How to effectively track your traffic with statcounter for free!

If your starting out as blogger or are experienced in the department, it is always good to keep a close eye on your traffic. To check if the content you are writing is bringing in numbers, or to check how your readers are locating your site. If you have been blogging "blind" i suggest you head on over to http://www.statcounter.com/ It is a site which allows you to track many different statistic about your blog by simply installing a small portion of html code. I will be focusing primarily here, on how to install the counter on a blogspot/blogger site. First of all once you hit up the link and are on their homepage your should register by clicking "sign up" link. Please beware not to enter any credit card details unless you intend on buying some of the premium services offered by statcounter. Once register you will be ushered onto a page in which you specify what type of counter you want. For instance you could have an invisible one where no picture or details that you use statcounter will be shown. Or you could go for a visible, numerical counter at the bottom of the page. Proceed by clicking the applicable check boxes relating to your choice and then hit continue. You will be brought to a page containing a text box with the html code for your website, copy and paste this and then head over to your http://www.blogspot.com/ account- please note if you forget to copy and paste the text, it will be sent via e-mail to the address you signed up with. After logging in on your blog and once on the dashboard click on the layout tab at the top. Then scroll down to the layout of your site and click "add new gadget". This will the open a separate window, where you should click on add new html/css code. This will then open one further window containing a text box where you should paste the html code you received from statcounter. The click save and well done you've just installed tracking code to hopefully improve your site. You can find out a great deal of information about your site back on http://www.statcounter.com/ under the tab "my projects" such as where your traffic came from, where it exited to, the amount of unique visitor and returning visitors. The really does go on and on, so play around with. If you have any problems or queries on this tutorial or you have any tech related questions, feel free to comment on this post and happy blogging.