Who Visits the Canadian Nature Photographer?by Dr. Robert Berdan When I posted this web site one of my goals was to reach out to a community of photographers and artists interested in Nature photography. Visitor stats give me an idea of how many people visit this site and where they come from. It also tells me what I am dong right and what I need to work on to improve this web site. I am always amazed at how far away some of my visitors are located and I thought it would be interesting to share some of this data. Also many folks have their own web sites and might not know about Google Analytics or how to add this valuable feature to their own web site. In the past I used to add hit counters to web sites, but we quickly realized that most visitors to do not come through the front door (home page) and counters were under estimating the number of visitors. A counter also does not reveal how long visitors stay or where they go on the web site. Using Google Analytics, involves placing a small bit of code into the web pages then Google provides me with detailed statistics for free. This information can be used to improve the site or address concerns that might be leading visitors away. I can even see what browsers visitors are using and what keywords they used to find the site. I will update the stats on this page every few months as this allows me to determine whether or not I am gaining or losing visitors and what if any kind of promotion is helpful. Over the past year I have seen a steady growth from about 3,000 visits per month to over 8,000 visits. My goal for 2012 is attract more then 10,000 visitors\month by offering valuable content. 1.) Where does the Canadian Nature Photography Web site show up on Google?If you type in "Canadian Nature Photography or Canadian Nature Photographer - this web site comes up on Top of Google out of 3,4 million web sites - not too shaby.
Search performed on Feb 2, 2012 - reveals the Canadian Nature Photographer web site comes on top of Google using keywords "Canadian Nature Photographer", and comes up 4th with the keywords "Nature photographer". The site does not show up on Googles first page using "Canadian Wildlife Photography" and this is something I need to work on by including more content with keywords "Widlife photography". My web site, however tries to target a wider audience then those interested in just wildlife photography. Below is a list of keywords that users typed into Google in order to Find my web site
Bounce Rate - refers to the % of visitors that eventually click on a link to another web site, since all links outside my site open in a new window, it does not tell me whether or not they came back or went on there merry way. I do know that visitors to my featured photography section often click on the links to these photographers web sites in order to view them - which is exactly what I hoped these articles would do. Wayne Lynch, Peter Dettling and Dan Juraks' articles are some of the popular artices that readers click on. 2) How Many visitors come to this Web site? (updated every few months)
Latest Stats show that more than 8,000 visits in January, 2012 The large peak includes more then 1500 vistors that came after the Calgary Herald published some of my aurora photos. 3. Where are visitors coming from?
4) What Cities are most of my visitors coming from?
5) What Browsers and Technologies are visitors using?
One might say who cares, well if the number of visitors from small Blackberry or Ipods increases I have to be sure
7) Where do visitors "Click" when they first visit my Home Page?
By adding small thumbnails next to each of the articles I have been able to attract more visitors to scroll down the page and click on articles below the scroll bar. These stats also show me what is the most popular links and it seems to be my galleries have the highest percentage of clicks - so I will try and expand the galleries more often.
HOW TO GET GOOGLE ANALYTICS ON YOUR WEB SITEIf you would like to get similar statistics on your own web site, simply go to Google, Type in "Google Analytics" set up a free account. If you already have an account simply click on the button "Access Analytics".
Once you set up an account and enter your URL of your web site, Google will create some Code that you need to copy and paste into your web page. If you know basic HTML this is easy, if you don't you can ask your web developer to do this for you - and then Google will start analyzing the visitors to your site. It's pretty cool to see where folks are visiting and the other information and it can also help you make your web site more useful. These stats show that we are a global community today and the actions of one person in one place can affect others on the other side of the world. Links and Resources
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