September 19, 2006
My Favorite Blog Stats
Written by: Juanchito
Most stat packages have a slew of stats. I’ve looked over everything, but here are a few of my favorite stats.
Referring Pages
I love to see what pages have links to my websites. More importantly, I like to see how many people other blogs and websites have sent to my page. This is checked daily and often hourly. Yes, I’m an admitted stat addict.
Search Engine Referrals
This is almost the same as the first, but I love to see what people are searching in order to find my site. It’s also interesting to see which search engines like me. I’ve found that Google is definitely the most popular, but MSN gives words more credit and links aren’t as essential for MSN as they are for Google. Also, for some reason Canadian Google loves my blog.
Visitors
I love to see how many people actually visited my website. I can’t look at pageviews because Googlebot looks at my pages so much that it skews pageviews. However, I do a search of unique O/S and it gives me a pretty good number of visitors to my site.
Most Visited Page
I do like to take a look at which pages on my website people are visiting. It’s a perfect way to know which topics visitors (and search engines) like. Remember that much of this could be influenced by being Dugg, Reddit or other link pimping.
Visit Duration
Awstats has a really interesting statistic that shows how long visitors to your site remain on your site. Google Analytics has something similar. I’ve been amazed how long some people stay on my website. It also doesn’t surprise me that many of my websites have people who leave quickly. That’s how I visit most webpages.
Bandwidth
This is just important to make sure that I don’t have to pay for extra bandwidth from my host.
Google Adsense Channels
I don’t know if this quite fits into this post, but I look at them as much as anything else. Other affiliate or advertising packages could be listed here also. I love to see which of my blogs are performing. I tried the Google email of my stats, but it just wasn’t enough. I like to check regularly how much my blogs are making and more importantly, which ads are making me the most money. These stats might be the most important stats you could check.
Of course each one of these needs to have the ability to change the time frame. Being able to change the time frame is very important to be able to see the trends over time. In fact, WordPress.com has a great built in stats package with a graph of your pageviews. It gives you a really nice visual of how quickly your blog is growing.
Any other stats that I missed and should be looking at?
Tips for Being a Successful Landlord
In today’s apartment rental market there are several things that are “must do’s” for becoming a successful landlord. The reason you’re playing the real estate rental game is to have the check in your mailbox on the first of the month, right? Here are a few tips that can help you to achieve this with as little aggravation and frustration possible.
First and foremost is finding the right tenant to rent your apartment, house or other rental. This is the most important ingredient in the recipe. Checking the prospective tenant’s credit history to make sure they are paying their bills is one of the best ways you can screen. A tenant that pays their bills on time most likely will send you their rent on time. Establish a clear system on collecting rent, handling complaints from the tenant and how you will contact them if you need to gain access to the apartment.
Secondly, get all the important terms of the tenancy in writing. You have the option to have a basic rental agreement or draw up a formal lease. Whichever you decide, the important thing is to document the terms that you and the tenant agreed to. Clarify who is paying the utilities, the rental price and any other agreements made between you and your tenant.
It’s a good idea to stay on top of the repair and maintenance needs of your property. When you are notified of something that is broken or not working, repair it as soon as possible to prevent further damages. You may also lawfully enable the tenant to withhold rent, sue for injuries caused by defective conditions or move out without notice.
On a similar topic make sure you are carrying enough property and liability insurance to cover yourself in any situation. A well designed insurance program can protect your rental property from losses caused by everything from fire and storms to burglary, vandalism, and personal injury lawsuits.
I hope that this has been helpful to you. Just remember, as long as you follow these simple tips you will be on your way to a happy and fulfilling landlord future. Best of luck!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eric Goldstein, associated with http://www.AllSpacses.com which Conveniently Connects All People with All Spaces in All Places, has been dedicated to the real estate rental market for over 8 years. He has assisted over 25,000 landlords with their renting needs. Any questions about renting apartments, houses or other rentals feel free to visit http://www.AllSpaces.com or email him at Eric@AllSpaces.com.
I love to read the search strings!!! Some of those just crack me up! I use the word “hot” a lot for some reason when I write and Google decided I was “hot julie” (without quotes) and ranked me #1 out of 20,600,000. My friends and I still just laugh and laugh about this one! We ended up putting the phrase in my meta tags, and my friends all linked me as hot julie. Oh man, I am laughing outloud right now just typing this out
Another really nice, great and original comment.
Great post! On google analytics, there is a stat for geo-location- it will put all your visitors on a map, I like checking that one, it is always need seeing where the visitors are, and with analytics, you can click on that location and see where those people were referred from!
I never worry about people that are there are long time. I tend to open a lot of stuff in tabs and totally forget that I’ve left pages open (even for days). I love finding out where people got to me from and what they were searching for. Right now “White and Nerdy Hoodie” is my biggest one.
I like the visit duration, too, but you have to throw out many of the upper extremes. I think most of us avid ‘net users click through pages faster than most. I’ve become a bit of a speed reader myself…