For a long time I used Google Analytics to provide webstats for me and for my clients – and it worked. Great stats, pretty graphs, nice figures – everything I needed.The problem I had was that I couldn’t get real time stats – I had to wait until the next day, by which time in some cases it was too late to react to surges in traffic.

I needed something that showed me what my visitors were doing and where they were coming from NOW, not yesterday!

And then I found GetClicky.

As they say about themselves:

Clicky is a web analyzer that works great with any web site, even Ajax and Flash sites. It was originally targeted towards smaller web sites and blogs because it tracks a high level of detail on every visitor, and these types of sites find this information very interesting.

It’s the high level of detail, combined with the fact that I can see what visitors are doing RIGHT NOW that makes GetClicky the perfect stats tool for me.

So what do you get?

The Dashboard:

The dashboard is an overview of the traffic to your site – telling you how mny visitors you’ve had (and showing you trends in a nifty little graph), how many actions those vistors have taken (eg where have they gone in your site), where your visitors have come from, what search phrases they have used and which pages they have visited.As an overview of your traffic, it’s very useful, but it’s in the nitty gritty that getClicky excels, and that’s what’s more exciting to me.

Visitors

The Visitors tab gives you a list of all your recent visitors, and tells you where they came to your site from.You’ll know what time they visited, what their IP address is, how many actions they took on your site, and if the referrer was a search engine, what search phrases they used.

This can be filtered in a number of ways and is very useful information.

Actions

I love the Actions tab as it shows me what each and every visitor has doen on my sites. I can see that one visitor has come to the site from an article that was Stumbled on Stumbleupon, and has not only read that article, but has clicked on the links in it to go to external sites, returned to my site and read some more articles, and even whether they have clicked on an email link to email me. By the time I receive the email I probably already know who they are and what they’ve been looking at and can tailor my reply accordingly – how cool is THAT?

Content

The content tab shows me which pages of my site are being visited, which are the entrance pages, exit pages, which of my files are being downloaded (in my main site, www.nikkipilkington.com, I have PDF versions of my internet marketing articles – this view tells me how many downloads they get every day) and more.

Links

Like most other traffic stats, this tells me where my visitors are coming from. But unlike most other traffic stats, it also shows me which links a visitor is clicking on to LEAVE my site.

This is great – I know whether links in my articles are being visited, recommendations are being followed, links to other sites I own are being clicked – even down to whether someoneclicks on an email link. I can also track visitors that leave to read something I have recommended and then come back! This to me is vital information and one of my favourite GetClicky features.

Searches

The searches tab shows me the latest search phrases I am being fond for on search engines – it’s always interesting to see the searches that bring people to my various sites – intended and unintentional

Spy

This is my favourite GetClicky tab of all.

I can see, in REAL TIME, visitors on my site. I can see which pages they are clicking on, which files they are downloading, external links they are following, and more.

It allows me to react to visitors almost instantly – if I can see that lots of people are on Using Twitter for Business part one on my Business on twitter site, I can quickly amend the page to add a link to other more recent articles I may have written, in order to drive traffic there. If I see that lots of people are clicking on an external link to someone else’s blog, I can make sure I let the blog writer know, and investigate any synergy we may have to exploit the large amounts of traffic.

The spy tab has a multitude of uses – but I warn you, it’s very addictive

All in all I think GetClicky is as close to perfect as a real time web stats tool can get.

Pricing?

There is a free service, which doesn’t include the Spy tab, and if you sign up now you’ll get a free 21 day trial of the Premium service, which is what I use. It’s only $60 for the year and you can pay monthly – it’s well worth the investment to have your traffic stats NOW instead of tomorrow.

So, why not given it a go? Sign up now at Get Clicky and let me know how you get on!

1) Search Engine Watch – the first site dedicated to search engines, and still the best. Originally started by Danny Sullivan in 1996 (he resigned in 2006), this is a great site to find out the latest search engine stats, search engine news and more.

2) Plurk - a Twitter like site that I’m testing for business use at the moment. It’s a lot easier to follow than twitter (although if you use a twitter app or plugin such as Twhirl or twitterfox then twitter isn’t that hard) and has a funky graphical interface. the downside is that it seems to be the new toy of choice for schoolkids bored in their lessons, so be careful who you approve as a friend! The link is to my personal profile.

3) Ezine Articles – in my opinion this is the best place out there to submit your articles to. It is well respected by Google, and the moderators work hard to keep the rubbish out. It’s easy to submit to, and if your articles happen to be rejected, they’ll always tell you why. If you’re on Twitter, you can follow Ezine Articles Guy here.

4) Ecademy -Please see my updated thoughts on ecademy here

5) SEO Book – with a ton of SEO tools, this site is a must visit for anyone interested in Internet Marketing and SEO. There’s also an e-book written by the founder, and the blog is a must read.

6) Google Analytics Blog – although my website statistics software of choice now tends to be Get Clicky, a lot of my clients (and indeed me) still ahve Analytics in place, so I check in briefly every day to see if there’s anything new on the blog.

7) Matt Cutt’s blog – Google employee Matt Cutts has ong been known as the public face of google for Webmasters and SEO companies alike. He regularly gives out google news, and occasionally hints at things he’s not allowed to (or doesn’t want to!) tell. Well worth checking every day to keep up to speed.

299 Steps To Website Heaven – yes, i know it’s my own site, but I visit it every day, whether to post, to approve comments, or to dig into the archives to find a tip that could help someone.

9) Google Webmaster Tools – whether to check up on clients recent search statistics or to open a new account for a client, Webmaster Tools is an important part of the optimisation process. It gives out a myriad of info about a site, as well as alerting a website owner to errors such as bad links, missing pages and more.

10) Get Clicky – I’m a great fan of Google Analytics, but it has to be said that it is annoying having to wait until the following day to see stats. Get Clicky gives you stats in real time – so you can post a thread somewhere like Ecademy, and within seconds be tracking visitors from that article, to your site, see which pages they look at and where they click to leave.

Nikki Pilkington

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

That way you can target each page specifically to an ad.

Yes it can be time consuming, but if your conversion rate rises, it’s worth it.

Repeat the ad on the page, and make sure the page has a good call to action – whether that be to buy, to call, to sign up or whatever.

This allows you to see people on your website in real time, and chat to them and answer their questions.

I have a number of clients using this and it really has increased conversion rates.

See http://www.liveperson.com for more details and a free trial.

What this means is that the page in the cache will load quicker for the visitor, and the search terms will be highlighted.

However, problems arise when the cached version of a page and the current version are out of sync.

You can tell google NOT to cache your page by using the following META tag

in the head tag of your page:

meta name=”GoogleBot” content=”noarchive”

This white paper reveals common errors in web analytics thinking and/or implementation and provides suggestions for a more positive outcome.

Learn how to:

Increase qualified traffic
Identify search terms that convert
Discover pages that influence conversion

Download from here

Time will tell whether it is any good for Google or not, but in the meantime it can’t hurt to list your sites and content.

I have to give you a referral link, as it’s introduction only, but I don’t make any money from this, just some ‘virtual’ $ that list my sites a bit higher in their categories.

Please do let me know how you get on!

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google.

There is no priority submit for Google.

In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or through the Google Sitemaps program, and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

Only surpassed by the people that promise to submit your site to 1000+ search engines for you for ‘just $19.95’.

Here’s some news – there AREN’T 1000 search engines. Most of the traffic that comes via search engines comes from ten main search engines. Google, MSN, AOL and Yahoo make up the bulk, Lycos, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, Hotbot, Follow on, and any one of about 5 smaller engines make up the rest.

What you WILL get from those 1000+ submissions is spam …. And lots of it.

Don’t waste your time on Fred’s Personal Search Engine that no-one ever visits – stick to the main ones or ones that are recommended and you won’t go far wrong.