When it comes to your website, you know how important it is to get good content to rank high in the search engines.  You know you want to be on page 1 rather than page 2, the number 1 spot rather than number 10.

Have you ever had someone ask you, “How many visitors does your site get?”  If you haven’t been able to answer because you’re not tracking than let me offer you a quick and simple way of tracking website visitors on a Wordpress blog.

When it comes to website statistics, you may have heard of Google Analytics.  This is a free service by Google that many people use and love.  Google’s analytic service is a great tool and I highly recommend it.

However if you’re running your blog on Wordpress, than there is another tracking tool that you might want to try if Google Analytics seems too much for you.  It is a plugin called Statpress.

What does it do?  Statpress can track your website visitors, pageviews, spider traffic, search engine terms that landed people at your site, rss feed visitors, and even what browser they were using.

It installs just like any other plugin, but if you need help than see How to Install Wordpress Plugins There are a few different versions of Statpress in the plugin library, but you’ll want to choose the one named Statpress.  Avoid the Statpress Reloaded and Statpress SEOlution plugins.  Statpress Reloaded has been discontinued and is no longer updated.

I used to use Statpress SEOlution but the original Statpress plugin is much simpler and more effective in my opinion.

So let’s take a look at what you get to see with this stat collector.  After you install this plugin it will add a button to the left sidebar panel in your Wordpress dashboard.  When you click on it, you will enter your stats area.  The image below is an example of you will see.

What is nice is that Statpress gives you your day to day statistics so you can see how you are improving.  Additionally it predicts your visitor traffic, pageviews, spiders, and feeds for the whole month.  So if you’re traffic is going well you might get a prediction of 8% or 55% or whatever your current trends formulate to.

This screen will also display your pages viewed, the search engine terms that your visitors are using to find you, and where the spiders are coming from among other things.  Beyond this explanation, there isn’t much instructionally that you need for this stat tracker to work for your fitness website or blog.

If you are using this plugin, how do you like it?  Are you using something else to track your website visitors? If so please share…

You have friends right? Do you have friends who blog?  Do you have friends who blog in fitness?  If you answered to those questions then did you know your friends and you can help each other out with traffic and backlinks?

This one is so easy yet often not performed.  You should first have a regular schedule for your blog posts, or at least be posting once a week or more.  You should already be leaving comments on other fitness blogs that you read to generate a bit of traffic.

So if you meet the simple above criteria of :

1. You have friends

2. You post regularly to your fitness blog

than you can take advantage of the power of a blog network.  The network power shouldn’t be anything new, you understand the importance of mastermind groups, coaching, and your bootcamp clients interacting with each other.   So why not network and work with a group to blast your blog to the next level?

So lets cut to the details shall we?

How do these blog networks work and how do you set one up?  First you need to contact your friends and ask them if they want to participate.  Let them know the steps you have planned and the expectations of your group.

Something like this should work:

Hey I want to put together a network of fitness bloggers to help increase each others traffic and blog presence. What that means is that we simply comment on each others blog posts and take time to Digg, etc the posts.

If we do this once a week, (I assume if you have a blog, you post on it once a week) we will create nice links, comments on posts, and traffic from social media sites.

Reply if interested.

Once you get responses, which you should, people will have questions and you should give them answers.  Plus everyone should do some tweaking on their blogs to pass link love to each other.

This applies to fitness blogs running on Wordpress, which I hope everyone is using.  When they ask what is next, you can simply direct them as so:

Alright so it basically works like this:

1 day a week we visit each others blogs and leave a comment which has a link back to your own site. Say you do it on Friday or something.

For a backlink to actually happen, you need either to get the DoFollow plugin or CommentLuv. I run both.

In addition to a comment, (your post should have social bookmarking capability) to do a quick Digg on that post also.

Its cool to go to a blog and leave a comment, because you thinking you’re getting a backlink.  However Wordpress comes fresh with no follow to all comment links.  Most people will never change this, but at Easy Fitness Websites we do follow.  So remember to leave a comment after reading any post.

So you see if you want to spread love then you should install these Wordpress plugins onto your blog – Do Follow and CommentLuv.

But the main point you want to make with your blog network is to bookmark your site to Digg, Delicious, Stumble, etc.  To make things easier you can just choose one as the norm and have everyone use the same.  So if you have a network of 8 then your post will have 8 diggs.  Remember to Digg your own posts as well.

So each week you should all visit every person in your networks blog, leave a comment, take 15 seconds to bookmark the post, and move to the next person.  You can also encourage each other to submit to social bookmarking sites at a certain time, say morning rather than midnight.  But remember too many rules and people start to drop off.

So email or IM some of your friends and tell them you want to start a fitness blog network to improve your websites.  (You could even contact me)

Not only is there an optimal time to publish your fitness blog posts, but there are also certain do’s and don’ts to submitting your posts to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, etc.

According to an article by Master Web Software there are certain times that may be better to submit your sites to social bookmarking sites because of traffic on these sites.

Assuming that you are targeting US traffic, which is by far the largest traffic source of the English speaking world, then you should be looking at posting between 10am and 3pm or 8pm and 11pm Eastern Time.  These are the times that the social bookmarking sites are at their busiest traffic wise.

Just like you don’t want to publish your posts on weekends, you don’t want to submit your sites on weekends either.  You don’t want to sabotage your chances of getting good traffic by posting when noones looking.

Did you know that there are certain bloggers who have been able to generate traffic of 1M viewers to their blog in a very short time using only a site like Digg?  Its true.  Thats why it is so important that you submit your posts to these sites, its a free traffic source.

I mentioned that I like to publish my posts at anywhere from 5-8am but I don’t submit them to the bookmarking sites until at least 10am or later, I’ve just found that it works well for me.  Depending on your fitness niche, then you might be midday or afternoon.

You’ve probably guessed that the more Diggs and bookmarks you have, the more traffic that equals.  Thats why it is important to make it easy for your readers to submit your posts to their favorite sites – Social Bookmarking Plugins for Wordpress Fitness Blogs

Lets just do a quick recap:

1. Don’t bookmark your posts on weekends.

2. Optimal times to bookmark your fitness blog posts are between 10am-3pm and 8-11pm EST.

3. The more people who also bookmark your site the more traffic you get – which is why a blog network is important.

Does this make sense?  Any questions you might have please drop them in the comments section below.

Did you know that there are optimal times and days to publishing your fitness blog posts?  It’s true.  Think about your typical reader, probably works in a corporate job with a schedule of 8-5.  Is it wise to publish your posts at 5:30pm?

Not really since alot of people will go home and not really want to sit and read stuff on the internet.  They are probably going to be watching their favorite TV shows and then hit the bed.  A typical employee might get to work at 8am, and by 9am they are looking for something else to do.

The day of the week is also important as well.  Monday is usually the first day back into the office, and probably the busiest.  Friday people are more concerned with getting the weekend started and some places close early as well.

So when should you publish your posts?

You can obviously schedule your posts and emails for around 8:30am so that way people are in their inboxes and come across your email update.  But there is another option as well, something I try to do.

Most people who get up for an 8am job might be up at 6-6:30am to start getting ready.  Many will check their email at this time, because people can’t pull away from their gmail accounts.  So what if the first new email they seen in their box was yours, before all the Skecher Shape Up junk mail starts coming in…

Try a few different times, but always in the morning.  Try sending some early and some later, and since Aweber can track open rates you can do some testing.

So we talked about days of the week and which days are optimal.  Weekends are usually not a good time at all to post, since people are off work and out of the house.

Mondays are a busy day for most employees and Fridays as we said may not be optimal.

So that leaves us with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  Personally on Easy Fitness Websites I like to post every Tuesday and Thursday and that works well for me.  If you blog everyday, then you can continue, but if you blog only once or twice a week, then consider the days you’ve been posting and what kind of traffic you’ve seen.

Remember you can schedule your Wordpress blog posts and Aweber broadcast emails for future dates, so if you write on the weekends, you can have them post on your optimal day.

Not to mention many bloggers kill their blogs because they feel they have to post all the time and get burnt out, or they write and post on the weekends and are disappointed why they don’t have much traffic.  Optimize your fitness blog and increase your business.

After you get your blog posts scheduled and posted, don’t forget to Social Bookmark them and there is a best time for that too.

I’m starting to notice a problem amongst bloggers, especially new fitness bloggers.  If you’re spending the time to write out great posts (or even not so great) but aren’t actively seeking out ways to get traffic from them…whats the point.

What do I mean?  Simple, think about your fitness blog post from the cradle to the grave.  The cradle is the time that you start writing, when the idea is born.  You then start to nurture and do research, continuously feeding the post until it becomes mature.  At this point that little fitness post is ready to go out into the world on its own.

This is when you publish.  You say, “this post is ready to show the world, and the world will learn something from this information!”  This is where the blog post parenting stops.  See ya later little post, have fun in the real internetz, and try to make some friends.

But wouldn’t it be easier for your little post child to meet new readers and friends if you introduced him/her to some people out there.  Kind of like that blind date your mom once set you up on, in hopes that you would meet someone new and finally give her some grandchildren.

That is neither here nor there however.  How can you go about getting your post out there into the internet clubs and activities?  How can we get our little post noticed by some of the popular people?

The answer… social bookmarking.

This is something you’ve heard before I’m sure.  But the problem I see is that hardly anyone is doing it.  This doesn’t mean just having some bookmarking buttons on your site because you see them on every blog you visit.

You need to be using them, bookmarking your own posts can get you a good amount of traffic if you write quality content.  So lets break it down step by step.

1. Research and write your fitness blog post.

2. Publish your fitness blog post. – Best time to publish your blog posts

3. Submit your new blog post to social bookmarking sites.

a) Best time to submit fitness posts to sites like Digg, Redditt, etc

b) Encourage other bloggers and friends to submit your posts as well

c) Be sure your social bookmarking icons open in a new window when clicked.  Keep your reader on your blog as much as you can.

4. You can also add friends on Digg and ask them to submit your content and you will do the same.

So this whole post is about not forgetting to submit your posts to social bookmarking sites to get traffic to your fitness blog.  If you haven’t already guessed, there really is no “grave” for content published on the internet.  People can find that content any time, because you should make your content as timeless as possible – Timeless content explained

So have you been submitting your own posts or not?