Get more website traffic visitors on Examiner.com, add Google Analytics tracking code and study it

Get more website traffic visitors on Examiner.com, add Google Analytics tracking code and study it

Thanks to my fellow Examiners over at the LinkedIn discussions groups for letting me know that you could put Google Analytics tracking code inside each of your posts to find out which of your particular posts get the most traffics and why -- so I'm writing this post to show other Examiner.com writers how do so, until the time that Examiner.com puts this forthcoming enhancement in place.

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First, go to Google Analytics and set up a new account if you haven't already. It's free.

Then go to "Add Website Profile" at the bottom

Choose "Add a Profile for a new domain", and add Examiner.com as your website and leave the choose adwords box blank

Then you should get "Instructions for adding tracking" and "New Tracking Code ga.js" and under that you'll see "Copy the following code block into every webpage you want to track immediately before the body tag. If your site has dynamic content you can use a common include or a template. Use this tracking code to gain access to a wide range of exciting new features as they become available."

Take the code that you see in that box below that text and copy and paste it to a notepad file so that you can use it often.

Next, when you're writing your next Examiner.com article (or adding it to the old Examiner.com pieces you've written) copy and paste that Google Analytics code in the same box that you would when you're posting a video to Examiner.com -- the little box that pops up when you add the YouTube code there, the one that looks like a clipboard with a <*> on it.

Okay, now that you've got your tracking code installed in your Examiner.com articles, here's how you can use it to figure out what articles are getting the most traffic..and how to duplicate that...

Google Analytics code gives you its data the day after you install it, and you have to wait till the next day to get the results for the previous 24 hour period, or whatever other prior periods you want to analyze.


Here's what I found out about my traffic yesterday on Examiner.com -- check my Examiner.com page to see the actual articles:


So far, I see that Google direct traffic is the main source of my traffic -- and that my Twitter and Digg marketing efforts didn't pay off as much yet, at least not until my followers grow on Twitter - CLICK THE PIC TO ENLARGE:





And this next Google Analytics page shows me which ones of my posts got the most traffic yesterday (of the pieces that I put the tracking code inside) and today I was surprised to learn that my recent article about AJ Jewell's funeral got the most views. I didn't even know it was ranked that well till I studied the code. So info like that helps me go back and see that the topic obviously has a lot of interest -- plus, it helps me learn how I wrote that post that helped Google rank it well. Maybe it was the amount of times I wrote "AJ Jewell funeral" throughout the post. CLICK TO ENLARGE AND STUDY:


And finally, getting a view of the keywords -- the actual search terms that people typed into search engines (mostly Google) to find my Examiner.com also helps. Click to enlarge pic:

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