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So what is analytics?
Analytics is the measuring, collecting, analyzing, and reporting on data from your website or blog to help you understand current performance and usage so you can improve or optimize future performance and usage.By tracking the analytics on my blog, I’ve been able to
- Know my audience better
- Have another resource for generating content ideas
- Improve my content promotion
How to get access to your site analytics
Ask anyone who knows anything about analytics and they will tell you the best tool for capturing your site analytics is Google Analytics. This is a free tool offered by Google that is not only used by bloggers and small businesses but also by large companies and brands.
How I use Google Analytics
I’ve pretty much been using Google Analytics on my blog since day one. This has been helpful for me because I’ve learned a lot about my blog’s performance and audience. All of which have helped me to make changes or adjustments that ultimately have helped my blog improve and grow.Before I jump into the details let me break down what Google Analytics provides. Google Analytics has a lot of data, which can be helpful, but also overwhelming. Especially if it’s new to you.
Ok. Here we go. Once you’ve set up Google Analytics and logged in you’ll see there are four key sections where all of your analytics are housed.
Related read: January 2016 Traffic Report
1. Audience Overview: Here you’ll find most of the information about who your audience is and their interests.
2. Acquisition: this section shows you where your traffic is coming from
3. Behavior: See how your audience behaves once they’re on your blog and what content they are consuming.
4. Conversions: To use this section you have to set up goals in Google Analytics. Once you do, you can tell how your audience is converting against those goals.
Within each section are several subsections. It can be a bit daunting when you first start poking around. So I’m going to share with you the key places I go to see how my blog is doing and what I can approve.
Know my audience better
I love the Audience Overview section so it’s one of the sections I spend the most time in. Here I can see and trackHow many from my audience are visiting my site by looking at Pageviews and Users.
When my audience is coming to the site by breaking down Pageviews and Users by day and even by the hour. This is helpful for planning when to post and promote content.
How long my audience is staying on my site by looking at Average Session Duration and whether it is increasing or decreasing over time. Additionally, I also look at the Bounce Rate. If my Average Session Duration is decreasing l look to see if there’s any correlation to my Bounce Rate and if so where the bounces are coming from.
Related read: What I’m Doing to Reduce My Bounce Rate
Who my audience is. By looking at this data I can tell if I’m hitting the right audience and gather more demographic information about them such as age and interests that can be used in my media kit.
A resource for generating new content
I get this information from two sections- Acquisition: Here I can dig into the organic keywords driving people to my blog. If I see some keywords in the top 10 that don’t correspond to content I’ve already created I make a note of that as an idea for future content.
Behavior: In this section, I look at which landing pages are the most popular with my audience in terms of high Pageviews and low Bounce Rate. If I see a particular topic has been performing well I look to see if I can capitalize on that with future content by either creating related content or expanding it into a series.
Improve my content promotion
In the Acquisition section, there is data showing where my blog traffic is coming from. I can also see how engaged the traffic coming from those channels is. Are they bouncing or sticking around and reading multiple posts.
By knowing this information I can focus on the channels that drive the most engaged traffic for me and spend less time and effort on the ones that aren’t.
Another benefit is I can see if any of my high-performing traffic drivers are now underperforming. If there are any I can develop strategies for those channels to try and improve performance.
How do you use your Google Analytics?
Other tools you can use for your blog
- Canva an online graphic design software
- MailerLite is an email list-building and management
- Later for Instagram scheduling and posting
- Tailwind for Pinterest and Instagram scheduling and posting
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