The Web Authority

As a professional webmaster, I have seen all types and brands of website statistics. My pick for best web analytics or best website statistics is Urchin.

If you can’t get Urchin, Google Analytics is our second choice and is created by Urchin and owned by Google, but full-blown Urchin, typically only available from your web host, is even better than Google Analytics.

Hands down Urchin beats AWStats, Click Stats, Web Trends, all free Web stats from web hosts that are unbranded and even log files that Yahoo provides with their own web hosting package. Urchin is simply the best in the industry no holds barred.

I have Urchin for my own website and pay $5 a month to Hostway, my web host, on my shared server. I have seen other web hosts charge as much as $15 a month for Urchin, is it worth the price? If you are involved in pay per click advertising and serious about selling your services and brand, you bet it’s worth it.

If you like Google Analytics, you’ll love Urchin. Not only is it more secure and you do not share your stats with Google, but you have much more in-depth information about how people travel your website, how they get there, and from where they come.

Nancy’s post for today is at Blog-World Watch and is on the topic of how to track blog visitors using Feedburner PRO.

If you are blogging and don’t have Google Analytics installed in the footer of your blog and don’t have your feed URL wrapped by Feedburner, you are missing out on great information that will help you to understand your readers better.

In my own personal case, I used to blog Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at Web-World Watch and only on Tuesday on Blog-World Watch and only on Friday on Design-Wold Watch. After watching my Feedburner stats, I found out that Blog-World Watch was my most popular feed and changed my writing schedule for increased writing frequency to feed my audience. With these great free tools installed what could you find out about your own readers for your own blog to help you blog more effectively?

Lots! Feedburner used to charge a monthly subscription charge to have PRO level stats. Since being purchased by Google, Feedburner PRO stats are free. If you are already using Feedburner, you just need to click the PRO link in the control panel to be able to get more information about your readers like how many are subscribed, what pages the aggregate audience has viewed, how many have clicked in. Don’t worry, there is no personally identifiable information just summaries. But the summaries can help you to identify is your audience growing, shrinking, and what do they like to read.

Knowledge is power! If you want to grow your reader base then you need to understand why people read your blog. Once you know, take concrete action to improve your writing for your audience.

So, as in my case wrap, your feed with Feedburner, enable PRO tracking, and make sure to install Google Analytics, and then you to can blog for your audience more effectively.