A lot of people I know like StatCounter, it tells you what search engines and what urls (like article directory articles) are sending the traffic and for what keywords.

But for professional SEOs usage, like to tell clients how well they’re (you’re) doing for them, where they’re ranking, the progress you’re causing for them etc… I’m not really sure, since I’m not a SEO by trade.

However, I’ve done some link building privately for people and I just do an occasional keywords search to see the progress I’m making.

The way I see it, if you’re on top of your client’s needs and project and have already generated a KWs list for them, just start with the long-tails, and check those off your list once you’ve gotten them to Page 1 for those terms.

Over time you’ll have less terms to work on and worry about and check progress for, and besdies AWSTATS tells you the KWs the site is being founds for anyways.

A lot of people overlook the AWSTATS tool because it’s free (inside your cpanel by default), but it tells you a lot but it has its drawbacks, too, just like Alexa.com has its drawbacks.

I like to keep things simple for assessing my sites and KW rankings, but if you need to generate reports for clients then you might need a paid solution.

Hope this helps,

Dan

I have been using Google Analytics but am extremely disappointed in the lack of up-to-date information among other things.

Any recommendations of programs to track visitors is greatly appreciated.