The Top 5 Metrics for Bloggers

In July, the The Wall Street Journal reported that Barnes & Noble is disseminating some of the data collected from its Nook e-readers to publishers “to help them create books that better hold people’s attention” (Alter, 2012, para. 6).

Bloggers have been able to make use of analytics to hone their content for years. The smart ones do that and more with their analytic data. Google Analytics is an inexpensive tool to use, but you can easily find yourself with more data than you know what to do with. SEO guru, Avinash Kaushik (2010) suggests, there are nice-to-know metrics and there are need-to-know metrics. Need-to-know metrics are measurements that are tied to your goals and knowing these statistics can help you achieve your objectives. A universal goal for all bloggers is to get more readers, so here is my list of the top 5 metrics you can use to increase readership.

1. Site Content – Page Views

Take a look at the number of views for each post. Was there one topic which spiked? It is a pretty good bet that if a topic received an elevated number of views, that it is a topic worth augmenting, developing or revisiting. Give the people what they want and they will return, comment, and perhaps tell their friends or post a link to your blog. As I discussed in an earlier post, content drives conversation and conversation builds an audience. So the more any blogger can fine tune their content to drive interest and discussion, the more readers they will attract.

On my blog, the topic that received both the most page views and the highest average time on page was the post comparing Google Adwords with Facebook advertising. This is an indication that the topic is of interest to many folks and merits deeper exploration.  

2. Traffic  - Daily & Hourly
It is important to know when people are reading your blog so that you can optimize your posting times and consolidate your efforts. For example, if you see a drop in readership on weekends, then stick to posting during the week. For even more focus, take a look at the times in which they are reading. Are there more readers at lunch hour, after 5 pm, or in the early morning? Whatever the time, make sure you post an hour or so before traffic generally peaks. Subscribers are going to visit when they receive your notice of a new post; for everyone else, try to let them find new content when they arrive.

For my blog, the traffic peaked with 9 visits at 11:00 pm. I summate from this that my readers are late night readers, so posting new content after 8 pm would be optimal.

As a side note, if you see traffic at odd hours, in the middle of the night and such, your site could be attracting night owls, or you could have overseas readers. In GA, check in the Audience Overview / demographics/ location metric. You can see which locations are driving traffic to your blog. With this information, you can further target your content and your posting hours.

(This location analytics image was taken from a blog with lots of readers in India.) (Eatmoreoats.com, n.d.)

3. Time on Site

How long are people viewing your pages? Are they reading for 20 seconds and leaving? Are they spending more than a few minutes? If we go back to our goal of increasing readership, then this metric will help us to understand how interested people are in what you have to say. Looking at the average time on page metric will also hone in on the topics they are most engaged with. While some posts may have high page views, they could have low average time, which could mean the title or topic attracted a reader to the post, but the material was not compelling enough to keep them there.

Conversely, a topic may have low page views, but high average times, which could mean the post’s title is not doing a good job of attracting readers, or it is a subject with a niche audience hungry for similar content.

4. Traffic Sources – Referral and Search

Since our goal is to increase readership, it would be logical to understand where our readers are coming from. For example, if we discover that 1% of the traffic is coming from Facebook and 5% is coming from Twitter, it would stand to reason that putting more time into tweeting will garner more readers.

Perhaps you discover from looking at the referral sources that there is another blogger who has included a link to your blog in one of their posts. Knowing that gives you an opportunity to link back to that blogger or just to send them a note of appreciation. Either way, strengthening that relationship will help drive more traffic to your site. Most importantly, you may not know even to do so, unless you review your referral sources, so check them often.

Likewise, if we are getting visitors from particular keyword searches, it would be helpful to know what those search terms are so that you can either write more posts that are pertinent to those topics, or include more of those keywords in your titles and text.

5. Returning Visitors versus New Visitors

The last metric in my top 5 is new versus returning visitors. The “bread and butter” of any blog is subscribers and return visitors. If a blog had to rely solely on new visitors for traffic, the effort would outweigh the returns. It is the return visitor who is more likely to subscribe, comment, and share your links--all actions which contribute to the goal of increasing traffic.

Combining this metric with the referral sources and average time on site will give you an indication of where the quality traffic is coming from.

For example, you can see in my blog metrics that Facebook delivered 7 visits, 100% of which are new visitors. However, the average time on the site from this source is 24 seconds. There is less traffic coming from Blogger.com, however it consists entirely of return visitors. Visitors from blogger.com look at more pages and they stay an average of 27 minutes. Because they are return visitors, they are more likely to help build the blog’s overall audience. Blogger.com provides low quantity of visitors, but they are high quality traffic.

In Summary

You don’t have to be Barnes & Noble or a big publisher to make use of analytics. By reviewing these 5 metrics on a weekly basis, you can gather insights that will help you build your audience. But remember to do more than just examine the data. Take action. Write new posts on topics where you received the highest number of page views and the longest average time on page. Post new content an hour or so before your highest traffic volume occurs. Be aware of your referral sources so you can put effort into the keywords and sources that are paying off. Lastly, mind where your return visitors are coming from and what is interesting them. Cater to them and you will be on your way to building a loyal following.

References

Alter, A. (2012, July 19) Your e-book is reading you. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304870304577490950051438304.html

Eat more oats. (n.d.) Eatmoreoats.com. Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/c5zjrhr

Kaushik, A. (2010) Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, Inc.