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Track Your Users!

You created your blog for a reason. Maybe you started your blog to promote an idea, to sell a product or service, to educate or inform your readers, to give your business a personality or maybe even to vent your frustrations to the world. You didn’t create your blog to express yourself in a vacuum … you created your blog to share your thoughts and feelings with other human beings. And here is how you get people to visit your blog.

What do you really know about your visitors?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could see how many people are visiting your blog, where they’re coming from and who sent them to you? What if you could see the exact words and phrases people were using they found your blog on the Google search engine? Imagine being able to look back over the life of your blog and see what topics you wrote about that were successful and what topics proved to be a waste of time for you and your reader? Do you think you could use this invaluable information to push your blog to the next level? Sure you could!

There are 3 tools you absolutely must use with your Blogger blog and all for different reasons!

The First Tool – Google Analytics

Track Visitors Using Google Analytics (Free!)

Track Visitors Using Google Analytics (Free!)

Google Analytics is a free service by Google that allows you to track the visitors who view your website. But this isn’t your standard “website counter” that you can find for free all over the Internet.  This tool will let you track all kinds of interesting information!

You can see what page each visitor went to, when they went there, where they live, (usually accurate to the city, worldwide!) how long they stayed, where they went next, what web browser they were using and if they were using a Mac or a PC. (Phew! Talk about information overload!)

Track Browsers and Operating Systems

Track Browsers and Operating Systems

The more you know about your visitors, the better you can make your blog.

Pinpoint Your Visitors Location

Pinpoint Your Visitors Location

Why is this helpful? Because the only way you can improve your content is to track past progress and results! If you don’t know what is working and what your visitors want, how can you possibly improve? Blindly guess?

Test, Track and Improve!

Google Analytics makes it easy to track your most successful content.  This will help you create more posts that you know your followers will want to read … encouraging them to come back again and again!

Track Individual Pages

Track Individual Pages

It’s easy to get started with Google Analytics and you want to start as soon as possible!  Every day you delay installing Analytics,  you’re loosing valuable information about your audience.  For those of you who are technically savvy, head over to http://www.google.com/analytics and get started now.  You’re going to need to add a small piece of code to your Blogger blog to start the tracking process.

If you need more help, we’ve included a visual walk through guide as a part of our Blogger SEO series that will show you exactly how to set-up Google Analytics tracking for your Google Blogger blog. (Actually, that’s only one small part of what you will learn in this program. If you’re serious about converting your Blogger Blog into a visitor magnet, check out Blogger SEO!

Blogger SEO

When to Use Blogger

I just read an interesting article on the Build A Better Blog website where Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman talked about the differences between Blogger, WordPress and Typepad. They suggested that non-techie, business bloggers should use Typepad as their blogging platform. I completely agree. Typepad is an excellent blog that is very search engine friendly out of the box. They then suggested that you use WordPress.org if you have easy access to a technician. I also agree. WordPress is a very powerful blog with a huge community of users.

And finally, they suggested that you shouldn’t use Blogger for a business blog. I don’t agree. What most WordPress and Typepad bloggers don’t understand is the amazing customization capability you have with Blogger. For example, you can remove the Blogger Nav Bar from your header easily. This makes your blog look much more professional and non-Google like. You can also easily accept credit cards on your Blogger blog quickly convert your blog into a business blog. Best of all, Blogger is super easy to use and it’s completely free … unlike Typepad or having to pay for a hosting account with WordPress.

Now, would I use a Blogger blog for my business? Probably not. But would I use a Blogger blog to set up a blog for my business? Absolutely, especially if I wanted to save money while I was learning how to blog and earn money.

Here’s a really neat trick. WordPress has a function where you can import your entire Blogger blog to a WordPress platform in less than 6 seconds. That’s right … less than 6 seconds. This blog was originally created on Blogger and was converted to a WordPress blog.

My conclusion is this, if you want a serious business blog and you have the money and time to learn how to do it right, go with WordPress. If you want a serious business blog and you don’t have the time or technical expertise to keep it up to date, pay $15 a month and go with Typepad. If you’re just starting out, go with Blogger. Once you learn  how to blog on Blogger, the others will be a piece of cake.

Get the Code Here

Download The Code Here

Removing Newer Posts/Home/Older Posts
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Removing Blogger Navbar
Place this code between <head> and </head >and BEFORE <body>
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<style type='text/css'>#navbar-iframe {height: 0px; visibility: hidden; display: none;}</style>

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Removing post date/time, Posted by, comments, links to this post, labels, email post icon.
Posting > Page Elements > Blog Posts > Deselect every box with the exception of the pencil. Keep the Pencil checked.


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