Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Everything Analytics—Learn What the Numbers Really Mean to the Success of Your Blog


These days everyone’s talking about analytics and how important they are. Today I’ll give you the info you need to take your blog to the next level.
First let’s start with the basics. What are analytics? 
One way of defining analytics within the context of the Internet is this: a process of collection, measurement and analysis of visitor activity on a specific website. This process is intended to help the author understand and achieve the goal of the website. 
This definition brings up several important points, first and foremost you should have a goal for your blog. It’s critical to your success that you know what you want to accomplish with it. 
Do you want to:
  • Connect with like minded people? 
  • Share information?
  • Build a platform or following?

All of these are great goals, but getting to each one will require a slightly different route. Before you can evaluate how well you’re doing you have to know where you’re going. 
Analytics can help you get there—if you know what you’re looking for.
Here are the most important statistics to look for:
  • Unique hits.
  • Returning visitors.
  • Traffic graph.

A Unique Hit is a statistic describing a unit of traffic to a website, counting each visitor only once within a specific time frame, say ten minutes. So visitor A could click on your blog once in a ten minute time period or 25 times during the same ten minute time period and either way would only be counted as one unique hit.
Returning Visitors are important because we want people to come back regularly. This is the statistic that tracks this.
The Traffic Graph for your site helps you track the popularity of your posts and when people visit your site. This can give you valuable insight when you’re planning your schedule and deciding what to blog about.
This is just an introduction to analytics. On Thursday I’ll be giving you a run down of what the different analytic programs can offer. 

Now it's your turn. What questions do you have about the statistics you see? Have these statistics helped you tweak your blog and get closer to your goal?

Don't forget to join the conversation!
Blessings,
Edie

18 comments:

  1. I love blogging and appreciate you blog so very much. I feel like I am hitting a brick wall with my ablility to get my numbers up. I know visiting and commenting on other blogs is important and I enjoy visiting with them, but it is very time consuming, and I'm limited by the time I can invest in the process.

    So my question is...How do I get more traffic to my blog?

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    Replies
    1. Diane, there's no one right answer. You're off to a good start by visiting and commenting on other blogs, but you're right, it is time consuming. Do you use Facebook and Twitter at all? When you work with Facebook, Twitter and Blogging together you'll see a lot more results.

      Also, I'm not certain how long you've been blogging. Did you read my post about reasonable blog growth? Here's the link if you missed it: http://thewriteconversation.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-fast-should-my-blog-grow.html
      This isn't a clickable link, you'll need to copy and paste it into your browser. Also, if you'd like to email me, I might be able to give you some specifics. ediegmelson@gmail.com

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  2. An explanation-worthy topic: bounce rates.
    Thanks, Edie!

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  3. At the conference, Dianne Mills recommended we include our stats on a book proposal. Which stats are publishers most interested in? (Unique, overall pageviews, returning, etc)

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    1. Kathi, the three I mentioned above are the most important. This gives them a solid idea of your platform or audience as an author. I'd also include an overall page views, too.
      Blessings,
      E

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  4. As always, thanks for sharing your savvy-ness with us! Praying sweet blessings for you!

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  5. Kristi, thanks so much for stopping by. I miss you and pray you're having a great week! Blessings, E

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  6. Thanks, Edie, I'll definitely be back Thursday! On Blogger, I don't see where you can find the Unique Hits number. And it's really annoying...I have to click "Don't track my pageviews" every time I open my blog on my computer at work (during my break, of course, lol), but I think it counts my views anyway (every time I reply to a comment). I think this is skewing my results, so I really have no honest clue how many visits I get. I've looked into Google Analytics but can't figure out how to hook it up to my blog.

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    Replies
    1. Lindsay, I'll be giving you step-by-step instructions on how to add Google Analytics to your Blogger site. I ran into the same problem. Thanks for stopping by! Blessings, E

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  7. Fantastic Post, Edie! You always have such helpful information. Can't wait to hear your follow-up blog tomorrow.

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    1. Thanks Michelle, I hope you find Friday's post helpful, too. Blessings, E

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  8. Thanks for the info, Edie. Figuring out stats is frustrating.

    There are a lot of things I like about Wordpress.com, but it's not compatible with Google Analytics and doesn't track unique visitors. If you know ways around this, would love to hear them.

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    1. Marney, I'll be giving those with a Wordpress site some options that I think work pretty well. Just like plugging Google Analytics into a Blogger site, I'll be giving the same instructions for Wordpress. Thanks for stopping by! Blessings, E

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  9. Thanks for another informative article. Being unfamiliar with stats, I checked mine on blogspot and found the graph. Are the unique hits and returning visitor stats there too?

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    1. Blogger doesn't offer unique hits, although you can adjust the settings where your page views aren't counted. I'll give you some options for generating these stats on Thursday. Thanks for stopping by! Blessings, E

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  10. Edie,
    You are an answer to prayer. I have been praying that the Lord would clairfy what my goals for my blog should be in this season of my life. Looking at your list of three options, I immediately saw what my goal is not...and what it is. I'm not looking to write or sell a book..but I do love to blog to connect with likeminded people and share information.
    Thanks so much for using your gifts and skills to help newbies like me! (: God bless you!!

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  11. Glenda, I'm so glad I was able to help. You do a great job of connecting with people. I know many will be blessed through you!

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