Blog Metrics and Goals Belong Together

In order to have a successful blog, goals and planning are imperative. Having a plan in place to track the healthiness of a blog can help it grow and flourish. There is no point in creating a blog if people are not aware of its existence, and more importantly are not reading it. Goals should be revisited regularly to ensure the blog is on the correct path in order to make any modifications to increase readership and visibility. Google Analytics is a major part of this process by providing detailed site data. “Blog metrics are all about attracting the right audience and getting them to take appropriate action as the result of reading your posts,” (Cohen, H., 2012).

As an author of a fledgling blog, I want to wrap my head around my traffic and audience. Knowing my readers behavior can provide insight in order to keep them coming back for content. This information will also provide insight as to how to attract new readers. If the intention is to maintain and increase readership in order to meet additional goals (e.g. increased sales or income), the Audience Overview report is important. The Audience Overview Report details the following: visits, unique visitors, pageviews, pages/visit, average visit duration, bounce rate and percentage of new visits.  Metrics are more than just numbers; they are valuable insights as to how your readership is interacting with your blog. I have listed a few of the more significant numbers to review in this report.

·         Visits – Visits track the total amount of people who visit the site (and thus read your blog), including new and repeat visitors. Visits are important because if you have a low visitor number, it might reveal a technical issue with the blog or may perhaps indicate the need to market it more aggressively (Georgieva, 2011). So far, my blog has six visits. A next step for me would be to connect it to my Google+ profile to get some social traffic. I should also share posts on my Twitter and Facebook to increase traffic.

·         Unique visits-This metric counts the number of times a new visitor reads the blog. My number is at four out of a total of six visits. This shows that there are new visitors coming to the blog. Note that this metric does not include repeat visits (“About multi-channel funnels,” n.d.).

·         Pages/Visit - This shows how far readers dive into your blog.  It indicates whether or not your content is being read. This number should be high, over 3-4. Currently, my number is 1. A solution is to include more article links on pages and add other related posts to the bottom of my articles (Deane, 2013).

·         Average Visit Duration – This number should be over 2-3 minutes. “The longer visitors are on your site, the more content they are reading and the higher chance you have for them to sign-up for your mailing list, click on affiliate offers or ads,” (Deane, 2013). Mine is zero. Obviously no one is spending the time to read my posts. Maybe my topics are not of interest or I need to modify my post titles to grab the audience.

·         Bounce Rate – Typically, a high bounce rate is a negative indicator and means people are not finding what they are looking for on your site. Either a specific topic searched for was not found or the content did not meet expectations. According to Google, the average bounce rate for a web site is 40% whereas a blog is 70%. The reason is twofold: “Blogs often have a high percentage of search engine visitors that are looking for an answer, they get it and move on and 2) blogs often have a high percentage of regular readers that only come to read the latest article published, as they've already read previous articles,” (Deane, 2013). My bounce rate is 100%. This is too high which tells me I need to really re-evaluate the blog and figure out why so many readers are bouncing. Again, it could be a technical issue or maybe my content is not captivating.

 

Above is a snapshot of my Audience Overview report in Google Analytics.

The Traffic Sources Report is as equally important as the Audience Overview. This report can provide good insight as to how marketing efforts surrounding the blog are performing. The report is chock full of information, but I have highlighted a few of the more important metrics to watch.

Overview –This report provides a big picture of how traffic is coming to the blog; breading it down into three categories: search, referral and direct. 

·         Search engine metrics are important because you want to make sure people who are searching the web with specific keywords are directed to your blog. The blog should be optimized for these keywords. Search engine traffic tends to click on ads so if you are running an AdWords campaign, this is a plus. This percentage should be about 50%. My blog’s search engine traffic is zero. Maybe I should create an AdWords campaign or reevaluate my search engine optimization strategy (Deane, 2013).

·         Referral – What other sites outside of search engines are driving traffic to your site? Is it a social media or affiliate campaign? Or an email campaign (Deane, 2013)? If you are executing these campaigns and do not see much referral activity then they must not be effective and require some attention to engage the audience.

·         Direct-This is people typing your domain directly into their browser or accessing a bookmark (Deane, 2013).  This stat demonstrates a real following and tells you that people are interested in what you have to say.

Another section to pay attention to in the Traffic Sources Report is Social Media (a sub-section under Traffic Sources) (Deane, 2013). Why is this important? Social media can drive a lot of traffic to a site (Pencak, n.d.). Nowadays, just about everyone is on social media sharing content and opinions which proves to be a powerful force. You can view a variety of social media stats in this report but for my intents and purposes, visits from social sites are important. I have one social referral which indicates I need to become more active in social.  I could tweet my blog posts or share them on Facebook.

In summation, Google Analytics possesses important metrics that can help gauge blog success. These metrics, compared to blog goals, should evolve along with the blog itself. I recommend reviewing performance at least once a week. In the fast-paced world of the blogosphere, you need to see immediate results so you can tweak here and there if you find that your metrics are not up to par. Naturally, this will impact the way in which you prioritize metrics. As you monitor analytics and achieve goals, you must determine the next set of goals to get the blog to the next level. For instance, as a newbie blogger, I am interested in generating new traffic and getting creating word-of-mouth buzz about my blog. As time marches on and I decide I want it to grow and generate income, the Conversions report in Google Analytics will assist in gauging blog success. This report can set up goals to see the values of conversions, track activities and monitor sales (“About multi-channel funnels,” n.d.).

  

References:

“About multi-channel funnels,” (n.d.). google.com. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&utm_id=ad&answer=1191180

Cohen, H. (2012). 65 metrics to track blog success. heidicohen.com. Retrieved from http://heidicohen.com/blog-metrics-to-track-success/

Deane, L. (2013). Using Google Analytics for your blog-audience overview. Side Income Blogging. Retrieved from http://sideincomeblogging.com/analytics-for-your-blog-audience-overview/

 Georgieva, M. (2011). 5 critical metrics to measure business blog performance. hubspot.com. Retrieved from http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29315/5-Critical-Metrics-to-Measure-Business-Blog-Performance.aspx

Pencak, D. (n.d.). The importance of social media marketing. mymagneticblog.com. Retrieved from http://www.mymagneticblog.com/the-importance-of-social-media-marketing/

“The Audience Overview Report.” (n.d.). google.com. Retrieved from http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1144406