How To Track Who Reads Your Blog

You might be wondering who is reading your blog and what your audience looks like? I understand, I've wondered the same thing. The good news is that finding out who has been reading your blog or website has never been easier.

Can I see who reads my blog? You can see specific information about who reads your blog by using analytics tracking software. By installing an analytics tracking software such as Google Analytics, you can track where your visitors are coming from (location), what pages they visit (pageviews), what journey they take through your website (journeys), and what actions they take on your website (heat maps and tags). Specific user data like name or home address are not available.

Understanding what type of traffic you are getting to your blog can help you in a multitude of ways. From developing the right content for your readers to creating in-demand products, knowledge of who is reading your blog or website is invaluable. Let's dive into to learning a few ways to analyze your blog visitors.

Can I see who reads, views, or visits my blog?

Yes, you can see who reads your blog to a certain degree. You've probably heard the term "analytics" used a lot in the digital marketing world. This term actually describes the nature of tracking people anonymously. Meaning, you won't have access to knowing their exact identity, but you can find out where they came from (location), gender, age, and a few website activity.

Not having access to exact identity (name/address) data is a good thing for all of us. We don't want to give anyone the ability to track us.

Specifically, we 100% don't want companies to know when we visit their site. Imagine all the spam and mail we would get from every big corporation who knew we were on their site, what we looked at, what our name was, and where we lived. Yikes!! RUN!

Everyone would abandon the internet. And so, the tracking remains anonymous. Which is good for all citizens in free browsing countries.

How are anonymous visitors helpful?

Understanding who is visiting your blog or website helps you determine trends to make better decisions. Understanding where your traffic is coming from (location), how many people are coming (traffic), and what they are interested in (page views) are seriously important factors.

On the other hand, knowing who a specific visitor is wouldn't be that helpful. Once your website is experiencing daily traffic, you will be making decisions based on the activity of the masses, not a single visitor.

Single visits establish questions. Groups of visitors establish trends. And trends are everything.

Understanding what the traffic trend of your blog is very important. Knowing that 1,000 people are visiting a single web page and only 10 visitors are viewing another web page is really important. This helps you determine which content is sizzling and which content is flopping.

Also, knowing that a group of people tend to click your buy button when they are from England while people from Asia never click the buy button is SUPER IMPORTANT. This information begins to paint a picture of your target audience—whether you want that audience or not.

Visitor analytics helps you to make informed content decisions. When you're only getting a single click per day, not so important. When you are getting 1000 clicks per day, very important.

I've seen blogs with 5,000 visitors per day make slight ad placement strategy changes based on new data bring in thousands of additional dollars per month.

What can I find out about my website visitors?

There are a lot of data points you can gather about your visitors. The following are some of the most popular visitor data points:

Users – How many people visited your site within a specific time period (da(s), weeks, months, year, etc).
Pageviews – How many times a specific page was viewed by a user. This is a great metric for understanding impactful content and/or page roadblocks.
Location – Where users are coming from around the world. Some analytic suites allow for city and zip-code information.
Sessions – Everything a single user does on your website in a given visit. Don't confuse this with pageviews. If a person views multiple pages (multiple pageviews), that only counts as one session. New sessions are super important—the number of new visitors interacting with your content for the first time.
Session duration – This is the time spent each visitor spends on your website. The more time they spend the better. Search engines like Google and Youtube reward websites that keep people clicking.
Pages Per Session – This measures the average number of pages someone visits when on your site. Again, the higher the better.
Bounce rate – This information tells how many people visited a single page and left without doing anything else. In other words, they didn't click on any other pages or buttons. The first button they clicked was to visit your website and the next button the clicked was to leave your website. You DO NOT want a high bounce rate. That means your either content is lame, your ad targeting is wonky, or you are getting spammed.
Channel – This is where users are coming from: organic search, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Bing, Youtube, etc.
Demographics – Age and gender are often provided, but they may not be accurate. They are taken from the profile data of the given browser. If you are searching on a family computer and the browser was setup by your dad, you'll be browsing as male even if you're a female. And likewise for your age.

This list is no way exhaustive. These are common analytics that you can gather about who is visiting your website. It may also tell why someone is visiting your website and where they are visiting from.

There are also additional analytics suites that can take Google data and drill down even deeper (more on that later).

How to find out who is visiting my website for free

So now you know that you can gather metrics about who is visiting your website, but you'd like to accomplish this for free. I'm cheap, I get it. If I have the opportunity to pay $0 for anything, I'll still ask for an additional free item.

Your best bet when measuring web traffic is Google Analytics. Google analytics suite is so good that you probably don't need anything else. This isn't your run-of-the-mill free software. This is THE SOFTWARE.

Every digital marketer worth their salt can navigate Google analytics. It's not only the industry standard, it's also THE SOURCE for 92% of all website search traffic. I don't know about you, but when I want answers, I go to the source when possible.

Why is Google Analytics important for measure website visitors?

It's simple really: Google accounts for 92% of all search engine searches according to Statcounter Global Stats. You should use their analytics suite to gather the data. And sure, you could use some off-brand analytics software trying to sell you on the hype, but in the end, they are just renting the data from Google to resell to you. Just stating facts.

And yes, Yahoo and Bing each make up 2.5% while Yandex and Baidu make up the other 1.5%—but we are talking crumbs. They will account for some traffic, but not like Google accounts for traffic.

Google controls the Hoover Dam and the others control the trickle from your Aunt Bertha's leaky bathroom faucet. I'm not suggesting that other search engines aren't valuable, but in English speaking countries, Google is king.

How do I setup Google analytics?

This part isn't hard at all. Once you sign up for Google Analytics, you'll be given a tracking code to install into your website.

How to find your Google Tracking Code after signing up:

Sign into your Google Analytics account
Click on the Admin button in the bottom left.
Select an account from the menu located in the account column. It's the far left column.
Under the property column, make sure to select the correct web property.
SelectTracking Info and thenTracking Code.
YourGoogle Analytics ID (code) will be shown to you.

Depending on which website platform you use, they may ask for a tracking Code or Analytics ID. They are the same thing (usually). Now, let's get that analytics code in your website.

Installing Google Analytics on WordPress with Monster Insights:

Log into WordPress
Click Plugins in side menu
Click Add New
Search for Monster Insights and download
Follow instructions and enter tracking code
Save Settings

Installing Google Analytics on WordPress in your site header with the Global Site Tag

Sign into your Google Analytics account
Click on the Admin button in the bottom left.
Select an account from the menu located in the account column. It's the far left column.
Under the property column, make sure to select the correct web property.
SelectTracking Info and thenTracking Code.
Scroll down until you see the Global Site Tag
Select and copy all the code in the Global Site Tag window
Log into WordPress
Click Plugins in side menu
Click Add New
Search for Insert Headers and Footers and download
Paste Global Site Tag in the header section

Installing Google Analytics on Wix

Log into Wix
Select Marketing Integrations
Click Google Analytics and Go For It
Click Connect Google Analytics in the top right corner
Enter Google Analytics ID
Select IP Anonymization (Google won't measure when you visit your own site)
Select save

Installing Google Analytics on SquareSpace

Log into SquareSpace
Find the Home Menu and click settings
Select Advanced
Select External API Keys
Enter Google Tracking ID in the Google Analytics Account Number box
Select Save

Installing Google Analytics on Shopify

Log into your Shopify account
From the admin section, click Online Store
Click Preferences
Find the Google Analytics section
Paste your Google Analytics ID
Depending on your site setup, you may need additional steps here

MANDATORY

*Make sure to complete the following step after installing Analytics ID on your website.*

How to check to make sure Google Analytics was installed correctly

Log back into Google Analytics
Select Admin from bottom left menu
Select Tracking Info under middle Property swim lane
Select Tracking Code
Check Status: it should say "Receiving traffic"

And that's all there is to it. You can easily wire up Google Analytics to your website and start monitoring blog traffic today. Check out this video below for a little bit more information on how to use Google Analytics for beginners.

Can I track companies who are visiting my website?

Yes, you can track companies who are visiting your website. This technology is actually very cool and really useful. If you are a blog, this is probably over-kill; Google Analytics is more than enough to gather sufficient data to make good decisions.

However, if you are a company that is looking to scale your business online, are experiencing sufficient traffic, and/or are running ads, this information could be GOLD 👑. Knowing which companies are visiting your website is seriously powerful—especially B2B strategies.

There are a few free ways to potentially do this and a few paid ways to definitely do this. The paid ways are going to bring better results, but free is always good to try first.

How to track companies visiting your website for free

Head over to your Google Analytics account and find the Network Report. The Google Analytics Network Report will show you a list of Network Providers who have visited your website.

Many of the networks will show major communications networks (cellular networks, internet providers, etc) which aren't useful. But, if a major company has their own network, they will often label their network with the name of their company.

This is an easy way for you to find some companies interested in your web content. I consider this low-hanging fruit.

How to locate the Google Analytics Network Report

Log into Google Analytics
Locate the Audience tab
Find and expand the Technology tab
Click on Network
Review the Network Report and look for company names

This report can come in handy as you accumulate more visitors to your webpage. In the beginning, most of the Network Report will contain internet service providers—not helpful. But as your traffic grows, you'll find competitors or interested companies landing in this report.

As you can see above, this report shows Longwood University visited this site. That's great information to know. You may not know who specifically visited your site, but you'll know that a particular company visited your website. If you have a very targeted niche, LinkedIn could easily guide you the right person to speak with.

How to track companies visiting your website using Google Analytics Data ($)

Google Analytics is seriously robust and as we pointed out above, there are plenty of free ways to analyze company visitor data. However, there are companies that can help you do even more with that data.

Google Analytics has opened their data through their API for other software companies to analyze. While you have access to most of the data, combing through it is a real challenge. You'd need to understand how to make custom reports and cross-analyze the data with custom dashboards. It's not easy if you're just getting started.

Woopra – Woopra is one such company that helps you take analytics data and measure end-to-end customer journey's. Their data is extremely powerful, helping you track trends, retention, and segmentation. Think of Woopra as Google Analytics Super-Powered.

Woopra has a free plan for small websites ($0) and a robust plan ($999/mo) for companies needing more data analytics. They are pretty awesome. Check them out.

Reportz – Reportz.io isn't quite as robust as Woopra, but it's really good for smaller companies and websites. I use Reportz for certain marketing needs and it works really well. They offer many report customizations from Google Analytics as well as other social media platforms. The nice thing is you are charged per dashboard, so the pricing can be under $10 per month for a single website.

DataDrivenU – This is my secret weapon (shhh, don't tell anyone). This isn't so much a software as it is a mastery level course in analyzing Google Data. This course is taught by Jeff Sauer who is a master level instructor in the Google Analytics world. He's awesome and seriously respected in the marketing world.

I've taken multiple courses and they've made me a better marketer—no doubt about it. Not only will you learn to analyze Google Data like a ninja, but you'll be able to use his custom spreadsheets to analyze data six-ways-from-Sunday.

The other benefit of learning Google Analytics inside and out is when you graduate to using larger analytics suites, the data will extremely clear. You'll know inside of an hour if a given software vendor is right for your needs or not.

How to track companies visiting your website with tracking software ($)

There are many companies who can help you track visitors to your website and determine if they are competitors or interested businesses. How do they do that you ask? It's a good question.

A friend of mine in the lead generation industry worked for one of the biggest tracking firms in the world. He has provided me great information about this industry and how they work.

Essentially, companies who help you track websites or blog visitors, track the IP addresses of website visitors and match the IP to company registration indexes. It's generally that simple. These IP tracking companies collect larger and larger databases over time, improving analytic reports.

Reports from these companies provide information like business names, contact info, demographics, financial information, and search intent.

It's a pretty slick technology. In the beginning, there were only a few players in the industry. Now, there are dozens to pick from. Here are five big players:

Lead Forensics
Leadfeeder
Leadberry
Leadworx
Clearbit

There are dozens of companies like these that will analyze incoming website visitors for you. They can go a step further into the sales pipeline process by automatically reaching out to them and creating a customized sales campaign.

After speaking with my friend, he told me that the software does in fact work well, but it all depends on industry type. He mentioned software B2B companies tend to experience great value from this type of lead tracking. Creative agencies such as web design firms, marketing firms, and software development firms also benefit substantially.

Tracking website visitors with pixels and cookies

Pixels have evened the playing field in the marketing world for small businesses. Pixels essentially attach a tracking code to each visitor and track where they go within your website. Think of pixels like a GPS attached to a person. And yes, that is allowed.

Once pixels are installed on your website, you can track the comings and goings of unique visitors. Pixels will tell you when return visitors appear on your site and what web pages they are clicking through. You can even attach tracking pixels to objects like buttons and emails (Google Tag Manager).

Depending on your marketing chops, you can show returning users different web pages and offers with the help of pixel data. You can also send unique emails to specific user types based on their actions.

This gets deep, but I just want you to know that pixels can help you identify specific customer types that give you SERIOUS opportunities.

Using pixels in your advertising campaigns

If you've ever visited a website to look at products and then noticed weeks later that those same product ads were being displayed on other websites…you've been retargeted through pixels. I know the feeling the first time I saw this.

I thought, "Wait a minute, this is an auto website and they are showing me the same men's watch I was looking at last week on a completely different website.. this is creepy. Am I being watched?"

I wasn't being watched, but I was being retargeted with a pixel. It's different that being watched, but barely.

Retargeting is when you visit a website and someone attaches a pixel code to you. When you travel to other places, they can continue to show you their ads if those other websites have ad network frameworks.

The original website you visited won't know where you are going or what other websites are showing your add, but they'll know that their ads are being shown to you over time.

Why is this important?

It helps lower the cost of ads. Cold traffic is expensive. You have no idea if your ad is going to work well.

But once someone clicks on your ad, they are suddenly a warm lead—they've shown interest. They may not purchase today, but they are more likely to buy from you in the future—they've window shopped.

Imagine if you owned a kids clothing store in the mall and you want to advertise a sale. It's a busy Saturday and there are 5,000 people walking around. What if you could advertise only to the people who have walked into your store in the past? That would be seriously effective!

That is what pixel advertising tracking is: showing ads to people who have previously shown an interest in your product or website.

Once I learned what retargeting and tracking pixels were, it all made sense.

For example, you can install tracking pixels from your Facebook (Facebook Pixels) or Google (Google Analytics Pixel) accounts. If someone clicks your ad in Facebook or Google, you can continue to show them this same ad in other places, even when they leave Facebook or Google.

This really extends your budget and increases your ad efficiency.