Ramblings-n-Writings

I have two problems I need help with…

1. I placed some Google ads in my right hand column. Do they appear for you? They don’t for me, except for the large gaping holes. Initially, I could see the ads nicely filling their intended spots, but then they vanished into cyberspace. The first set of ads should be between “Labels” and “Blogosphere” and the other set is between the “AC” ad and “Sonific SongSpot.” Please leave me a comment and let me know if you can or can’t see the ads!!! Edited: With some experimenting, I’ve changed the Google ads around. Hopefully you can see some Google things in the right hand column now!!!

2. If you use Mozilla and ScribeFire to write your blog posts, I need your help specifically. In my previous post, I didn’t want to link every occurrence of the word “Sitemeter” to the website. I figured I’d do the first occurrence in each paragraph. Well, I managed to do two in one paragraph and couldn’t figure out how to get rid of the second link. I tried re-highlighting the offending link, clicking the ‘link’ button, and leaving the address blank, but that didn’t work. Any suggestions on how to get rid of the link? What do I do if I put the wrong link? Of course, now that I wrote this, I figure I can log in to Blogger and fix the link that way, but shouldn’t I be able to do it in ScribeFire before I publish my post?

Occasionally I plan to do a Friday Featurette of blogs or websites that are worth your time. If you are a blogger, this featurette is for you!

At the bottom of my right hand column, there’s a small, unobtrusive box that says “Sitemeter.” I absolutely love Sitemeter! I’m not sure where I initially read a post about Sitemeter other than it was a missionary lady’s blog who was impressed at the handful of readers she had from around the world. I gave it a try and it is really cool when you have a reader in Bristol or Madrid or Hong Kong (yep, I’ve had readers from all those and more).

What is Sitemeter? I’m sure you’ve seen sites that say something like “1,015 visitors since…” Sitemeter does the counting of visitors and a lot more for free. When I log in to my Sitemeter account, I can see how many visitors I’ve had in the past week or month, how many page views (did you look at just the homepage or did you click a link to another page?), what site referred the visitor, and the general geographical location of the visitor (this tends to be the location of the ISP rather than the actual visitor location). Sitemeter shows the information in text format as well as graphically with bar charts, line graphs, and a world map.

Why do I love Sitemeter? Well, it’s incredibly simple to use. I don’t recall it being difficult to integrate. Each week I receive an email with a report of numbers from the previous week. If I want more information, I click a link in the email and it takes me directly to my summary page at Sitemeter. From there I can look at the stats to see what generated the most traffic to my site. For example, if I leave a comment on another blog or participate in a Mr. Linky, I can see how much traffic those actions generated through the referral page. Or I can see what post titles tend to be picked up by Google when someone searches. Or I can check the predictions for how much traffic I will have in the next month if my traffic is the same as now. And I can also see what time frames tend to be popular for viewing (helpful to know when considering posting).

Initially when I first started using Sitemeter, my traffic was quite low – maybe 10 visitors a week – and I really didn’t pay much attention to Sitemeter. Then I started to get the hang of how to promote my blog (e.g. Mr. Linky and comments) as well as BlogRush. Now, I tend to check my stats each week, and with the increase in traffic (approx. 200-300 visitors a week), I knew I was in the position to start placing ads on my blog to generate a minimal income.

If you love stats, graphs, and all things analytical, you’ll love Sitemeter! Check it out and let me know what you think.