How do you know if your blog is successful? Which metrics should you track when there are so many of them? Here are 7 key blog metrics, mostly from Google Analytics you can use to help measure and evaluate the success of your blog.
1. Page Views and Page Per View
The page view refers to the number of times visitors looked at your blog pages. It is a good guide to let you know what topic your readers are most interested in and what blog post was the most popular, as the analytic breaks down the statistics by each blog page. The page per view will indicate whether your visitor found the blog interesting or informative to read more on your blog. The top visited post can be a model for your future posts and you can also add links on the post that will lead to other pages on your blog.
2. Visits and Returning Visitors
Traffic is one of the most comprehensible metric. You want to measure how many visits you are getting from one period to another and recognize the trend. Returning visitors will tell you how many loyal fans you have craving for your blog content. If you have a high percentage of returning visitors, it is an indication that you are doing a good job of retaining your readers and building readership.
3. Number of Shares on Social Media
Did you already set up a social media share bar on your blog? Great! With the social media share bar, you can easily track how many times your blog post was shared on different social media platforms. Your blog can become a valuable information source. The social media share bar also facilitates the process of sharing your blog post for your readers! Web Design Leaders offers a great list of Social Media Share Bars you can get for WordPress.com.
4. Bounce Rate
According to Google Analytics, bounce rate is “the percentage of visitors that see only one page during a visit to your site.” So, if your bounce rate is 50%, it means 50% of visitors leave your blog after viewing only one page. This can mean that your visitors are not finding the information they want or not interested in exploring other pages or posts
on your blog.
5. Referrals
This metric not only tells you if your blog is being shared or mentioned on other sites, but also the sources that are directing visitors to your blog. For example, if you see that one of your top referrer is Twitter, you should take advantage of this and strategically share your blog on Twitter.
6. Keywords
The keywords will give you an understanding on what keywords your visitors used on a search engine to land on your blog. You can also optimize this metric by using the keywords to improve your SEO.
7. Reader Comments
Although not measured by Google Analytics, reader comments are important for a blog’s success. It is also the most visible metric on your blog and a high number of comments can leave a great impression for your visitors. Comments will tell you if your blog post was interesting and engaging enough to provoke conversations, and it is a good indication of whether or not there is a sense of community so that your bloggers are interacting with you. You can track how many comments you have on average, and it is important to read all your comments and see if there are active conversations. Read a blog post by Social Media Examiner to learn how to increase blog comments!
As you track metrics for your blog, always remember your goals. Is it to interact with more visitors or customers, or to educate and inform readers? To some bloggers, the quality of comments is more valuable than page views. Depending on your goal, some metrics will be more valuable than others.
Which metric do you consider to be the most important for your blog and why? Comment below – we would love to hear from you!