MEGO: My Eyes Glaze Over

Google Analytics for Bloggers Part 4: Great Reports

Jan 28, 2009 Digital Marketing & Metrics, Search Marketing, Web Analytics

So by now you should know why you should use Analytics for your blog, how to set-up Google Analytics, and have a basic understanding of the dashboard and the terminology.

Time to see what analytics can tell you about your blog!

Note:  There are some differences as far as measurement for a blog than for a standard website such as a corporate site. The biggest difference I spoke about in Part 3, and that is bounce rate. Bounce rate “represents the average percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.” (Wikipedia) Don’t be discouraged to discover that you have an incredibly high bounce rate on your blog, someone can visit your blog read the entire post, or even multiple posts should they land on your home page, not click anything and then leave. Despite the fact that they read every word – they will be counted as a bounce, simply due to the fact that they didn’t click on anything.

The stats available on Google Analytics can show you:

• What are the top posts and pages.
• Who are your referrers and what are your incoming links
• What search engine terms did people use to get to your blog.
• What links people are clicking on within your blog.
• What is the busiest day to-date for your blog.

I suggest looking at 2-3 month period to get a good look at your data the first time you do this. Once you have an idea of how your site performs, I am sure you will be checking it daily…but for now 2-3 months should give you a more meaningful look at traffic to your blog.

What are the top posts and pages?

Directions -  Content: Top Content or Content by Title

Top Content: Will show you this information by URL. This may not be helpful if your posts use the standard URL system used by Wordpress where each post is given a number example = 303. Unless you have memorized your posts by numbers, you will have to go back and forth to figure out which post Analytics is referring to.

Content by Title: Will give you the same information, however it will list the content by the page Title. Page Title is what appears at the top of your browser. For example if you are visiting my blog to read this post (rather than reading it in an RSS feed reader)- the title on your browser will be Google Analtyics for Bloggers Part 4: Measuring Success: MEGO My Eyes Glaze Over. If you aren’t using an SEO Plug-in that allows you to add titles, consider doing so – titles are more than just pretty – they are important for SEO purposes.

This will give you your top content listed in descending order. It is likely that your most popular page will be your home page or “/”  will be your number one page. You can sort this list by a few different metrics, I usually use Unique Pageviews to get an idea of quantity of visitors to that page. If you have goals set up sort by $ Index column ( average value for a page that a user visited before landing on the ) to get an idea of which posts are converted your visitors. Watch for more on Goals in Part 5!

Questions to consider

Do you notice any trends surrounding the topics at the top of the list? At the bottom? Are they what you expected? Are these same blogs ones you have had more comments on – or less? If you are using goals, are the top posts by Pageviews the same ones converting?

Who are your referrers and what are your incoming links?

Directions- Traffic Sources: Referring Sites

Referring Sites: This is one of my favourite pieces to look at! I believe, it is also one of the most important factors to take into consideration when “pimping” your blog as well. It can tell you what is working, and what isn’t!

Once again you can sort this chart in a number of ways.

Visits: Number of visits the various referrers drove to your site.

Page/Visit: How deep did those visitors go? Remember if they landed on your home page, they didn’t need to go far to read multiple posts, so you might want to figure out where the referrer linked to first. You can do this by clicking on URL listed, it will show you the URL on the referring site, then pull down Dimension and choose Landing Page (see image).

Average Time on Site: Sort by time and you will see which referring sites send traffic that sticks around.

Questions to consider

Which sites are sending the most engaged visitors? How did you get that referral – was it due to a shared item on Facebook? A tweet you made on Twitter? A comment on another blog? A link back on someone elses blog? Again, what was the content that attracted the visitors? You also might want to segment by Returning and New visitors by using Advanced Segments (top of dashboard).

What search engine terms did people use to get to your blog?

Directions -  Traffic Sources:  Keywords

There are three ways a visitor will make their way to your site: direct (type in your URL), Referring site, and Search. From your dashboard or from the Traffic Sources: Overview you can see what percentage comes from each. Search can help drive new traffic your way, or help folks who are looking for your particular blog find you. A blog, due to the content rich nature, tends to be fairly “Search Engine Optimized” to begin with, but there are ways to help it along (please refer to SEO for Marketers).  The Keywords report can help you find out what words your visitors are using and clicking on to get to your blog. By looking at a three month period or more you may see words that repeatedly drive traffic to your blog.  Are they indicitative of what is on your site? Are they words that fit your blog objectives and goals? Are people searching for your blog name? Your name? What keywords are missing? Is your blog about children’s books, but keyword “kids books” isn’t driving any traffic? That could be because there is a lot of competition for these words, or perhaps when you talk about books you refer to “Children’s” rather than “kid’s” more often?  Looking at your keywords can help you understand your visitors, what content they are visiting for, what keywords may be trending in your niche, and where you might be losing visitors due to keywords not reflecting in your content.

Questions to consider

Are you missing traffic from a particular engine? Are you indexed by that search engine? What keywords do you want to place for in the search engines?

What links people are clicking on within your blog?

This is really important on a corporate site or E-com site, to give you an idea of how your navigation is working, give you and idea of where to place your key links, and if your visitors are not finding what they are looking for. Blogs, usually have a limited navigation, but it can still be helpful to see what your visitors are doing on your site, what outgoing links they might be visiting, and what pages within your site they are checking out.

There a few ways to get this information. I will just look at the more simple views for this post.

Directions – Content: Site Overlay

Google Analytics Site Overlay

This is a great visual function that can help you see what links are being clicked on, and where on your site they are. This can be very helpful if you change your layout and want to see the effect on important links.  Roll over each bar showing click-through to see:

- Clicks

- Goal Value

- Goals

Directions – Content: Navigation Summary

Want to view a summary of a particular page, use the Navigation Summary. You will see a page like this:

At the top pull down any page from the Content menu. You will then see how site visitors got to that page, and where they went after.

Entrance: Percentage that entered via that page

Previous Pages: Percentage that entered your site from a previous page on your site (see list below as to where they came from).

Exits: Percentage that exit from that page

Next Pages: Percentage that move on to another page from that page (see list below to see where they go).

Questions to consider

Are there pages that have encouraged your visitors to read more? What links on your page are getting high-click through? Where are they located on the page?

What is the busiest day to-date for your blog?

Directions- Visitors: Visitor Trending: Visits / Absolute Unique Visitors

This will show a bar graph of visits by day. This is a great way to visually see your site’s traffic day by day. You can also look at Unique Visitors in this way to get an idea of how many different visitors come to your blog on a given day.

Questions to consider

Are your busy days reflective of when you added new posts? Is there a trend in most popular days of the week?

Watch for Part 5 coming soon where I will go over Goals and a few other ways to look at your success.

As always  – connect on Twitter and Google Friend Connetc (right hand side). And, if you enjoyed this content – subscribe!

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Tags: google analytics, reports, Web Analytics