Let me start this post off with a warning. Far too many bloggers spend way too much time looking at their website’s statistics. Although it’s great to know where your site is at in terms of visitors, subscribers and comments, checking these too often can take away from other important aspects of your website like creating awesome content or promoting your site to the rest of the internet.

As you study through this post I want you to take away from this a strong sense of what each of these statistics are and why each is important. Then I want you to glance at each of these at your site and then put it away and get back to work!

If you haven’t already done this, you should create an account with Google Analytics and install their tracking code on your site. If you have more questions about how to do that just let me know and I’ll help you out.

Google Analytics will allow you direct access to most of the following statistics with charts and graphs to make it very easy to analyze. It’s also completely free so you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it out.

Unique Visitors

This number reflects the number of computers that view your website. Each time a different user connects to your blog it is counted as a unique visitor. This number is reset every 24 hours at midnight. If a person visits your website at 8:00 AM and again at 4:00 PM they will not count twice. That person will only count as 1 visitor even though he or she visited your site twice.

This number is incredibly important because it is a perfect reflection of how many different sets of eyes are viewing your website each day.

Page Views

This number is very similar to visitors and is in fact determined by your visitors. The difference, however, is this: each time a page is viewed on your website this number increases. So if a particular user visits your site and views three different pages then 3 page views will be added to the total rather than just one per user. One visitor who really digs around on your site could create dozens of page views per visit.

This number is a reflection of how interesting your site is. If each visitor that comes to your site only looks at the home page and then leaves then your site is not set up very well. We want our visitors to click on links, read articles, and browse our site enjoying our content. We want our page views to be much higher than our unique visitors.

If you have 200 page views and 100 unique visitors, it means that on average each of your visitors have viewed 2 pages of your website. The higher the ratio between those two number the better your site is.

Email and RSS Subscribers

This is one of my favorite statistics to check for my site. In my mind, this is a reflection of the number of people who feel that my site is interesting enough that they want to know every time I add new content.

This is also a reflection of the potential visitors that you could have at your site each time you post a new article. Email subscribers translates into lots of repeat visitors.

You can view my subscriber numbers at the top of each page at my site and you can subscribe by clicking one of the subscription icons there as well.

Comments

How engaging is your site? Do you create an environment where users are encouraged to leave feedback and ask questions?

Don’t answer those two questions out loud because the number of comments on your site has already answered it for you. The number of comments that you get on your site reveals how much you’ve made your readers feel like they are a part of your blog community.

Incoming Traffic Sources

Incoming traffic sources refers to the sites that your visitors were viewing right before coming to your site. This usually means that they clicked a link at that site that brought them to your site. Often times you’ll see this if you have an advertisement posted on another site or if you’ve been leaving comments on other blogs.

Focusing on your incoming traffic sources is important for several reasons. Focusing on these allow you to see which sites are giving you the most bang for your buck.

Pay attention to which sites you have commented at that are sending users back to your site or blog. You’ll also be able to see which advertisements are giving you the greatest return on your money if you are paying for ads at other sites.

Take it home with you

What should you take away from this article? Easy. Use this article as a guide to understand what each of these statistics means and how they can impact the success of your site. If a site you are commenting at is sending you lots of visitors, keep commenting at that site. If your page views are low then find a way to make your content and internal links more inviting.

Don’t spend too much time staring at your stats hoping that they will magically climb through the roof. Use your site’s stats as a guide directing you where you should focus your energies.

The bottom line is this: get back to work. Write killer articles. Promote your site like your life depends on it. Continue optimizing your site’s layout and theme. And only check your stats once in a while.