‘’Monitor Statistics on your blog’, Day 30 #31DBBBDay30 with @problogger

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1013123

At the beginning of this process, you hopefully put a programme such as Google Analytics on your blog & therefore have a months worth of statistics to look at. Darren tries to undertake a proper look at stats each month…

If you’re new to analytics:

1. How many visitors are you getting overall? Is it rising or falling? Can you tie the rates into anything in particular (frequency posts, links from elsewhere, topic focus, etc.)
2. Most Popular Posts: Gives you ideas about topics to develop further, and think about how to optimise your blog – drive users from these posts deeper into your blog.
3. Referral stats: Which sites send you most traffic – if another blog – see if can develop relationship with owner. If a search engine, work on SEO.
4. Questions being asked: What do people want to know? Can you answer it?
5. Keywords & Traffic – knowing what people are searching for can allow you to optimize your content with the right keywords
6. Seasonal traffic – what can you grab here? The Big Bible Project was built out of a Lent project – we’d love to do Autumn & Advent too…
7. Daily/Weekly trends: popular days/times of day – do you then adjust posting times? [We use Crowdbooster for some of this – and tested posting stories before rush hour, rather than at 9am – and numbers reading rose]
8. Bounce Rates: How many people leave without reading any other pages? Seek to make your site more sticky.
9. Page views per visit: Similar but how many – how to increase page views?
10. Time on site: Is your content engaging enough to keep people reading – and hopefully commenting!
11. New/Returning Visitors: Are people loyal visitors? The Big Bible Project has around 45% loyal visitors.
12. RSS Stats: Consider using Feedburner – will give you more stats
13. Outbound Clicks: What motivates readers to leave your blog – what might you be able to give them more of (if your aim is to keep them on site – or if you’re happy that you’re giving good links).
14. Where people click on your page – Google Analytics or Crazyegg can create heatmaps… giving you an idea of what attract attention/action.
15. Exit Pages – Where are people leaving your blog from – if there’s an unusually high number then see if there’s something you can do to change the page.
16. Monetisation stats – if you’re seeking to make money – work out which posts are performing.
17. Other stats – endless options – geography, broswers, etc.

Avoid becoming a ‘stats addict’ – don’t check more than 2-3 times a day (oh dear, I should check more!), and in depth once a month.

Today’s Notes

It can be depressing/disillusioning to see all this data – but typically it takes 2-3 years to hit the big time with a blog. This is a marathon, not a sprint – think about how you may want to grow your blog.

Further Reading

• Google Analytics to compare traffic from different periods of time.
• 2 blogging myths – traffic & content
• Understand your sites traffic