Website development today is a pretty lucrative business that can generate good income. Of course, not all resources are profitable, but only the most attractive from the point of view of advertisers. One of the most important criteria for this attractiveness is website traffic. There are many ways to account for it, but funds from Google and Yandex are especially valued.
They are extremely simple, so for their development do not have to deal with dozens of parameters. This is very important, as in recent years the number of webmasters who do not have the necessary minimum knowledge even in the field of HTML has sharply increased. This situation is associated with the spread of simple and intuitive CMS.
"Metrics"
Yandex.Metrica (site) is a specialized software that counts visitors to a resource. Particular attention is paid to those of them that clicked on the advertising links of Yandex itself. The fact is that such information is literally worth its weight in gold, as it allows you to analyze customer behavior and develop the most winning business strategies. "Metric" will certainly be useful to the creator of the site, as it gives him a lot of useful information that is needed for competent optimization.
From our article you will learn how to set the site metric. In addition, we’ll talk about a very useful plugin that can interact with this advertising tool. It also allows you to check the correctness of the page code.
Preparation for installation
The installation itself will take you just a couple of minutes, but before that you need to check some circumstances:
- A Yandex account is required.
- You must have access to the source code of the site.
If you don’t understand everything about the first point, we’ll explain: you just need to create a mailbox on your account, at the same time registering in other services of the company. As for access to content, for this you can use the program Total Commander or FileZilla. You can use standard CMS (WordPress, for example).
By the way, on their official sites you can find even more detailed information regarding the connection of the metric.
We put a metric
Once you are convinced of the availability of everything you need, you can proceed to the direct installation. Just note that all the functions that the site metric provides will only work if a special script from Yandex is placed on each page of your resource. However, now we will talk in detail about all the stages of connecting the service.
Connection steps
What to do so that a metric appears on your resource? The official site is what you need! There are all the services that are currently offered by the company. We go to the site of the search engine "Yandex", click on the link "More" located at the top of the page, look for the item "All services", where the metric of the site is located. You should be interested in the button "Create counter", which should be clicked with the left mouse button.
Then you need to come up with some meaningful name and indicate the domain of your site. Be sure to specify the mirrors of your resource (in case the main server is unavailable). It is possible to configure the sending of SMS messages about the availability of the site. Be sure to also indicate your time zone. After that, you must agree to the terms of the User Agreement, and you will finally be sent to the next page.
Put the script on the site
If necessary, you can check the box with some additional parameters (we will talk about some of them below). After that, finally copy the code of the counter itself, for the sake of which all this was started. Of course, you need to insert it on your site. Here's how to set a metric on a site.
The easiest way is for owners of those resources that are based on some popular CMS: just drag the script into the main template. If it does not help, edit the header or footer of your resource. If you have not used the system to manage content, you will have to manually copy the code to all pages of the site. We recommend inserting it at the very top, as counting visitors in this case will be more accurate.
Important: Yandex.Metrica itself (to the site) is quite simple to install, but certain problems may arise with its configuration. Remember how we talked about some additional options? It is time to learn more about them!
We configure additional options
When setting up the metric, we strongly recommend that you enable the Webvisor option, as it will automatically record the behavior of site visitors and analyze it. Also interesting is the "Click Map". If this option is activated, the system will automatically collect information about those places on the site that users click on.
And we are talking not only about links, but also all other objects. With this information, you can analyze the direction of clicks and place advertising links and banners in the places that users click on most often.
The “Share” button will surely be of interest to those who control the appearance of links to external resources on their website, and also prefer to know how many times the files posted for free access have been downloaded.
But Yandex.Metrica (to the site) is especially good in that it has an excellent option called the “Accurate bounce rate”. In this case, all visitors who visited the site but stayed on it for less than 15 seconds will be registered. This allows you to immediately think about your mistakes in optimization and select better content.
If your site is far from being on the most powerful server, you should pay attention to the Asynchronous Code function. In this case, your Yandex.Metrica (counter on the site) can be configured in two different ways: if you put the slider on the “on” position, it will be loaded with the site. In the case when the switch is in the “off” position, the service is loaded only after the final rendering of the resource.
What features to include optional
In addition to the options described above, which we would recommend to include when installing the metric in any case, there are those whose activation depends only on your needs. These include "Informer", which allows you to flexibly configure the display mode of the same name button, which displays statistics on the attendance of the resource for the last day.
However, the option "Hash tracking in the browser address bar" is highly recommended for those webmasters who create AJAX sites (developed using online constructors). The fact is that this function monitors the actual number of views, even on those pages that do not need a reboot to update. So the metric on the site is a multifaceted and extremely useful tool!
By the way, the “Ban on indexing” can be included for anyone who does not want to index their site with this particular search engine. It is difficult to say when and for whom it may be necessary, but it is still worth bearing in mind the possibility of enabling such an option.
Other parameters
In the case when you are an experienced webmaster, you will certainly be interested in the item “Using visit parameters”. This metric option will allow you to set some of your own parameters, statistics on which will be collected separately. Note that when you enable this service, you will have to set its settings in the script code yourself.
If Yandex.Metrica (the installation on the site of which we described) was already on your site, but you changed some points in its settings, you will have to re-register the code on all pages.
To make this process more convenient, in the main menu of the metric, left-click on the item “File Manager”. All pages of your resource will be presented in an extremely convenient form for editing. To change the pages, you need to click on the wrench icon, which is located on the right side of the working dialog box.
Other setup tips
By the way, we’ll give more information on the correct configuration of the metric. The code must (!) Be inserted exactly between the <body> </body> tags, as otherwise it may not work correctly. If this happened to you, check the correctness of its placement by attributing the necessary tags. Of course, the metric for the site should be edited accordingly after any changes.
Correct filter settings are very important. It can be extremely useful if you want to exclude some individual visitors from the statistical set. So, with the help of filtering, you can easily cut off all visitors who enter the site from specific IP addresses or from a separate
domain zone. It is possible to work only with certain pages or referrals. For each counter, you can simultaneously enable about three dozen filters. Attention! The changes you make are irreversible, and therefore work with them extremely carefully.
Using these counters, you can very “finely” modify pages, so we advise you to master their correct application as soon as possible.
Important notes
As a rule, after installing the application on the site, you will begin to receive statistics within half an hour. If any error occurs, then its description will appear in the "personal account" on the Yandex website. Efficiency of receiving data is also at a high level: most often the time gap between user actions and sending information to you is no more than five minutes (more often - less than a minute).
If statistics do not come after this time, be sure to check the placement of the script, as this behavior indicates errors made during installation.
Metric Plugin
As we promised, let's talk a little about a special plugin for this wonderful service. It allows you to quickly check the correctness of the installation of the service, quickly view all the statistics accumulated over the day. Before installing the metric on the site, go to the add-ons control panel (only for users of Chrome and Firefox), and then find the Yandex.Metrica plugin there.
The interface of this application is as simple as possible, so you will probably figure it out yourself. However, we still highlight some points. So, if the service is installed correctly, you will see the active application icon. If you click on it with the left mouse button, a context menu will appear from which you can find out about statistics and other program parameters.
Myths and traditions of the blogosphere
As usual, with Yandex, not everything went so smoothly. In particular, many young webmasters of the Runet vied with each other tell various horror stories. In many of them, they report that Yandex.Metrica is the only reason that the attendance of even a site popular in the recent past may fall. Installation on the site, allegedly, leads to a conscious nullification of Yandex statistics.
Is it really?
Let's look at the issue a bit. Do you think that old and “experienced” sites are popular only because of optimization? Yes, many of them arose even at a time when nobody used the word SEO on the Runet, and users did not even know its meaning. Alas, we have to upset you: if the site is interesting, then in any case they will read it. If not, then no metric will make you worse.
Do you think the creators of Yandex search algorithms were not even aware of introducing a slightly modified algorithm for analyzing young blogs into their system?
conclusions
What can be said in conclusion? If you need traffic to find out, Yandex.Metrica is the best solution. This application correctly and fully provides webmasters with information about the popularity of the site, and makes it possible to organize the advertising campaign in the best way to get returns from the resource.
Nowadays, great attention is paid to the behavioral factors of users, which automatically makes the metric a completely indispensable tool. If you are careful about maintaining your resource, then the metric on the site will help you “promote” it even more. Its creators will help you with this, providing valuable information that can be used with great benefit!