If you run an online business, website or blog, knowing how many hits your website gets is key to knowing whether you’re doing the right things with your marketing or not. In the context of marketing, hits equates to unique visits and is a useful metric to use for knowing how much extra effort you need to get the visitors you’re looking for.
There are a few ways to find out how many hits your website gets. Some are free and some are not. As free is always the best price, I’m going to be concentrating mainly on free tools. Some of these free tools will need to be configured first so if you’re setting up a website, now would be a good time to set it all up.
Measuring ‘hits’ and other statistics is called website analytics and there are lots of tools out there that can help. Here are just a few.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is free for basic use to anyone with a Google account. It offers a huge amount of data that covers everything from basic analytics such as hits your site gets to where people come from, what device they were using, what times of day they visit and a whole lot more.
Google Analytics takes a little while to get your head around but the new design makes the data much easier to visualize and therefore, understand. The main screen shows unique visits front and center and you can drill down to an almost infinite degree from there. As analytics tools go, this is one of the best. The free tool offers a lot but there is so much more if you need it.
Jetpack
If you use WordPress as your web platform of choice, you should consider using Jetpack. It’s a free suite of tools that can offer a lot of features for your site from speeding it up to analyzing how it performs. Most of the tools are completely free but there are some premium ones in there too.
One useful tool is Site Stats. Like Google analytics, Jetpack Site Stats can tell you how many hits your website has, when they occurred and what happened next. It offers similar insights in an almost as accessible way. Once you have Jetpack installed, and stats enabled, it will begin working right away.
If you use WordPress, Jetpack is worth using for the CDN and fast-loading features alone. There is an entire collection of useful features that integrate seamlessly into WordPress. It’s well worth checking out.
Alexa
Not Alexa the talking bot, Alexa the website analytics tool. Also run by Amazon, Alexa is one of the oldest website ratings tools around. The term ‘Alexa Ranking’ has been around for decades and is a useful tool for finding out where you stand in worldwide website terms. You can install a toolbar onto your browser to track your own site or check out the Alexa Rank of other websites.
You will need an Alexa account to access the full analytics suite but it is free for basic use. Alexa used to be the king of web analytics but has fallen out of favor over the years due to its reliability. While useful for home or hobbyist users, I wouldn’t suggest using it for business.
SEMRush
SEMRush is a trusted name in SEO and analytics. SEMRush is not free and I would suggest only using it if you’re serious about your website’s ranking, content marketing and SEO. If you are serious then these are one of the best outfits out there to help. They offer a wide range of services, with analytics at their core.
As this is a pro-level tool, it is easy to be intimidated by the sheer volume of data available. However, stick to the Overview and the top line of data and you can see quickly who visits your website and from where.
Clicky
Clicky is a very detailed analytics tools where telling you how many hits your website gets is the least of what it can do. It’s another pro-level tool and has a free version for basic stats but requires a subscription once you want to get serious. There are the usual analytics such as unique visitors, referrer details and more but there is also a very cool heatmap.
If you’re into web design or have just changed the design of your site, the heatmap can show you where on your pages people go. It requires an install into your web server but if you’re tinkering with navigation or page design, heat maps are invaluable tools that tell you exactly what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.
Those are what I think are the best (mostly) free ways to find how many hits your website gets. Got any others to suggest? Tell us about them below if you do!
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