Welcome to the Mom Blog Money Blog Series! For 30 days we are following the Mom Blog Money Blog Workshop (affiliate link) sharing some tips so that we can work through the steps and grow together. Grab your coffee, have a seat, and join us.
In Day 14 we discussed rewarding your blog readers. It’s now time to get started on week 3 which focuses on turning up the heat. So, today’s post is all about…
Multiplying your traffic using your blog stats!
Let me start this post off by saying, YES, you must check your Google Analytics stats. At least once a month. If you aren’t checking your blog stats you are missing out on valuable information that can help you understand what your readers like and don’t like and what type of changes you should make.
Blog stats you should be checking
Pageviews
Are your monthly pageviews totals continuing to go up? Yes…You’re done here. Move onto the next section of pages per visit.
If your answer was no, then stick around. If your monthly total pageviews are going down you need to figure out why. Is it the holiday season and everyone is on vacation, is Google no longer bringing searches to your site, is something else going on? Do some researching to figure out why people are no longer coming to your site so you can fix it. Immediately.
Pages Per Visit
When people are visiting your site how many pages are they visiting each time? If the number is 3 or above you’re doing well. If it’s less than 3 you want to figure out how to make your readers stick around. Maybe you need more internal links, or a related post plugin, or a better understanding of the anatomy of a blog post.
Check out this post on 3 ways to drive traffic to old blog posts.
Average Time on Page
The Average Visit Duration will tell you how long people are staying on your page. If you have people sticking around for 3 minutes are more that is awesome and definitely something you should brag about on your media kit.
Content Overview
Use your Google Analytics to know what your top 10 posts are. Then you can create new content using the topics and SEO from those posts that both your readers and Google will love. Hmm…this advice sounds like it would fit with the theme of the blog smarter, not harder post.
Traffic Sources
Your blog should be getting 3 different types of traffic: search, referral and direct. Keep an eye on the search traffic to see the top keywords people are using to get to your site and also what search engines they are coming from. With this knowledge you can again learn what keywords you should be targeting and also figure out why some search engines are not sending traffic to you.
What now?
Once you know what’s going on with your blog stats you can get a better idea of where you should focus your time and energy. You will also have a better understanding of what keywords you should focus on and how to be what Google thinks you already are. Keep an eye on your Google Analytics every month and if you do it right you will be on a better path to make money blogging.
There is more information in this Google + Hangout with Holly, Laurie, Jessica and Randi.
How often do you check your Google Analytics stats?
Don’t miss Day 16 which focuses on must use WordPress plugins.
About Jessica Torres
I am just getting up to speed on this series and have learned so much through your posts and the google hangouts!! I’m trying to get used to my analytics, admittedly I haven’t spent any valuable time in the past trying to use the numbers to determine what to blog about in the future. BUT, my top search term is “(not provided)”, any idea why that is, what it means and how I can find out more?
Thank you so much for your insight!!
People can do encrypted searches meaning you can’t see what search terms they use to come to your blog. I have those on both of my blogs. There is nothing (that I know of) that you can do about it. You just have to work with the terms you can see.