If a blog post is published online and nobody reads it, is it still a blog post?
If your company has been blogging for a while without seeing an increase in website traffic, it may be time to rethink your strategy. Blog metrics can help you understand how your audience is finding you and the type of content that you should feature.
Your definition of success will depend on your particular goals, but there are some fundamental metrics that can help you generate traffic, get leads and grow your company.
Poring over numbers, charts and statistics may seem overwhelming, but it’s easy to start with the basics. Here are six metrics that you should be tracking on a regular basis to maximize the potential of your company blog.
Overall Blog Visits
This may seem like a no-brainer, but tracking the number of overall blog visits each month will show you if you’re growing your traffic, and give you insight into which topics resonate with your audience. You’ll also get valuable information about which forms of content — written text, videos, photos, infographics — make a lasting impression with visitors.
Unique Visitors
Breaking down the details of all those visits, the unique visitors metric lets you know the actual size of your audience. Are those 100 visits from 50 individuals? From 100? From 10 very interested visitors who keep returning? If you’re looking to engage your audience, you want them to find information they need, and to go on to read more than one page on the site. Knowing your number of unique visitors can lead you to include more content that they find valuable, or to add navigation that will guide them to pages you want them to see.
Pages Per Visit
The more pages people view when they visit your blog, the better, right? Higher numbers mean that the blog offers something of interest that is keeping visitors clicking around. On the other hand, if visitors leave your site without taking any action, it’s time to consider making content changes or offering more opportunities to engage with your existing content.
Referral Sources
Which websites and blogs are sending the most traffic to your blog? Are you gaining significant traffic from your social media channels and company e-newsletters? Each source will have a different audience that you can analyze and then create content to fit their distinct needs. Understanding the sources of your traffic helps you understand your audience, and so target your blog posts to them more effectively.
Time Spent Per Post
How engaged are visitors once they find your blog? Look at the amount of time they spend on specific posts and determine possible trends. For example, readers may spend more time with videos than with text posts or photo galleries. What’s the takeaway then? Create more blog posts featuring videos.
Social Shares Per Post
Social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are key to leading visitors to your blog, and understanding what posts are shared where allows you to tailor your efforts to be successful on each social channel. Your Facebook business page shows how often your blog content is Liked or Shared and what type of content visitors were compelled to share with their network. You can examine your Google Analytics or Twitter Analytics pages to see what content is the most popular on those platforms. You may notice that business strategy posts perform best on LinkedIn, while Facebook shares lean more toward company culture stories, or vice versa.
Conclusion
Creating informative and engaging content for your blog on a regular basis can help you to reach a new audience and build relationships with current and prospective clients. But it’s one step in an ongoing process. Identifying and examining your key blog metrics lets you know what resonates with visitors and where to find them. Use that information wisely and your blog will remain relevant and valuable to your target audience.