31DBBB Day 21: 17 Statistics to Monitor on your Blog
This is Day 21 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, a group project we are doing together in an attempt to improve our blogs and help each other become better bloggers. You can read more about it and still sign-up to participate here. Please subscribe to our RSS Feed to stay updated on the project.
- Day 16 (Monday): Breathe Life into an Old Post
- Day 17 (Tuesday): Call your Readers to Action
- Day 18 (Wednesday): How to use a Magazine to Improve your Blog
- Day 19 (Thursday): Ask a Question
- Day 20 (Friday): Develop a Plan to Boost your Blog’s Profile and Readership
- Day 21 (Monday): 17 Statistics to Monitor on your Blog
- Day 22 (Tuesday): Plan the next step for your blog
This is the next to last day of 31DBBB on Anomalous Material! We are finally in the final stretch of this project and I would like to thank all of you who participated. I hope you got something out of this which will help you continue to improve as a blogger.
Today, we are going to take a look at 17 statistics to monitor on your blog. Hopefully, it will help you build a routine that you will use every time you look at your website analytics. Obviously, if you don’t have web analytics yet, there is something seriously missing with your blogging and I would advise you to install one on your blog as soon as possible. The key takeaways is that studying your blog stats can be very enlightening but you should not become a stat addict.
The 17 Statistics to Monitor
- Overall Visitors – I think everyone pays attention to this number first. Are visitor numbers increasing or decreasing over time? What might be the reasons for these changes? Observe as you make changes to your blogging such as post frequency, participation on forums and related blogs, ad campaigns etc…
- Most Popular Posts – What posts are the most popular on your blog? Knowing this is important since you will know which posts can be optimized to send traffic deeper into your blog. You will also know what topic people are interested in which can make for future topics to write about.
- Referral Stats – what sites are sending you the most traffic? If it’s another blog or site, perhaps you could develop a relationship with them to see this increase. If it’s Search Engines, how can you adapt the posts to see it rise even more using on page SEO techniques.
- What Questions are being asked? – what questions are readers typing into search engines to find your blog? These could make great future posts (learn more about how to do this here).
- What Keywords are sending traffic? – knowing the keywords that people search for to find your site is very useful. It helps you to know how to optimize your blog for SEO even better and can give hints on what content to write more of.
- What seasonal traffic is there? – are there any seasonal trends that you should be aware of and could use to capture more traffic? What caused the bumps in traffic and how can you prepare yourself better for next time those conditions might happen again (read more on seasonal traffic and how to capture it).
- Daily/Weekly Trends – another trend to watch is what traffic does over different periods of time. What are the most popular times of day? What days of the week are most popular? Knowing this gives you ammunition in planning when to release new posts.
- What’s Your Bounce Rate? – metrics packages like Google Analytics provide you with a ‘bounce rate’ stat which measures how many people arrive at your site and then leave again without viewing any extra pages. I find this a key metric to watch and attempt to change. Set yourself some goals to get this rate down and the page views viewed per visitor up by making your blog sticky.
- Page Views Per Visit – Similarly to ‘Bounce Rate’ – This is a good one to watch over time as it shows you whether those coming to your blog are going deep into your blog’s content or simply looking at the page they arrive on. My goal on my blogs is to see this number increase over time. For tips on how to increase page views also check out 4 Quick and Simple Ways to Increase Page Views on Your Blog.
- Time on Site – Another stat that can give you a sense on whether readers are engaging with your content is to look at how long they stay on your blog. The longer they are staying the more likely it is that they’re reading, commenting and interacting (or that they forgot to close their browser).
- New vs Returning Visitors – This one gives you a sense of whether you’re succeeding in converting people to loyal visitors.
- RSS Stats – If you’re using a tool like Feedburner to manage your RSS feeds you’ll have access to more useful information. Feedburner provides you with the number of subscribers but also what posts people are reading most of (again showing you what content people are engaging with most which gives you some good information on what type of content is working best).
- Outbound Clicks – Not every metrics package will give you this type of information but if you have access to it knowing what links on your blog people are clicking to leave it can be very useful. It’s not that you want to stop people clicking links – but knowing what links they click on can give you some useful information on what motivates your readers to click a link and what type of information they want more of.
- Where are People Clicking on Your Page – not all stats packages track this but some like Google Analytics or packages specifically for it like CrazyEgg will create heatmaps or visual pictures of what people click on when they visit your blog. I find CrazyEgg’s heatmaps better than Google Analytics but you do need to set it up on specific pages of your blog to be able to see them. This is very useful information when thinking about the design and layout of your blog but also can help you test how to layout posts to see where people click.
- Exit Pages – A similar metric is knowing what page on your blog people are leaving from. A couple of years ago I checked my stats and noticed that the % of people leaving a particular page on my blog was triple other pages. When I investigated I found that the page had some very bad formatting issues on it that made the page almost unreadable – I was able to fix the problem and keep more readers engaged as a result.
- Monetization Stats – many of you are looking to make money from your blogs so it’s also important to pay attention to any stats you have at your disposal on how your blog is performing in this way. The metrics you have at your disposal will vary from income stream to income stream but if possible try to work out where on your blog the income is coming from specifically. For example if you use Google Analytics and AdSense you’ll be able to see what specific pages are earning more than others. Otherwise – use what ever channel or tracking options your ad network or affiliate program gives you to help you work out which posts are performing.
- Other Stats – There are plenty of other stats that can be revealing when you dig into them. Knowing the Geographic regions of your readers can be helpful as you think about content but also is useful if you’re dealing with advertisers, knowing the screen resolution and browsers people are using to view your site is good from a design perspective etc. Also worth doing from time to time is looking at other stats like how many posts you’ve done over time (post frequency can help you monitor how you’re performing personally) and how many comments you’ve had on your blog over a period of time and on which posts (which can be a great indicator of what kind of posts are working best on your blog and how reader engagement is going).
On Anomalous Material
Personally, I usually briefly check my stats 3 or 4 times a day to see how things are doing. I mostly monitor whether I’m getting some unexpected traffic that I should be aware of, and keep a watch on what sites and blogs are sending me referrals. Every few weeks, I will go through most of the stats Darren described above.
The main stat I pay particular attention to is:
Comments: We broke the 3,500 comments barrier in the month of August woohoo!
Click to Zoom
Things I have learned from looking at my stats:
- Peak hour is usually around 2 and 3PM Central Time
- Top content are lists
Discussion
- Did you track your statistics this month? What did you see?
- Which statistics do you feel tell you the most about your blog or readers?
45 Comments
I check my stats everyday (sometimes multiple times). This helps in the sense that I can figure out what time they are checking. If they are coming back then it helps me to decide WHEN I should be posting and with what frequency. This month (especially since I have been working on this project) I have seen my stats go up satisfactorily.
This past week I had a rather interesting day which was over double my normal traffic for the month. Still trying to figure out what happened on that day.
For me the Top Pages and Posts is very telling. Consistently my piece on the Tudors in Film is #1 in searches and eventual clicks to my site.
I also have a few subscribers on Feedburner.
Very happy to hear that 31DBBB is reflecting in your traffic stats
Yes, the top pages are very telling indeed, you can use them to point new visitors deeper into your blog.
One thing I am curious about is that the stats in my wordpress page are different than the stats in google analytics; do you know why that is?
It is because they do not use the same methods to determine whether a visitor is really one. For example, if you come to Anomalous Material and then keep your window open on the blog, you will count as one visitor. However, if for example, you take a 15 break before clicking on something else on AM, Google might interpret this as a new visitor while WordPress counts it as a pageview from that one visitor. (or vice versa). Hence, Google will show 2 visitor while WordPress will count 1.
Do you know how good Google is at eliminating “own” visits on their analytics?
They include all traffic from all sources in their list, but at least they will calculate how many of those visits came from Google. I guess you’ll have to do the math on your own.
When you’re checking the Visitor’s category, they at least tell you which visits are from search engines, referral services and then from just your average normal web surfer.
Yes I have seen that breakdown and its really good! Way better than the one inside wordpress.com
Totally. BTW, if you haven’t already, I highly recommend hooking up the google analytics widget for your dashboard.
Oh so then you get the reports at the dashboard??? thats awesome, I’ll check it out…
Actually I found another widget showing most popular posts according to GA! So I threw in that one aswell!
OMG, you really do love charts eh Castor! Man, my head is spinning just looking at this. Say, how do you obtain the data on your first chart there? Hey, clearly I visit your site a lot, AND spend a lot of time browsing, too
“Peak hour is usually around 2 and 3PM Central Time” Well, that’s good to know. I guess that’s the lunch hour in the East Coast?
Oh the one for the comments? You need to go to Akismet in WordPress and there is an option to show how many “Ham” you have (well there should be one, not sure about wordpress.com lol)
You mean on the West coast?
Sheesh, I hadn’t realized I could click on the Akismet thing, yeah there is one for wordpress.com as well.
And yeah, I mean West Coast, lol.
You jumped a bit over my head. What program/package did you use to keep track? I’ve used Sitemeter so far, but that doesn’t seem to keep track of the same stats.
Google Analytics Jess
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Awesome! Thanks. Will get going now.
As a new blog I get some excellent traffic from Social media sites. For my first month, I got around 1000 visits. Also our training session can helps me a lot to get some friends like Travis, Castor etc..So overall I get some targeted traffic on this month. Also from my site analytics, I noted that ‘List posts are always rocking’ and also readers love the list rather than normal content.
Congrats Mani, 1000 visits for your first month is very promising! Keep it up
Thanks Castor…
I have increased my traffic a lot thanks to this exercise. When blogging on wordpress.com I used site meter after moving my blog I am going to use some statistic plugin and configure it right this time. Whats your suggested program? Google analytics? And can it keep track on all those statistics you’re referring to in this post?
Google Analytics is comprehensive – with lots of different metrics they keep track of – including pretty much everything mentioned in here. It’s also good because it stays pretty current to what’s happening while you’re looking. It’s just nice to back that up with something else. My host has some great metrics (like AWStats), so you should see what they provide – if you’re self-hosting.
Yes Google Analytics Joel. I also use Sitemeter for quick access. I usually check sitemeter during the day and look at Google Analytics once every few weeks.
Thanxs again guys! Finally got Google analytics installed properly.
These are stats for your own site? Holy (bleep), man. That’s (bleep)in’ insane.
I’m on Google Analytics, but I don’t go on much. Apparently, when people think Four of The, they think Bai Ling news. This is depressing, okay?
I am trying to install google analytics right now but its really messy! Anyone know a really good tutorial page for it or videoclips. They have really tried to make it difficult to install.
Simply add the code they gave you to the Header.php file as instructed.
You make it sound so easy. How to I obtain the Header.php file on wordpress.org?
Go to Appearance > Editor
Hi Joel I hope this link will be useful for you..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUfef288VLU&feature=related
its about ‘How to add Google analytics in your WordPress blog’..
Thanxs guys! I appreciate it!
I got Google analytics up and running now and its really great. Very informative!
I’m a total stats addict, but I think I’m missing the complete picture because I never quite understood what everything meant. And more importantly, I wasn’t too sure on how to get those numbers to go up or down. According to site’s main stats source AWStats, we had our best month ever this month – which I guess is a blessing and a curse – ’cause we have to do even better than that somehow. I’ve been trying to track our most busy time on the site – essentially I schedule everything to post on the blog at 8:08am PST, just because it seemed like a reasonable time in the world – I’m hoping for more clues. When my numbers were super low, I could never tell if I was swaying things myself with all my tinkering and refreshing of the site myself.
For stats counting I use AWStats, Google Analytics, Sitemeter, and I rely a lot on Project Wonderful’s metrics – they’re one of my ad providers. You gotta know they’re keeping accurate track of your site’s numbers if there’s money on the line.
The best time to post is definitely going to be when a lot of people are going to be in front of their computers. Then it will hit the Facebook and Twitter feed a few minutes later getting you quick traffic. I don’t always care about when I post my content (you can see some post coming up really early in the morning or really late at night) but I can definitely notice that posting during “busy” hours will get you nearly instantaneous traffic from Twitter or Facebook.
I only use Google Analytics and Sitemeter. I like Sitemeter because you can check every thing in real time down to who is on your site at any point in time.
Still figuring out Sitemeter. I picked it up when I saw it here, I like how thorough it is – but I’m not ready to post up that traffic numbers widget until I have some real traffic to speak of.
Timing of posts was one of the first blogging tips I’d ever heard, so it’s really stuck with me. It’s also the easiest thing to keep consistent. I don’t count on either Facebook or Twitter for traffic, even though I devote quite a bit of time to maintaining both. One of these days I’ll get the hang of harnessing them properly. You know, AM was my fifth largest source of traffic for this month. Thanks for the traffic! Google, of course, is my bread and butter.
I’ve held off doing this because I know my numbers will be depressing. My blog has been up for a couple of years now and I still don’t have people coming. I have learned a lot and found some great movie blogs by doing this challenge with all of you! I can’t believe tomorrow is the last day! Well, I’ve certainly added a bunch more “blogs to read.”
Castor, you’ve done a great job breaking down all the info for us everyday. It sure looked like a lot of work on your part. Did you sleep at all these last 31 days?
Ahaha thanks Colleen, it wasn’t that bad
I hope 31DBBB was helpful and will help you get your blog more and more readers. It’s worth it!
Yeah, I think I’m pretty committed. Weaker, movie addicts would have thrown in the towel by now. I keep learning and trying different things. It’s a much more involved process than I ever realized. I wish I could blog all day, but a girl’s gotta make a living. I’m looking forward to reading all the movie pitches. That is such a cool idea!
LOL, I got about 1% of actual comments compared to the traffic I get… is that normal? xD Hits have increased sort of steadily for a year now. I got double the hits I got for the Beijing Olympics month ;P but comment activity has maintain.
I get more precise info when checking stats on AlterWind (sp?) and downloading the files from my server. But AWStats works great on my control panel with my server provider.
Funny thing? My posts about actresses get the most hits, like the one on Pin-up photoshoots xD
We are lucky here to get a much higher ratio but on average, 1% comments rate is the normal rate for most blogs. You should definitely look at what you can do to increase participation. Question posts, opinion posts can be helpful. You also need to pay attention whether your visits are “real” or simply hits from google image for example.
Lots of great info once again. I’ve always looked at the stats I have access to, but the above images are much more in depth. I need to do some more research and start collecting better data. Thanks!
I really couldn’t analyze my statistics during the challenge becuase I switched host, the most interesting for me have been to be awaken about my referals. Facebook is the top one one but the two after that are two fairly small swedish filmblogs (at one I have hardly participated in the comments).
Also I have found that I have least traffic on evenings (swedish time) so I guess a lot of my readers are international or Swedes browsing on work time. Really interesting and I’ll definitively schedule my updates according to this.
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