Top Four Analytics Reports To Measure The Success Of Your Blog

Although the objectives of blogs vary, there are essential metrics all bloggers should monitor to gauge the success of their efforts. Today, I will focus on the metrics and reporting available in Google Analytics (Google.com/Analytics). These metrics are based on the foundation of why most blogs exist and they answer these very important questions:

• How many people are visiting your blog

• Where are your visitors coming from?

• Are visitors engaged and reading my content?

How many people visit your blog and when?

Looking at Google’s Audience Overview report will enable you to immediately identify how many new and returning visitors access your blog. You may feel you are publishing the most awesome content and visitors are clamoring to read your latest post, but  without looking at the traffic displayed in the Audience Overview report, you will never truly know.

This report is especially useful when looking at the data in aggregate, viewed over a long period of time to identify more than peak dates visitors access your blog, but also seasonal trends. For instance, suppose visits to your blog peaks each year in February. Then by drilling down to take a closer look at the traffic to your site during this specific time period and learn that most traffic is coming to your blog because visitors are searching for a blog conference that you sponsor each year.

Additionally, the Audience Overview report may also reveal better optimized and engaging blog posts. For instance, you may see significant spikes that could reveal that the content used within your blog was more relevant or resonated very well with subscribers resulting in click-throughs (traffic) to your site. 

If you are blogging then you are most likely familiar with search engine optimization and with an optimized blog post using specific keyword terms and tagging, you could receive additional traffic from major search engines that have moved your blog up a couple positions in search engine results. Could it be that the additional 10,000 visits to your blog was the result of being “Digg’d?”

Digg is a popular website that delivers Internet news and enables visitors to easily find, read, and share stories. Maybe your blog post was highly regarded by Digg, and it was proudly displayed on the front page of Digg's website for thousands to see. Who knows? 

Now this is all good news, but you should also be prepared for not-so-pretty results. If what you end up looking at is a lack of visitors, you will still have the information you need to take corrective action and improve your blog to deliver better results.

Where are your visitors coming from?

You have a blog and you have visitors. Good for you. But where are they coming from?

Knowing where your visitors are located and the medium and sources that are driving them to your site will bring you an arsenal of analytic weaponry you can use to begin shooting for the stars. This information will tell you a few good things including the location of your visitors and the source that brought them to your blog. This information is not available in a single report, so you will need to navigate Google Analytics a bit to review.

Location

Understanding the location of visitors to your blog is important if you are targeting an audience within a specific region. It may be that your blog is getting a good amount of traffic, but if you are looking to reach prospects in New Hampshire and most of the visitors to your site are located in New England, then you have a problem. 

On the other hand, if location is unimportant, then you can still use location for other purposes. You may want to optimize your content to balance the geography of visitors. This information is available in Google Analytics' ‘Location’ report. Here you can view by Country/Territory, City, Continent, or Sub Continent Region. 

I enjoy using Google Analytics’ Secondary Dimension to view the number of visitors in their location and drill down even further to identify the traffic source and medium that brought them to my blog. You might find that more people from Connecticut are coming to your blog through search, but in Charleston they're finding you through referrals. Charleston is after all where the conference is located that you sponsor each year. 

Traffic Source

Looking at the Traffic Source report will give you an excellent view of where your visitors are coming from in terms of other websites and the type of medium (referral, search, or direct). If my blog is receiving a lot of traffic from referrals, then that could mean I am doing a good job at building relationships with other publishers or developing good content others find resourceful and beneficial. The other dimensions on this overview report will show you if the content you are producing is valuable to others and reaching the right audiences. These dimensions include the Average Visit Duration, Bounce Rate, and Pages per Visit. You can make several conclusions by looking at the combination of these metrics. For instance, an average bounce rate of 40% may not seem too bad, but if you look at the traffic source from search traffic and the bounce rate is 85%, then it is most likely time to re-evaluate your search engine optimization strategy.

Are visitors engaged and reading my content?

You are publishing content and you have visitors to your page, but is that really all you want to become? Wouldn't you like to get visitors to subscribe to your blog and come back for more. . . and more. . .and more? Using Advanced Segments in Google Analytics’ Audience Overview report will show you if your visitors find your material worth their time and you can see this instantly by looking at New Visitors and Returning Visitors. 

Think about this for a moment. The Audience Overview report and filled with beneficial information to help you identify trends and irregularities in traffic and you could be more than pleased to see an uphill climb of New Visitors. That is encouraging, but what if you chose Returning Visitors advanced segment to compare against New Visitors segment and you found that the Returning Visitors trend was increasing at a far greater rate? I bet you would certainly want to have this information! 

This example is a good thing, but you could also discover that  New Visitors are outpacing Returning. It could be that you are spending money in the right places to attract visitors, but your content is not engaging. This of course is one example and there could be other reasons when this is a good thing. Maybe your advertising is highly effective and reaching just the right people at the perfect time, and with a little time, New Visitors will transform into Returning Visitors.

These are just a few of the reports available in Google Analytics, but they are reports you will most likely use for as long as you measure your blog. A key benefit of the Internet is that the activity that takes place online is highly measurable. It affords us with the opportunity to get to know an audience and to evolve into an identity they grow to love and value. Explore analytic tools. Get to know your blog. Get to know your audience. Become loved. Become valued. Become indispensable. Good luck!