improve its online visibility. With so many tools and techniques available, it can be overwhelming to decide which ones to use.

In this article, we have compiled a list of 10 effective ways to track your website’s traffic and search engine rankings. From using Google Analytics and Google Search Console to leveraging social media platforms and conducting competitor analysis, these techniques offer a comprehensive approach to monitor your website’s performance and optimize your online presence. So, let’s explore these 10 ways and learn how to track your website’s traffic and search engine rankings like a pro.

Top 10 Web Tracking Tools

Tracking your rankings in search engines is essential for blogging success.

After all, if you don’t know where you currently are, how will you reach your destination?

These tools will not only help your track your blog visitors, but some of them will also allow you to track what’s going on with your competitor’s rankings and your social network presence.

The SEMRush All-in-one Marketing Toolkit is our favorite tool for checking how much traffic a website gets.

Their Traffic Analytics tool offers some of the best market competitive research on the market, allowing you to get estimations of any website’s traffic.

#1 Google Analytics

OK I shall start with the one TOOL that I hope most of our readers are already familiar with: Google Analytics

There are several reasons why you should use Google Analytics to track your website’s traffic. Firstly, Google Analytics provides you with a comprehensive view of your website’s performance, including the number of visitors, page views, bounce rate, and more. This information can help you to understand how users engage with your website and identify areas where you can improve its performance.

Secondly, Google Analytics offers real-time data, which means you can monitor your website’s performance in real-time and make informed decisions to optimize its performance. You can also set up custom alerts to receive notifications when something important happens on your website, such as a sudden drop in traffic or an increase in bounce rate.

Thirdly, Google Analytics allows you to track your website’s traffic sources, including organic search, paid search, social media, and more. This information can help you to identify which channels are driving traffic to your website and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.

Lastly, Google Analytics is a free tool, which means you can access its basic features without paying a cent. However, if you need more advanced features, you can upgrade to Google Analytics 360, which offers more comprehensive analytics and insights.

Overall, using Google Analytics to track your website’s traffic is essential for understanding your website’s performance, optimizing your marketing strategy, and making informed decisions to improve your online business.

 

#2 CrazyEgg – Heatmaps and A/B Testing

Ever wondered how your visitors are using your website?

CrazyEgg is a powerful tool that can help website owners to understand how users interact with their website and make informed decisions to improve its performance. Here are some benefits of using Crazy Egg:

1. Heatmaps: Crazy Egg provides you with heatmaps that show you where users click, how far they scroll, and which areas of your website are getting the most attention. This information can help you to optimize your website’s layout, content, and calls to action.

2. Recording: Crazy Egg’s recording feature allows you to watch how users interact with your website in real-time. This information can help you to understand how users navigate your website and identify areas where you can improve its usability.

3. A/B Testing: Crazy Egg allows you to conduct A/B tests to compare different versions of your website and see which one performs better. This information can help you to optimize your website’s design, content, and calls to action.

4. Insights: Crazy Egg provides you with valuable insights into your website’s performance, including the number of visitors, bounce rate, conversion rate, and more. This information can help you to understand how your website is performing and identify areas where you can improve its performance.

#3 Google Keyword Research Tool

I haven’t been using this tool much till recently when I have been working on SEO. What you do is you type your keyword of your post, for example, Web Hosting and it will give you all the other search terms people will be searching for. Now I take these terms and use them as tags and meta keywords to help me rank high in Google. It also lets me know which term will get the most traffic so that I know which one to use for my post title. Visit Site >>

#4 Bing Webmaster Tools

This tool is great, basically, to rank high in search engines you need lots of great links.

Find someone who is ranking higher than you in your niche, put their URL in the Yahoo Site Explorer and you can see all the sites that link to it.

Now go to these sites and negotiate advertising deals, link exchanges, and guest blog posts. Visit Site >>

Blog Tracking Tools

#5 Tracker.ly marketing links

Wherever your links go, only Tracker.ly marketing links can brand your websites, plus short or secondary domains, domain redirects, & QR codes, all tracked together, with retargeting.

One thing that is really important as an affiliate, is knowing what converts. This tool shows me where my affiliates are getting clicked, so for example, I promote HostGator website hosting on my site and I want to know which page is converting the highest, this tool will tell me which page is giving me the most clicks.

Also, it will redirect your URL’s so instead of giving a long HostGator affiliate URL, I can have a URL such as IncomeDiary.com/hostgator. Click here for the website.

blog analytics

#6 Alexa

Although not very accurate for their traffic details, it is a very useful tool. For those who don’t know how Alexa works, it basically ranks every website in the world by the number of people who visit a site that are using the Alexa toolbar. Visit Site >>

#7 Quantcast

Great piece of software for those though are buying advertising space, this tool allows you to see who you typically reader is, where they live, how old they are, how much they earn a year, etc. Visit Site >>

#8 Matomo Analytics

Their claim is a bold one:

They claim to be the Google Analytics alternative that protects your data and your customers’ privacy. Matomo is a powerful web analytics platform that gives you 100% data ownership.

We have not used this tool ourselves, but reviews generally are very good. If data ownership is important to you this may be the service to use. Click here for the website

blog analytics tracking visitors

#9 Google Website Optimizer

This is one of the hottest pieces of software I’m using right now to test my site. It allows you to test different aspects of your website, for example, say you’re not sure if your sidebar is converting well, design a second sidebar and use Google Website Optimizer to test which one pulls the most clicks. Visit Site >>

#10 Website Grader

This tool basically allows you to learn everything about your site, how well it’s doing in the search engines, is it getting much traffic, how many social sites are linking to you.. etc. Visit Site >>

Tests You Should Try On Your Website

Increasing Affiliate Box Clicks

Go to your Google Analytics and pick one of your most visited pages, for me it was my Top 30 Earning Blogs post. I had a paragraph in it where I was promoting an affiliate product, I knew it wasn’t making me much money so I decided to run CrazyEgg on this blog post.

Over a couple of days, I saw that the affiliate links didn’t receive any clicks at all, I remember my friend told me using a stop sign really helps draw eyes to things. So using these two bits of information I tested different stop signs and ended up using a green sign to match the site. Adding this sign increased the clicks on affiliate links from 0 to 12 clicks a day. Admittedly not a lot of clicks but a lot more than what I had before, I now have rolled this out so that I use it at the bottom of every blog post because I used these tools and found it worked.

Finding Whats Converting Readers The Most

As an affiliate blogger, I need to know which page is making people take action.

It is essential that I can see which pages are getting the most clicks on affiliate links and then comparing them to other pages, can see what call of action is making the reader take action.

Related: The Best Keyword Research Tools For Ranking Your Blog or Website

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Comments

  1. John Paul says

    Great list mna.. Never used Crazy Egg.. Might have tot ake a look.

    Also noticed few days ago, that Alexa was giving up more info similar to Quancast.

  2. Dev - Technshare.com says

    Hey Michael,

    Nice Post and Great List.. I’m yet to try crazyegg.
    Going to try some day.

    Thanks for sharing this great Post. Keep up the good work Michael.

    ~Dev

  3. Nabeel | Create Your First Website says

    Hi Michael,

    Great tools you mentioned there.

    I use Google Analytics, Google Keyword Tool, Yahoo site explorer, Alexa, and recently used Website Grader.

    The other tools you mentioned look really useful, especially Go Try This. I have never heard of them, so thanks for sharing.

    All these tools are essential to analyse and improve your statistics.

    Kindest,
    Nabeel

  4. Lilian Nganga says

    Wow that is great.

  5. Hi Michael..
    Three tools are new to me I am not still using.Thanks for sharing them.
    I also used cpanel to get my traffic reports.

    Now will using them hoping it works better for me.

    Thanks For Sharing
    Abhishek

  6. Trafficcoleman says

    Yo Micheal,

    I used bout over half of these free tools, and they are an life savor to my business online. Out of all of them maybe Google Analytics will be the one you must get integrated into your sites asap.

    This tool will give you all the nuggets you will need to know about your site traffic.

    “TrafficColeman “Signing Off”

  7. The Google Adwords Keyword tool is very useful.I have seen people paying expensive bucks for keyword tools that does the same or less than what Google Adwords does.

  8. Nabeel | Create Your First Website says

    I forgot to add that Website Grader had some pretty amazing on page seo information, and all that for free (though we do have the option of buying for even more detailed report, I think).

    I used it, and I was just amazed at the amount of in depth information it gave. 2 Thumbs up for website grader!

    Kindest,
    Nabeel

  9. Chase Brumfield says

    Great content here Mike,

    I especially liked the yahoo finding sites that link to similar sites tip. I’m going to have to check into this and see if I can’t form some relationships with some good bloggers who are into the same thing I am.

    Google analytics is also increasingly important, but I can see how looking at it everyday can get discouraging. I like to look at it once a week… especially checking out the “referring sites” tool so I can thank those who have linked to my site. It’s a great way to see where the buzz is coming from and take the opportunity to thank the people who have gone the extra mile in sharing what you’re creating.

    I haven’t done much SEO lately, but Market Samurai might be just what I’m looking for to help me get started in that department.

    By the way, here’s a tip for everyone here. There’s a great website called “lexis-nexis.” It’s basically a website that allows you to search legitimate news articles all the way back form the 80’s. If you’ve need to do some research on an article your writing it’s a super quick way to find out what’s already been written about and pull from that (not to mention a great way to think of stories to write about). There’s some real quality stuff there. The link is….

    https://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CDkQFjAD&url=https://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe&rct=j&q=lexisnexis&ei=uChgTLXBN4WclgeNlc2ZCA&usg=AFQjCNHRa1dXzqoarNx01fEx6w7yPwEBRQ&sig2=A7wSL0ynTEotnERDkQ4w6A

    I know the link looks long but I can’t quite figure out why. Anyway hope it helps you guys (I have no affiliation with Lexis Nexis).

  10. Mark Aylward says

    Hey Michael
    As usual, good stuff!
    I like the spin on Google Keyword Tool. I think most people use it for research and don’t go back to it during post/article writing for headlines and such.
    It’s amazing how much free information that’s out there-it’s just work
    Mark

  11. Great article. i will personally try some of these.

  12. Did you know there is a firefox plugin for the yahoo backlink research thingy.

    Thanks
    -Mikey

  13. Eduard Burt, D.C., MUAC says

    Thank you for a great information. I have been using only 3 out of the list that you have provided. Never used Google Keywords for tag purposes. Scribe SEO generates it for me automatically. Now is a good time to check if I need to add
    anything to my tag lines.
    Love the Stop sign Idea. I am just starting my blog out and I am not at the point of providing an advertising platform. May be in the future. Will probably adopt a stop sign for my questions which at the end of the blog and before the comments.
    Thanks again for a great and informative article.

  14. Hi Michael,

    I`ve been reading your blog for a while now &, I have to say, you always deliver excellent info!!! Thank you for that.

    I have enjoyed this post but I have one burning question to ask. What`s the difference between Google Analytics & the testing tool that is included in blogs automatically?
    Nick

  15. Michael, thanks the post really helped.

  16. I think that Market Samurai is the best all-around tool for a blogger or internet marketer. The number and quality of features is just great. (Oh, and I’m not affiliated with them… 😉

    • Stuart Wooster says

      Yep I’ll back Karol up with his comment on Market Samurai…

      I’ve found it a very valuable piece of software for the past two years with its different modules helping you analyse keywords (traffic, competition, adwords value, etc.) and also looking at the strength and weaknesses of other websites.

      Glad to see things are going so well here Michael, a testament to the hard work you put in and posts like this give an insight to what else you do behind the scenes.

      Best wishes to everyone here 🙂

  17. Dean Saliba says

    Crazy Egg is a site I have never heard of before, it sounds like something I might in danger of spending hours every day looking at! 😀

  18. TriNi @ Make Money Online says

    Definitely helpful! I had never heard of Crazy Egg before, neither Go Try This, but I’m going to check them out right now. I currently use all the others you mentioned as well. I’m glad I decided to stop by your blog today.. learned something new!!

  19. I never heard of CrazyEgg before. I checked it out. Their cheapest service is $9 per month for tracking ten pages. Then of course it goes up in proportion to the amount of traffic you get and number of pages you want to track. It looks like a winner if you have a commercial blog that you want real insight into.

    I would want to see more reviews of people who have used it in comparison to Google Analytics though.

  20. Great tools for me, especially crazyeggs and yahoo site explorer. I think these tools are really helpful for all blogger where they are big or small.

  21. Nice one mike! thanks for the info!

  22. Nice tools here Michael. I have been using most of them but not all. I will definitely check the other products out.

  23. ariston | viral marketing says

    ei Michael, thanks for these great list of tracking tools!
    I’m using maybe a couple of them… the CrazyEgg looks interesting, maybe I’ll also add this one on my tracking tools list.. 🙂

    again, thanks! =)

  24. These are great tools to get insights on how to increase income. So far, I have tried Google Analytics and Google Keyword Tool. They are amazing! Maybe I should try other tools and see how they will benefit my online business.

  25. Hi Mike
    My first visit to your site as it was recommended to me. Being new to blogging I am trying to learn as much as I can before I monetise my site. I know we are not meant to be checking out stats too often but must admit I check mine several times a day! Got a pleasant surprise last night when I saw my traffic had taken a leap up the chart. Then when I looked deeper it was cos some kind bloggers had stumbled me. I had heard of this but don’t know about it only that it works 🙂
    I have some of the tools I am using as recommended to me by experienced bloggers. Will have to check the rest out. Thanks for all the useful info here.
    Patricia Perth Australia

  26. Sam Bakker says

    Alexa is a tool I use all the time. Not so much to look at web traffic because it sucks for that, but for their search analytics. I find that looking at the search analytics of Alexa gives a very good indication of where my competition is getting their traffic from and how much their getting…

    Market Samari = Mad Tool!

  27. hi.. im from malaysia, thanx 4 d information michael, i just add google analytic to my blog.

  28. Michael,

    Another rockin post!

    I agree with you about how testing and tracking can be boring. In the beginning actually it can be depressing as you are trying to grow your site and you see the stats you don’t want to see.

    But over time patterns will show up, and you will start to get a feel for what will work better. But of course, those new things need to be tested also.

    Oh, and i definitely have to give market samurai a try! Haven’t gotten my hands on it yet.

  29. Salvador Stabler says

    Hey Michael, thanks for the great list. Just wanted to say that I started using crazyegg recently and let me tell you it’s been a great tool. It’s incredible analytics to give you a detailed behavioral analysis of where your website visitors are clicking. Giving you an eagle eye view on how your web visitors are using your website. Website grader has always been a favorite of mine. I’ve been using website grader for sometime now and love it. Thanks for the list, take care

  30. Yeah…. this post is very essential as we all can’t do without at least on of these tools.

  31. I agree that google website optimizer is one of the hottest pieces of software

  32. forexmegadroid says

    What a great job! It was useful for my team. very well written and researched. Thanks for sharing 🙂

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