Many bloggers know they need to learn how to understand Google Analytics. But when they open the dashboard, all the menus and options frighten them away.
No one wants a degree in statistics just to understand their blog. Thankfully, you can learn Google Analytics through repeated use.
You can use the results from your analytics to improve your existing content. Or create new content that your audience really needs.
Curious about how to understand your blog analytics? Read on to learn more.
Why Are Blog Analytics Important?
We’re going to assume you’ve got Analytics installed on your website. You’re just not sure what everything means or how to get useful answers out of it.
Using your blog analytics, you can find out:
- How many visitors does your blog get
- Where does traffic come from
- What are your most popular posts
- How quickly do visitors leave
That’s a small sample but they’re some of the most important questions for bloggers to answer. Let’s check out how to find them.
Visitor Numbers
The audience overview graph shows you information about visitors to your blog over time. You can change the date range if you like.
‘Sessions’ refers to the number of unique browsing sessions. If a user visits your blog four times on the same device within 30 minutes? That counts as one session.
If they come back once a week for a month? They’re separate sessions. That’s why it differs from ‘users’, which refer to the number of visitors to your blog.
These figures tell you how many visitors your blog gets. Check ‘page views’ to find out how many times people view each page.
Traffic Sources
It’s important to know where your traffic comes from so you can check how well your marketing campaigns are doing.
Go to ‘Acquisition’ for your traffic sources. If you go to ‘All Traffic & All Referrals’ you can see where a person was when they saw your link.
Get plenty of traffic from Twitter? Focus your efforts there. Likewise, if no one comes via Pinterest? Change your strategy or stop posting.
You can also find out more than just where the user was. Find out how they got there. For example, ‘Organic’ means they clicked on a link in a search engine. ‘Direct’ means they used a bookmark or typed your URL into a browser.
Go to Acquisition > Keywords > Organic. This tells you what keywords visitors use to find your site. If these aren’t the keywords you’re trying to target, you might need to change your SEO strategy.
If this all sounds confusing, try working with a Google Apps partner to make it easier.
Popular Posts
Go to the ‘Behaviour’ menu in the lefthand column. Choose ‘Site Content’ and then ‘All Pages’.
Find out how popular different posts are. If a handful of related posts are doing well, create more content on these topics since there’s an appetite for them.
Consider optimizing older posts covering popular topics.
You can also check out your keywords. Do users find your blog using keywords you’re not targeting – but you want to? Create content using those keywords.
Bounce Rate
This one is important because it tells you how quickly someone leaves your blog after landing on a page. The lower the number, the longer they stick around.
If you have a high bounce rate, you may have a mismatch between blog post titles and content. Visitors might leave if they expect one thing and get something else.
It could also mean there’s a problem with your load time which you need to address.
Get Your Blog Analytics Right
Now you understand the blog analytics you need to succeed. With a little patience, you can figure out the right information to boost your existing content.
Create brand new content without relying on fads or formulas. Provide the information your audience is actually searching for. Then enjoy the boost in traffic.
Check out our other articles about blogging to skyrocket your success.
