Does Google Analytics intimidate you as a blogger? Don’t be! When you start tracking and understanding these five statistics from Google Analytics, you can find new ways to grow and improve your blog. Plus, you can make sure you are properly monetizing your blog!
Go ahead and ‘PIN’ me so you can find these important stats out later!
5 Important Blogging Stats Easily Found on Google Analytics Home Tab
Understanding your blogging statistics is key to increasing your readership and monetizing your blog. But, first, you have to know where to find the information. The blogging industry standard is Google Analytics.
Google Analytics scares many bloggers. It is a powerful tool, but as in most areas of life, the mere mention of “statistics” and “analytics” can be intimidating. There is nothing to fear. You can’t break your blog by just looking at some numbers.
Luckily, Google has listened to feedback and has put most of the important statistics you should track right on the Home Tab making it easy for even the most number-phobic blogger to get vital information to build their blog.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Does Google Analytics intimidate you as a blogger? Don’t be! When you focus on these five statistics, you can find new ways to grow and improve your blog. #bloggingtips #ibabloggers” quote=”Does Google Analytics intimidate you as a blogger? Don’t be! When you focus on these five statistics, you can find new ways to grow and improve your blog. #bloggingtips #ibabloggers”]
Getting to the Google Analytics Home Tab
This article assumes you are already signed up for Google Analytics and have the tracking code installed on your blog. If you have not done this yet, scan through the rest of this post to see why you should get this done and then head over here to sign up for free!
When you sign in to Google Analytics, you should be directed to your Home Tab. If you see a screen like this, just choose your blog name and All Web Site Data.
All of the charts below allow you to change the date range in the lower left corner and to dig deeper in the lower right corner.
1 – Audience Overview
How many people have visited your blog this week?
This is the first box you see and has a load of information you can use to improve your readership.
- Users: how many people have visited your site
- Sessions: how many times the users have visited pages on your site
- Bounce Rate: the number of single-page visits (the user visits then leaves instead of clicking other pages on your site)
- Session duration: how long are the visitors staying on your site
The one stat not on this page that is one of the most sought after is Page Views. We need to go one page deeper for that, just click on Audience Overview in the lower right corner. If you need average page views for the last three months, for example, change the dates to the previous 3 months and divide the page view number by 3. That’s it. Easy right?
(Side note: in case you are wondering, my numbers look a little wonky the 2nd week of January since I have a New Year’s Day recipe that gets crazy amounts of traffic every year.)
Some questions to ask:
- Are people staying on your blog and reading the post?
- Are they visiting other posts before they leave?
2 – Acquisition
How are users finding your pages?
This is one you want to dig deeper by clicking on Acquisition Report in the right corner.
On the next page you can click on the terms in the chart below the graph to find out a tremendous amount of valuable information:
- Organic Search: keywords people used to find your blog.
- Social: which social media channels are sending traffic to your blog.
- Referral: which sites are sending traffic your way (note, this one use has some spammy accounts listed, you can filter them or just ignore them)
- E-mail and Direct: both tell you which page people start on coming from those sources.
Some questions to ask:
- Are you spending too much time on one channel with very little return?
- Where can you expand your reach?
3 – Pages
Which of your pages are the most popular?
Some questions to ask:
- How can you monetize these pages?
- Are you calling for your readers to interact with your post through comments?
- Can you put in related posts to get people to browse your site more?
4 – Top Devices
What device are people using to view your blog?
Some questions to ask:
- Is your site optimized for mobile?
- Do your readers care?
5 – Retention
Are readers coming back for more or are they one and done?
Some questions to ask:
- Do you have a lot of one time visitors but not many repeats?
- Do you have a small readership that comes back every post?
- How does that effect your monetization strategies?
Your assignment
Blogging without statistics is like driving a car with a blacked out windshield and no navigation system. Ultimately, you know where you want to go, but you don’t know which roads to take to get there or have any way to monitor your progress.
Google Analytics has finally made it easier for you to blog smart, not hard by showing you much of the key information you need to build your readership and increase the profitability of your blog.
Let’s Talk:
How often do you check your blogging stats? Which numbers do you track the most? What are your favorite tips for using Google Analytics?
Blogging for Beginners: What You Need To Know About Web Hosting
Blogging Basics: 5 Essential Graphic Design Elements
3 Reasons You Need to be Guest Posting on Other Blogs Already