One
important step before we get started:
Whether you are about to build your first website, have just
finished building it, or have had a website for a little while
and are just wishing to get it to perform better for you,
before we go any further I want you to do something for me.
After your website is posted and accessible on the web and
before you implement any of the principles that I will be
sharing with you from this point forward, I want you to subscribe
to and implement a traffic tracking service for your site.
The reason I want you to do this is so that you can actually
watch the results you will get as they happen. Even if your
website is brand new and you know it couldn’t possibly
have any visitors at all yet, I want you to be able to see
the results you are getting as they develop and watch your
web presence transform. This is the only real way to see the
results you will be getting.
There are many services out there, but as a starting point
I will recommend what I am using, which is Hitslink
(hitslink.com) which I find to be a detailed and informative
service for an inexpensive and worthwhile $10 a month (includes
detailed information on search engines, page views, visitor
statistics, keywords and search terms, statistics by the minute,
hour, day, month, and year and much, much more!). At the time
this page was written, Hitslink offered your entire first
month free. All you have to do is create an account, go get
the javascript code they have created for your account, copy
it, and paste it into the body of your page code on each page
of your website. Then Hitslink will be able to track all of
your traffic in detail for you!
Not only will this tracking service be a fun and encouraging
way for you to watch the fruits of your labor, it will also
become a powerful insight for watching the habits and interests
of your visitors. This resource will become extremely handy
for you when you get a feel for how to read it as it will
help you see what your visitors are looking for, where your
site's strengths and weaknesses are, how well your navigation
is working, and how “sticky” your site is (“stickiness”
is a term that is used to describe a website’s ability
to keep its viewer engaged. The “stickier” the
site is, the longer the visitor will stay and the more pages
they will view. If a viewer drops into one of your pages and
immediately drops back out, your page is not very “sticky”
at all. We’ll be getting into what you can do to make
your site “stickier” later on.)
Definitely make sure that you have this service in place before
you start developing your web presence. It will give you a
fantastic before and after “snapshot” that will
really show you how far you have come when you finally get
there!
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