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Analytics Research: "The Beginning Guide to Blog Analytics"

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Analytics Research: "The Beginning Guide to Blog Analytics"

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Article:
Collier, Mack. "The Beginning Guide to Blog Analytics." MackCollier, http://www.mackcollier.com/beginner-blog-analytics/

Mack Collier describes the importance of researching various aspects of blog analytics if you desire to write a successful blog.  Collier breaks down blog success into 3 categories: traffic, search traffic, and referral traffic.

Fortunately, Collier's insights and focus on blog traffic helps the reader understand how the timing of posts makes a difference. He reiterates this idea by showing a graph of the low and high points for blog traffic. This graph helps the reader to see that certain days draw more traffic. Collier even expounds on this idea that even posting at the right time of day (he suggests 8:00 am on Mondays) can have more impact.

He reiterates the idea, however, that the most important aspect is understanding how to use keywords, "because it not only gives you better insight into what posts are most popular, but also the search keywords are more about what topics people are interested in" (Collier). Unfortunately, he doesn't give any direction on how to understand key words--merely that it is important, which is a bit irritating. Further research is required to obtain this knowledge.

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Could I make checklists for each post to ensure I'm posting in the right way, at the right time, etc. to pull in the most traffic?

the checklists could include the following:

word choice and titling

Time of day to post

Day of the Week to post

Include a picture/graphic of some kind

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If keywords are so important, How can I determine which words to use? Obviously word choice is important. I wonder if I did a little of my own "market research" and asked people to search on a topic and just record their first search. Then I could compare and look at various word choices among users.

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What goals could I set to develop the right habits?

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What habits do I currently have that reinforce the idea of a good blog?

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Do you want to be a successful blogger?

I do. I might be getting a bit obsessed with it, actually.

Post ideas pop into my head unexpectedly. I keep a long running list of ideas for improving my blog.

I also study how the most successful bloggers got where they are, and I pore over every word that they write.

If you want to be a great blogger, you should, too.

A lot of the top bloggers like Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, and Leo
Babauta have shared hundreds of tips about how they made their blogs so successful. But each blogger's tips are just a little different.

There's too much advice to follow

So I would read one special report with a great idea and put that into place on my blog. But the next day I'd find a podcast from another top blogger with contradictory advice, so I'd change my blog again. Then I'd come across a third idea from an equally successful blogger, which sent me down a totally new path.

Finally I realized I needed to stop focusing on little things like what plug-ins to use, how to write my About Page, or where to position my ads.

I needed to focus on a bigger picture. I wanted to find out what all these top bloggers had in common. Their mindset, their mental habits.

I spent a lot of time observing, which led to this list of the eight success traits shared by all top bloggers I've found. I'm happy to share it with you.

The good news is that even if you don't have all these personality traits already, most of them can be developed over time. Best of all, if you can cultivate these traits, you'll become more effective in the rest of your life as well.

1. Effective bloggers are prolific

The first key to being a successful blogger is to write. A lot.

The more you write, the better your writing gets. The more posts you add to your blog, the more juice you'll get from search engines. And more content means more reader visits to see what's new.

There's no way around it; it takes work to be prolific. Effective bloggers work hard. Putting a successful blog together requires a lot of time in front of your computer, and not surfing LOLCats or Twittering about what you had for lunch. Great bloggers put serious time into researching, writing, editing, and planning posts for their blogs.

2. Effective bloggers are concise

It is a truth universally acknowledged by top bloggers; people come to your blog for a reason. Usually because they want to learn something from you.

No one wants to read fluff or blather, especially online.

Top bloggers know how to quickly get people's attention, how to keep it, and how to make their posts easy to digest.

Most effective bloggers tend toward short posts. They also divide their copy into short paragraphs, and use bullet points or numbered lists to keep the reader scanning. They use compelling subheads so readers can scan for the information they need.

Brevity comes in handy in other areas of life, too. Keep your phone calls short. Pare your email messages down to the essentials. You'll have more time for creative work, and people will be much more interested in what you have to say.

3. Effective bloggers are analytical

Successful bloggers don't work or live in a bubble.

They always look to their readers, observing carefully to see what readers care about and respond to.

They study their statistics, so they know where readers come from - what sites, what search engines, what search terms, and even what countries.

They know when they tend to get the most traffic, what kinds of posts are best suited for their audience, and what kinds of headlines get tweeted most often.

Then they tailor the timing, content, layout, and images of their posts to suit their audience.

4. Effective bloggers are lifelong learners

If you're new to blogging, you're probably on a steep learning curve at the moment.

Maybe you tell yourself that things will get better when you've been doing it longer. There won't be so much to learn. You'll have systems in place soon and everything will run smoothly.

Sadly, I think this is a myth. I've been using and designing for the Internet for about 15 years, and it keeps changing. Just when you've got one element sorted out, something new gets released. Or becomes obsolete. Or mutates in 20 different directions.

If you want to stay ahead in blogging, you have to keep learning.

Fortunately, being curious and wanting to learn keeps you young and your brain active. A love of learning doesn't just set you up for a successful blog, but for a successful and happy life.

5. Effective bloggers are focused and consistent

Successful bloggers choose a topic and stick to it.

They write consistently about their chosen subject, and with a consistent voice and approach. Even when they write about something that seems to be off-topic, they relate it back to the niche they know their readers are interested in.

Top bloggers are also consistent about timing. Most stick to regular posting schedules. Whether they post three posts a day or two posts a week, their readers know what to expect.

6. Effective bloggers plan ahead

Successful bloggers know where they're going. They have a master plan and they stick to it. Yes, they adapt based on feedback, but always in service of a vision.

To paraphrase Seth Godin's recent book Linchpin, "Effective bloggers ship." Top bloggers don't waffle for months about the typeface on their upcoming ebook. They may tailor the angle, price, or format to better suit their market. But they don't let themselves get derailed. They follow the plan.

7. Effective bloggers are persistent

Top bloggers understand that success doesn't happen overnight. Real success rarely happens quickly.

Time is on your side. To get to the top takes consistency, hard work, serious study, and lots of persistence. Successful bloggers don't give up.

8. Effective bloggers are self-starters

I've been self-employed for years.

I've noticed a lot of people like the idea of working from home, working for themselves, being their own boss. But if you want these things, you need to be able to manage yourself.

No one is going to sack you if you're late. No one reminds you of important deadlines or nags you to get your sales numbers up.

If you want to be a successful blogger, you need to be a self-starter. It's not enough to have good ideas. You have to act on them.

What trait do you think is most valuable?

What do you think the most important trait of a top blogger is? It might be one of these eight, or something completely different. Let us know in the comments!

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Trafficke Website Optimization Consulting Firm

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pimsleur or rosetta stone for language learning

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The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers

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Do you want to be a successful blogger? I do. I might be getting a bit obsessed with it, actually. Post ideas pop into my head unexpectedly. I keep a long running list of ideas for improving my blog. I also study how the most successful bloggers got where they are, and I pore over every word that they write.

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It is necessary to consider all of the various facets of blogging: from structure of the website and ease of access to analytics.

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Do you blog? Feel like you're trying to reinvent the wheel time and again?

Looking for some ideas to simplify your content creation process?

What follows are 26 tips, from A-Z, to help you create optimal blog posts every time you sit down to write.

#1: Anatomically Correct

A blog post contains several areas that require our attention and care. Pamela Seiple refers to six parts of the anatomy of a lead-generating blog post:

Eye-catching title

In-text links to landing pages

Sidebar/banner calls to action

Social sharing buttons

Call to action at the bottom

Relevancy-making sure the post is relevant from top to bottom

#2: Blogging Platform

By knowing the ins and outs of your blogging platform, you'll ensure that your posts look as good as they can. Take the time to master the visual editor (or raw HTML, if you prefer) so that you know how to format a post, insert an image and embed a video or podcast.

Whether you're working in platforms such as WordPress, Tumblr or Posterous, it's good to stay up to date on the features and new versions.

If you're not comfortable with the more technical aspects of blogging, try to find someone who can be a resource for you to answer questions as they arise.

#3: Categories

Whether your new blog post is a stand-alone article or part of a series you're writing, it should fit into your blog categories as well as your overall corporate content strategy. Meaning that you want to stay on topic and have your posts fit into the categories you've established.

For example, HubSpot has nine categories on their blog. Posts are written to fit in with each of these categories. Writing about category topics such as analytics, blogging, email marketing, HubSpot TV, etc., allows both readers and writers to stay focused on what they can expect to see on HubSpot's blog.

When you choose your categories, ask yourself, do they make sense, and do they fit into the objectives of my business? Having clearly defined blog categories will help you continue generating meaningful content and topics for your blog.

#4: Description

Most search engines will use a maximum of 160 characters for your post description on their results pages. If you don't create a meta-description (defined as a "...concise summary of your page's content"), a search engine will often take the first 160 characters it finds on your page instead.

Note too, that when you create a meta-description that is fewer than 160 characters, you'll see the full description in the search engine. Otherwise it will be cut off.

#5: Editorial Calendar

Bloggers find editorial calendars helpful for scheduling and organizing topics for posts. Some people use their calendars to track more elaborate details.

Michele Linn suggests using specific tabs in a spreadsheet to track info for each post such as: post date, author, tentative title, keywords, categories, tags, call to action and status. She says "By tracking more than topic and date it will help to make sure the key elements you need for SEO, digital optimization and conversion are accounted for."

Download a sample editorial calendar worksheet.

#6: Fine-Tune and Revise

Like other forms of writing, a blog post is rarely completed in one draft. Many writers find it helpful to take a post through several revisions and fine-tune the post as you go along. Check grammar, spelling and punctuation, and make certain that all of your links are working.

#7: Guidelines for Writing for Search Engines

By following a few tips and best practices, you can increase the chance that your blog post will be found by search engines-by Google in particular.

The State University of New York at Plattsburgh offers these helpful writing tips:

Google likes text

Google likes formatting

Google likes freshness

Google likes accessibility

Google likes outbound hyperlinks

Googlebot isn't psychic, so remember to link your pages

Google likes you to tell it where you are

Google likes experts

#8: Headings

Joost de Valk offers some good suggestions regarding blog headings. He writes, "The heading structure of your pages is one of the very important aspects of on-page SEO. It defines which parts of your content are important, and how they're interconnected. Because they have different goals, a single post needs another heading structure than your blog's homepage or your category archives."

He offers five basic principles about heading structure:

The most important heading on the page should be the H1

There is usually only one H1 on any page

Subheadings should be H2s, sub-subheadings should be H3s, etc.

Each heading should contain valuable keywords; if not, it's a wasted heading

For longer pieces of content, a heading is what helps a reader skip to the parts that he/she finds interesting

#9: Images

Blog posts are made up of more than words and headings.

Judy Dunn recommends five ways the right photo can increase readership and blog views:

Convey the overall feeling or emotion of your post

Illustrate a metaphor or analogy that is part of your main idea

Evoke surprise or curiosity

Complement your headline

Make your reader smile

Judy points out too that readers are visual learners and images can help people take in and retain information better.

#10: Journalistic Approach

Bloggers can learn a lot from traditional journalists and the ways that they approach their news stories.

Mickie Kennedy offers five things that bloggers can learn from journalists:

Get your facts straight

Trust has to be earned

Give credit to your sources

The inverted pyramid works (basic overview in first paragraph and then delve into more details in subsequent paragraphs)

Editing and proofreading are essential

#11: Killer SEO and Blog Design

Cyrus Shepard makes an important case for having a beautiful blog. He says, "...the overall design of your site is the first thing visitors see and it significantly influences bounce rate, page views and conversions."

Cyrus suggests that certain elements on the page will add to a blog's success:

Search box

RSS feed

Breadcrumbs (helping users navigate),

Flat site architecture by minimizing the number of clicks it takes to reach your content

Images

Keep your best content above the fold

Link to your best content

Don't overdo links

Watch ad space

Encourage comments

Add sharing buttons

Test the blog for speed

Check your blog in different browsers

Pick a powerhouse blogging platform (e.g., WordPress, Posterous, Tumblr)

For a resource that will help remind you of these killer SEO suggestions, check out Cyrus' infographic, Blog Design for Killer Search Engine Optimization.

#12: Lists

Lists have become a very popular type of blog post.

Nate Riggs offers three types for bloggers to consider: brief, detailed and hybrid lists.

The brief list has little description but can entice readers to bookmark the post to use the list as a resource down the road or to share it across their own networks.

In a detailed list, each bullet is a complete thought and serves as a good way to communicate complex information.

The hybrid list combines the elements of short and detailed lists, often with descriptive narratives or explanations in paragraphs between the actual lists.

Nate's post has a lot of useful information about lists as a powerful content marketing tactic and is a good example of a hybrid list.

#13: Metrics for Blogging

Magdalena Georgieva identifies five metrics to keep an eye on to know how your blogging is going: visitors, leads, subscribers, inbound links and social media shares.

As Magdalena says, "Measure the performance of your business blog regularly to identify weaknesses in the content you're producing, what topics your audience truly cares about, and what blogging tactics work for you."

When you find topics and approaches that work particularly well, try to replicate those efforts and be willing to let go of features that aren't performing well. Magdalena recommends looking at your five most successful blog posts and asking, "What do they have in common?"

#14: Names, Titles and Bio

Not only are readers interested in the content in your blog post, they also want to know who wrote the post and their role at your organization.

Sometimes you'll come across a thoroughly researched and well-written post only to find an attribution of "admin." Even if the blog is only written by you and you're the administrator of the blog, be sure to include your name, title and a way for readers to contact you.

#15: Original vs. Curated Content

The type of post you write can contain completely original content or can consist of content that you've curated.

Pamela Seiple addresses the issue of curated content and makes an important point when she says, "There's a misconception among marketers that curated content is lazy and unoriginal, but we think it's the complete opposite. It takes time and careful evaluation to create quality curated content and the result is oftentimes a very valuable piece of content that helps people seeking information on a given topic to cut through the clutter on the web and save time."

The 26 tips series here on Social Media Examiner is an example of curated posts, pulling in the expertise of others who have written on the topic. As a curator of this kind of post, I love the journey of the research and find it especially rewarding to see the content pulled together in a way that hadn't been previously available. Curated posts can be incredibly gratifying!

#16: Publish and Promote

Kristi Hines speaks about the publishing and promoting stages of creating a successful blog post. Kristi says that one thing you want to do during the publishing stage is to ensure that your post has some kind of call to action. "Think about what you want people to do once they've read the post...."

Promoting a blog post can involve a fair amount of thought and strategy, as you'll see from Kristi's approach. She has a different plan in place for "averagely awesome posts, awesome posts and killer awesome posts."

What differs for the three types of posts is how many social networks she shares the posts with, whether she includes the post in her writing portfolio and whether it's included in her custom RSS feed or utilizes blog commenting promotion and direct messaging partners in social media to see if they'll help spread the word.

Kristi describes promotion as taking from a few minutes to a few hours, and recommends taking the time to build a good foundation before you expect to execute a successful blog promotion.

#17: Questions

What are you going to write about post after post, week after week, year after year? Sometimes thinking about content for your blog can seem daunting.

Lee Odden offers a great piece of advice: "One particularly effective way to get content ideas for blogging comes from reviewing web analytics for the kinds of questions people type into search engines like Google or Bing that deliver visitors."

In one example, Lee said that he noticed that numerous visitors each month were typing in the question "What does a community manger do?" and search engines were sending them to one of his posts about that topic. He used it as an opportunity to explore other related questions about social community managers and providing content in the form of answers.

What questions are your web visitors asking before they arrive on your pages? How can you maximize your content to answer readers' questions?

#18: Research

Well-researched blog posts can differentiate your content from your competitors'. Being known as a go-to source in your industry will help make your blog stand out. Where do you go to research posts?

I find that utilizing a variety of sources helps me gather the information I'm seeking.

For example, while I can often find a lot of useful content via web-based searches, sometimes there's nothing like a visit to the library or a bookstore where I often will discover a helpful book on the shelf that I wouldn't have known existed if I hadn't been standing there physically eyeballing them.

Oli Gardner makes a good case for using social media research for your blog posts. He suggests ten social media research strategies:

#19: Stand Out

When you've been blogging in a competitive marketplace for a while, chances are good that you'll see other bloggers writing on topics similar to yours. It doesn't mean that you have to stay away from the topic completely; rather you can use it as an opportunity to see what worked and didn't work in their post and write yours in a way that will help you to stand out in the topic area.

By reading the comments on similar blog posts, you will get a great view of what questions and thoughts people had after reading the post and you can take a slightly different angle by making sure you cover those areas in your article.

#20: Title

How important is the title of your blog post? Simply put, very important!

Brian Clark writes that the title is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader.

He says, "Without a headline or post title that turns a browser into a reader, the rest of your words may as well not even exist.

But a headline can do more than simply grab attention. A great headline can also communicate a full message to its intended audience, and it absolutely must lure the reader into your body text."

#21: User-Centered Content

Possibly one of the worst mistakes a blog post can make is missing the mark of its readers, forgetting who they are and their needs and interests.

Georgy Cohen goes as far as to say that content can serve as customer service and that to be helpful, content should be user-focused (asking what our users' problems and priorities are), communicated clearly and presented in succinct language.

#22: Valuable Content

In the perfect blogging world, creating valuable content would be at the top of every blogger's list for their post objectives.

While our definitions about valuable content may vary, Ahava Leibtag has created a very helpful step-by-step checklist that reminds us to ask five questions:

Can the user find the content

Can the user read the content

Can the user understand the content

Will the user want to take action

Will the user share the content

She suggests:

Findable content includes: an H1 tag; at least two H2 tags; metadata including title, descriptors and keywords; links to other related content; alt tags for images.

Readable content includes: an inverted-pyramid writing style, chunking, bullets, numbered lists, following the style guide.

Understandable content includes: an appropriate content type (text, video), indication that you considered the users' persona, context, respect for the users' reading level, articulating an old idea in a new way.

Actionable content includes: a call to action, a place to comment, an invitation to share, links to related content, a direct summary of what to do.

Shareable content includes: something to provoke an emotional response, a reason to share, a request to share, an easy way to share, personalization.

Download the checklist for future reference.

#23: Word Count

How many words should you have in your blog post? Some blogs have s et parameters for optimal length and put a value on whether a post is short or long.

Corey Eridon has an interesting perspective on word count and suggests that focusing on blog word count might not be as important as you think it is. "Some topics take 100 words to explain, some take 1,000, and that's okay."

Corey suggests that writers focus instead on whether posts are optimized for mobile, use effective formatting, communicate in a clear manner and that outlining the points you want to cover may ultimately be a better use of your time and energy.

If you're restricted to shorter posts by the parameters set up in advance for your blog, then you could also follow Corey's advice to link to longer-form content you've developed around the topic.

Bottom line: Don't let the quantity of words dictate the quality of your post.

#24: (E)xcerpt

On the heels of our discussion about blog word count, a shorter blog post can also be an excerpt or summary of what readers will find in your longer-form content -e.g., eBook or white paper-but it needn't be restricted to words.

You can also use an excerpt of the transcript or a brief description to demonstrate what information the users will learn if they watch your video or listen to your podcast.

#25: Your Story

Readers like to get to know how writers tick and often appreciate hearing a few personal details and insights from the person who has taken them on a journey through a post. While business blogs shouldn't be thought of as personal journal entries, you can tell your readers a little bit about how you operate.

For example, I stated above that writing curated posts like the 26 tips series here on Social Media Examiner is one of my favorite types of posts to write. (Truth be told, curated posts are also some of my favorite types to read.)

In the description of "research" above, I also shared how research is one of my favorite parts of blogging and how I enjoy researching both online and offline by doing the footwork of visiting libraries and bookstores in search of materials.

What parts of yourself are you willing and able to share with your readers?

#26: Zone for Writing

Ideas for blog posts come at all times-when you're driving in your car, sitting at your desk, and yes, even in the middle of the night!

Chances are good though that the actual writing of the post will happen in multiple drafts and revisions, and depending on how you work, it may take place over a period of days.

What can be helpful is to create a time and place where you can get into the zone for writing and allow yourself to go with it, with as few interruptions as possible.

What do you think? How do you keep your blog posts consistent and dynamic? What tips would you add? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

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Do you blog? Feel like you're trying to reinvent the wheel time and again? Looking for some ideas to simplify your content creation process? What follows are 26 tips, from A-Z, to help you create optimal blog posts every time you sit down to write.

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Understanding internet traffic is crucial to creating a popular blog

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Analytics is an area that a lot of bloggers don't pay as much attention to as they should. And while I'm definitely not an expert when it comes to super-advanced analytics-tracking, I did want to give y'all a general overview of getting analytics tracking set up on your blog and some of the main metrics you should be looking at.

First, you'll need to add a statistics tracker to your blog. You can get a premium service if you want, but there's plenty of free options that should be just fine for the average blogger. On this blog, I use SiteMeter and Google Analytics to track my blog's statistics. Both of these services require you adding a snippet of HTML code to your blog's template in order to 'register' the information about your blog's visitors. Now at one time, this could be a pain in the ass, especially if you weren't comfortable editing your blog's template coding. Luckily, it's gotten a lot easier now to do this.

For SiteMeter, you'll need to first sign up for a free account, and then SiteMeter will give you the code you need to add to your blog's template. If you are comfortable doing the coding yourself, all you'll need to do is take the HTML code SiteMeter gives you, and put it right before your template's closing </BODY> tag. If you have no earthly idea what I just said, don't worry, you can click this link for a tutorial. Or to make it even easier, you can do what I did, I took the code and created a new text-based widget on my sidebar, and added it there. Simple as can be.

The second way I track my blog's analytics is with Google Analytics. As with SiteMeter, this requires adding a snippet of code to your blog's template. You'll again need to sign up for an account with Google Analytics, and then take the code they provide and add it to your blog's template. I used a plugin to do this for this blog, Yoast's Google Analytics for WordPress Plugin. That link will show you some of the additional functionality you can get from using the plugin. But again, if you are comfortable tweaking your blog's template, you can probably add the GA code manually without much problem.

There are other services you can use, but these are the two I use here. Now in general, I use SiteMeter to track real-time visitor information, and I use Google Analytics to look at trends over time. Even with the new version of Google Analytics and it's Real-Time dashboard, I still get more detailed information from SiteMeter, especially on individual visitors.

Now I wanted to give y'all an overview of first some of the 'basic' metrics you should be looking at, and then I wanted to walk you through some of the metrics that I spend more time looking at.

Traffic. Everyone loves to look at their traffic. But besides being an ego-gush, there's some very valid reasons to pay close attention to your traffic. First, you want to see how it's trending over time. For example, if your traffic was down 33% in January of this year versus January of 2011, it helps to try to figure out why that decrease happened.

Also, looking at your traffic can give you great clues about when you should be publishing new posts. For example, here's what the traffic looks like here over the last 30 days according to SiteMeter:

Note the red Xs. Those are coming on Saturdays. Also notice, those traffic levels are the low points for each week. So that alone tells me that if I want my new posts to get maximum exposure, I probably shouldn't publish them on Saturday! But as with anything else on your blog, you still should TEST this! In my case, I have published posts on Saturday, and the traffic level for those posts was below what similar posts have gotten that were published here during the week. But still, you need to test to verify your assumptions.

And like many of you, I use Twitter as a tool to help promote my blog posts. I also know from watching my traffic closely that during the week, the hourly traffic is very low here each day till around 8am, when it starts to increase through the middle of the day till around 3pm, when it starts to fall again. So when I publish a new blog post, I try to run it at 8am. For example, I am writing this post on Saturday and Sunday, but will publish it at 8am on Monday morning. Then, I will schedule a few tweets to promote it during the day, starting at 9am. I schedule the first tweet for an hour later because typically I will have a couple of comments come in from blog subscribers that see the post as soon as it goes live at 8am.

Then, I will tweet a link out to it at 9am, then again at noon, and finally at 3pm or so. Now I know from tracking the traffic in the past that I will get a bump in traffic from Twitter for each time I share a link to this new post. I also know from watching my traffic patterns in the past that the tweet at noon will likely send more traffic here than the tweets at 9am or 3pm. I assume this is because more people are taking lunch and checking Twitter from their desk at work.

BTW, here's a detailed post on how I used this strategy to increase my traffic here by 300% and email subscribers by 900% in ONE week.

So in general, you should know what your traffic levels are on a monthly, weekly, daily and hourly basis. That way if there's a change good or bad, you should be able to spot it immediately, and then you can investigate to figure out what triggered the change.

Search Traffic. Now along with traffic, I also pay very close attention to Search Traffic. The reason why is simple: If someone uses search to find my blog, they probably do not know who I am, and they probably are trying to solve a business problem. I'll talk about this a bit more below, but by looking at keywords, I can see what people are looking for when they arrive here. For example, I know that a lot of people arrive here by looking for information on the pricing for social media marketing services. That's because since 2010, I've been doing an annual recap of How Much Companies Should Expect to Pay for Social Media. Last year when I realized how much search traffic was being sent to those posts, I went back and added in a link to my Social Media Marketing Rate Sheet. Since doing that, I've gotten several work inquiries that have specifically mentioned a service and price listed on my Rate Sheet, which was buried on here before I added them to those posts. Just last week, a major organization emailed me wanting to inquire about one of my services and referenced seeing it listed on my Rate Sheet.

Now should you care about Search Traffic? Well I think the answer is 'Yes', but also note that I care more because this blog is a tool I use to grow my business. But even if your blog is a personal one, search can help you get found by people that share your interests, which means you can make some new friends, if you aren't interested in attracting new clients. If you want to increase your search traffic, there's two ways that I have found that have worked for me: Post more often, and optimize your posts for search engines. Here's a beginner's guide on how to optimize your posts for search engines.

Referral Traffic. This tells me what sources are sending traffic to my blog. For example, it could be Twitter or Facebook, or a link that someone has put on their blog. It can also help you identify sudden increases in traffic. For example, if you see that within the last 5 minutes you've got as much traffic as you usually get in 5 hours, you can click the referral sources of that traffic, and that will usually tell you where that surge of traffic is coming from. Often, it will be a new link that someone has posted on their blog, or maybe a popular Twitter user just tweeted out a link to one of your posts.

This also really helps you determine where you should be spending your time promoting your blog, on other sites. For example, if you see that Facebook is sending your blog 1% of its traffic, but Plus is sending it 8%, then that's probably a good indicator that your posts are more popular when they are shared on Plus. A good way to test this is to share your new post on different sites at the same time, and tracking the referral traffic. For example, if you write a new post tomorrow, share a link to it on Plus, Facebook, and Twitter at 11am on each site, and then track how much traffic each link sends back to your blog. This is a 'quick n dirty' way to test how engaged your network is on each of these sites.

Pageviews for top posts. This is a great way to tell which posts are most popular on your blog. Here's a list of the Top 10 most popular pages on this blog via Pageviews, over the last month:

Note that the top four pages on this blog all deal with the price of social media services. That tells me that people are hungry for that type of information.

Search Keywords people use to find your blog. This is really important because it not only gives you better insight into what posts are most popular, but also the search keywords are more about what topics people are interested in. Also, remember that a lot of people ask search engines questions. Look at this list of the most popular search keywords here over the last month:

Note that the #6 search term is 'How to Write Your First Blog Post'. I actually wrote a blog post with that exact post title. I've talked about this before, but when you write your post titles, think about how people would find your post if they Googled it. We often Google a question we are looking for the answer to.

Now note that the #1 search term for the last month is 'social media crisis management'. Also, looking at the picture above the one above, we see that the post I wrote on social media crisis management is the 7th most popular here in the last month. That suggests to me that 'social media crisis management' is a topic that I may want to consider blogging about again soon.

Now paying close attention to your stats can also give you clues about the type and even FORM of content your visitors enjoy.

For example, here's a screenshot of the 10 most viewed posts here in the last month from my Direct Traffic, which are usually visitors that came here directly from putting in the URL:

Note the two red circles: The avg time spend on those two posts is 2:13, whereas the other posts are as low as 5 seconds? Why is the avg time spend on those particular two posts so much higher? I think part of the reason why is because both of those posts either have a video or audio file in them. But I can't be sure because the post inbetween them on Social Media Crisis Management also has a video embedded, and yet people are spending over a minute LESS time on it.

But this is a good example of why it pays to pay close attention to your blog's statistics, so that you can better understand how visitors are finding, and interacting with your content. Investing some time now to better understand blog analytics will not only save you time down the road, it will also make you a better blogger! If you have any additional questions about your blog's analytics, please leave a comment and I'll try to help you!

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Analytics is an area that a lot of bloggers don't pay as much attention to as they should. And while I'm definitely not an expert when it comes to super-advanced analytics-tracking, I did want to give y'all a general overview of getting analytics tracking set up on your blog and some of the main metrics you should be looking at.

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Layouts should be well organized and have pictures which help with aesthetics

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HOW TO MAKE YOUR BLOG STAND OUT - blogging tips