Just as brick and mortar stores capitalize on visual storefronts to entice customers, bloggers can follow suit by posting content and visuals to a themed online storefront. Any storefront whether online or on-site is just a facade for what lies behind the curtain. In the blogosphere, web analytics are the back-end of an interface providing structure and foundation to the front-end visual storefront.
According to Jay Baer, from the blog Convince & Convert, “Without a statistical measure of your blogging progress, adding content to your blog on a regular basis can be an incredibly lonely proposition” (Baer, 2010). In an effort to produce content for the masses, instead of content for a finite following, figuring out what metric to leverage is contingent upon the blog type. Baer suggests separating blogs into three distinct groups: content driven blogs, commerce driven blogs, and community driven blogs (Baer, 2010).
In the case of my Web Analytics and SEO blog, my goal is to build a sense of community around posted content with my audience. Baer suggests that I should pay attention to the following key performance indicator metrics: repeat visits, RSS subscribers, comments and refers from social outposts like Twitter or Digg (Baer, 2010).
By activating and pairing the tracking code supplied by Google Analytics (GA) to my Blogger account has provided me with transparent metrics on visitors interacting with my curated storefront.
Overview
One of the standard reports in Google Analytics (GA) is called Audience Overview. This snapshot overview captures the following metrics: visits, unique visits, page views, pages/visit, average visit duration, bounce rate, and % of new visits. Since repeat visitors are a key benchmark metric for community blogs to measure, GA provides a pie chart segmenting that seven return visitors (43.75%) have come back to my blog (Google.com, 2013). The average visit duration is three minutes and forty four seconds (Google.com, 2013). Forty-one page views have been accessed since the launch of the blog on January 18, 2013 (Google.com, 2013).
On a negative side, the current bounce rate is 56.25%, but “No matter how engaging your blog is, you can expect a high bounce rate for the very simple reason that bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only a single page, and blogs in general are designed for consumption directly on the main page rather than navigation to internal pages” (Fettman, 2012).
In order to best leverage the overview report, Baer suggests setting up goal benchmarks within the report (Baer, 2012). Micro-goals could be an excellent starting point for me and my benchmarks could include: downloading an eBook, signing up for an RSS feed, or successfully sharing my blog with a social network (Baer, 2012).
Content Overview
A total of four blog posts have been shared on my blog and the most recent post amassed the highest page views with 14.63% (Google.com, 2013). In addition, to the content overview section, the In-Page Analytics drop down quantifies the clicks a visitor made by color code. It is intriguing to see that the Blog Archive feature, which I felt was unpleasing to the layout, was leveraged by visitors and should be kept as part of the interface.
Traffic Sources
The all traffic report under traffic sources provides insight on the source/medium of all the traffic coming to my blog. Direct traffic currently accounts for 31.25%, and referral traffic is 68.75% (Google.com, 2013).
Referrals have been a key traffic driver. Other student bloggers have been my top referrers, but no activity is currently coming from social outposts like Twitter, or Facebook. In an effort to widen the referral search pool for my blog, I should post my content across all viable social networks.
In order to improve the low direct traffic numbers on my blog, I should add meta keywords to any future posts. In addition, I should add a meta description to the page source so that when it is crawled by search bots my blog would likely appear higher in a natural search.
Social Sources
The social sources report within the traffic sources drop down is a helpful tool in pinpointing brand advocates sharing my content. In addition, this report tracks the stickiness of shared content across social networks.
Baer is a strong advocate for this report because he believes “The data inspires informed action” (Baer, 2012). Since I currently do not have RSS subscribers, comments, or social shares, I should proactively work on improving this portion of my blog.
Marcus Sheridan, from thesaleslion.com believes in the concept of stirring up the pot. “You do not have to be over the top, a ‘gentle’ stir is all that is needed to initiate some great conversation” (Sheridan, 2012). In future posts, I should pose a question to help spark conversations within the blogs comments section. In addition, I need to follow the lead of other successful bloggers and start commenting on other blogs. If I start commenting on my classmate’s blogs I would begin to establish a dialogue with future blogging commentators.
With the help of Google Analytics, I will be able to holistically examine the back-end of my website. The data provided from the reports will help me to make front-end storefront improvements.
Baer advises infant bloggers, like myself “Blogging success is a slow march, not a mad dash” (Baer, 2010). With each step I take toward improving my community blog, I will need to keep in mind the goals and objectives I established at the beginning of my blogging march.
Resources
Baer, Jay. (2010). How to match 10 key success metrics to your blogging strategy. Retrieved February 18, 2013
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/web-site-analytics-and-metrics/how-to-match-10-key-success-metrics-to-your-blogging-strategy/
Baer, Jay. (2012). Google analytics social reports provide huge metrics edge. Retrieved February 18, 2013
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-measurement/google-analytics-social-reports-provide-huge-metrics-edge/
Retrieved February 18, 2013
http://gatipoftheday.com/expect-a-high-bounce-rate-for-your-blog/
Retrieved February 18, 2013
https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=en&pli=1#report/visitors-overview/a38385524w67012327p68931161/
Sheridan, Marcus. ( 2012). 10 ways to get tons of massive comments on your blog every time.
Retrieved February 18, 2013
http://www.thesaleslion.com/ways-get-tons-massive-blog-comments/
I am just so pleased to have the details here. Thanks for sharing tips. Well, I also have to pick a blog promotion method and these days I am obsessed with the Google Adwords success stories so would like to try it out. If you have any suggestions for Adwords Management service in LA, please let me know.
ReplyDelete