We had another informative #webcomicschat, thanks to all those that could participate. To start I asked a few questions related to website analytics. I, like many others, have installed Google Analytics into my website. The information it provides is really detailed but it can be a bit complicated. When talking about visitor statistics I also found a helpful website article with good definitions written by Brian Getting. The consensus from our chat seemed to be that unique visitors and repeat visitors are important statistics for determining if new readers are coming and returning to your site.

I also asked about keywords as a part of website optimization. Seeing that our webcomic blogs generally deal in images, it’s very important to add text and articles to your blog regularly so that search engines can index your site. Some artists suggest adding “alt” tags to their comic images as well so they can be indexed in image searches. Personally I haven’t done that yet, but I think it’s probably a good idea. The other half of optimization is to make sure your website has links from others back to it. It’s well known that Google “trusts” sites that have links to them. Getting links to your site can be an organic process where readers link to your site or you can manually ask other sites to share links. Another piece of good advice is to always make sure your comments on other sites, forums, social media sites, etc. always include a link back to your site.