{"id":12025,"date":"2013-01-04T08:32:11","date_gmt":"2013-01-04T13:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shareaholic.com\/?p=12025"},"modified":"2014-05-13T11:20:03","modified_gmt":"2014-05-13T15:20:03","slug":"understanding-blog-analytics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/understanding-blog-analytics\/","title":{"rendered":"The Definitive Guide to Understanding Your Blog’s Analytics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Business<\/a>As the new year rolls around, you might be looking to change things up on your blog. Whether you\u2019re hunting for the perfect blog design<\/a>, creating a fresh editorial calendar<\/a>, or designing a strategy for your social media promotions<\/a>, you should be using your blog analytics to guide your decision-making.<\/p>\n

Why are analytics important? They give you insight into what\u2019s working on your blog and what\u2019s not. By monitoring them, you can benchmark your content\u2019s success and figure out what\u2019s needed to\u00a0grow your blog<\/a> even more.<\/p>\n

All of this is essential to eventually monetizing your blog\u2014you need the numbers to back up your content to be considered for ad placements, sponsored posts or expenses-paid trips to conferences.<\/p>\n

Not familiar with how to navigate your analytics and use them to your advantage? Keep reading. I\u2019ll be walking you through the basic metrics you should be measuring and how to start tracking them. The start of a new year is the perfect time to pick up a new skill that will help your blog grow and grow, so let\u2019s get started!<\/p>\n

What metrics should you be measuring?<\/h3>\n

Not all numbers are equal. There isn\u2019t an expansive checklist of blog metrics you must<\/i> track because every blog has different goals. Because their goals could be different, two different blogs might be concerned with measuring two different metrics.<\/p>\n

For example, a food blogger like Paula<\/a> from bell\u2019alimento<\/a>, a Channels Featured Publisher<\/a>, might be more concerned with measuring traffic from Pinterest than a business blogger would because Pinterest is more aligned with her audience\u2019s interests. The business blogger, on the other hand, might be more concerned with measuring the impact of LinkedIn on his or her blog\u2019s success. While each of these bloggers in this example is interested in measuring traffic from social networks, the specific metrics they want to track are different.<\/p>\n

That being said, there are a few core numbers that all bloggers should be measuring at the start<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"popular<\/a><\/p>\n

1. Top trafficked posts:<\/strong>\u00a0You should always be aware of what content is doing the best on your blog. Keeping track of the top 20 or so posts over time is key to discovering trends on what your readers want to see. Notice that shorter posts with photos are dominating your top 20? You\u2019ve found your post structure sweet spot<\/a>\u2014your readers are speaking with their pageviews and social shares and they like what they see! Look for trends like these in your most popular posts to help guide your content.<\/p>\n

\"Traffic<\/p>\n

2. Traffic sources:<\/strong> With this report, you\u2019ll be able to figure out where your traffic comes from. Is your traffic mainly driven by search engines, referrals (including other blogs, websites and social media), or by people going directly to your blog? You need to know where your traffic is coming from so you can optimize your posts to be more easily discovered by these sources. For example, if you saw that your posts were mainly found through search engines, you would want to continue to develop your SEO efforts<\/a> for future posts.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a><\/p>\n

3. New vs. returning visitors:<\/strong> If you\u2019re spending a ton of time cranking out content you think is awesome, you want to make sure that you are reaching a solid reader base who thinks your posts are awesome, too. In your analytics, you can measure the percentage of new vs. returning visitors to get an idea of the type of people who check out your blog every day. For example, if you\u2019re looking to develop a community around your posts, try optimizing your site for getting more repeat visitors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"engagement\"<\/a><\/p>\n

4. Engagement:<\/strong> While it\u2019s very important to measure the general traffic and reach of your blog posts to understand how well your content is doing, you should also be measuring the engagement of your posts. Measuring this is important because engagement shows that your readers are interested enough in your content to interact with it in some way\u2014they comment on the post directly, share it with their friends, link to it in their own post or subscribe to your blog. To start measuring this, count the number of comments, shares, links back and blog subscribers. As you grow your blog\u2019s reach and goals, you may want to adjust what you view as engagement, but these are great metrics to start out with.<\/p>\n

How to start measuring your blog\u2019s success<\/h3>\n

So now you know why analytics are important and what metrics you should be measuring, but how do you go about getting your analytics set up? Follow these three steps:<\/p>\n

1. Set measurable goals for your content that make sense for your blog. <\/strong>Before you even open up your measurement tools, you need to know what you\u2019re trying to accomplish so that you know what you need to measure. Don\u2019t just decide that you want to get 10,000 pageviews by the end of the year\u2014because what is that ultimately accomplishing? More advertising or monetization opportunities? Brand partnerships? A tighter-knit community? Knowing how<\/i> to measure those numbers is useless if you don’t know why<\/i> you are measuring them in the first place.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not sure how to create these goals, here is an awesome post<\/a> by Heidi Cohen<\/a> that will walk you through the different types of goals you can have.<\/p>\n

2. Set up your analytics to track your metrics. <\/strong>There are a ton<\/i> of tools available to measure the success of your blog. Here are a few I recommend:<\/p>\n

\"Shareaholic<\/a><\/p>\n