The Numbers Just Don't Add Up

Here's a fabulous article on web statistic numbers! I have just begun realizing this myself - with 5 different analytics programs, I often get 5 completely different numbers!

How can that happen? Well, if you think about it, statistic programs are counted on to weed out spiders and crawlers (which are "finding" your site electronically - but are not real visitors) and they are trying to get rid of repeat visitors. So, the statistics can vary - a lot.

So, why are they still helpful. Look to them for trends - not the actual stats. I do tend to rely more on my web hosts actual "numbers" for visitors than I do Google analytics (mostly because the former is higher) but Google analytics makes it easier to look at and track trends.

I know it's frustrating, but the Internet is NOT a perfect place.

Some "wow" information about Titles in blog posts

Written on May 21st, 2005 at 10:05 am
by Darren Rowse

The importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization

A few days ago I was moaning to a mate about the fact that despite thousands of inbound links and a page rank of 6 - ProBlogger.net is still yet to rank highly for many of it’s relevant search terms in Google - as a result I rarely get any traffic from Google on this blog. Even for a term like ‘Blog Tips’ (something I write about a lot) I only ranked around 60th on Google.

My friend asked a simple question that made me realize how blind a blogger can be when they stare at their own blog all day and lose objectivity.

He asked:‘What is in the title tags of your blog?’

As soon as he asked the question I knew how stupid I’d been. This is a question I often ask other bloggers but had not asked myself!

The title tags of my front page had been ‘ProBlogger: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. A good descriptive term - but not including some of the key terms that I was wanting to get hits on - particularly ‘Blog Tips’.

NB: your ‘title tags‘ are what appears between in your blog’s templates. This title comes up at the top of your browser when viewing a page and comes up in search engine results as the title of your post.After banging myself on the head a few times for my stupidity I decided to do an experiment - I changed my title tags on my home page to ‘ProBlogger Blog Tips: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. Just a tweak really - the inclusion of two words. I set this up and waited to see what would happen.

Read the rest of this post here...