Measuring the Success of Your Blog
Blog writing can be extremely rewarding for your company – among many benefits, blogs can help share valuable resources, build your brand and thought leadership, improve SEO. In fact, an estimated 8.28 million blog posts are published online every single day.
But reaching success with blog and article writing can take effort and you likely won’t be reaping all the rewards overnight. It’s important to have ways to track and measure your progress and understand what topics are trending and relevant to your target audience.
Keep reading to learn how you can maximize your blog’s performance by understanding it’s metrics and performance.
And if you’re interested in how to improve your blog posts to get more hits, we’ll have a post on that soon.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Let’s start off by discussing the KPIs that you should be keeping an eye on.
Knowing where your strengths and weaknesses lay can help you effectively strategize for growth.
- Site Visits and Views
This KPI counts the number of visitors coming to your website. It’s a simple measurement that can tell you a lot a few things to consider:
- Unique vs. Returning – This number tells you if your blog is retaining visitors – unique visits are first-time visitors, where
- Visits Over Time – Does your blog or certain posts thrive only during specific times of the year?
- Blog Post – Take note of which pages attract more visitors – this can help you get an idea of what types of posts are in high demand
- Homepage – Tracking how many hits your homepage is getting will help you understand how visitors are accessing your site
- Length of Stay – Are visitors staying and reading your posts, or are they clicking away after a few seconds?
- Web Traffic Source
This KPI measures where your visitors are coming from.
- Organic – Visitors directed to your webpage from a search engine
- Direct Traffic – Visitors who enter your web address directly into their browser, or have your page bookmarked
- Referral – Visitors directed to your site from links on another site
- Social Media – Visitors directed to your site from social media, whether from your profile, posts, or advertising
- Paid Advertising – Visitors from paid ads on websites
- Engagement
Take notice of how many viewers engage with your content beyond visiting the site – how often are you getting subscribers or sign-ups from your content?
Offering call-to-actions (CTAs) in a sentence or short paragraph at the end of your blog post can encourage viewers to take the extra step.
Other forms of engagement like activating your viewers by allowing them to like, comment, or share a post on your blog can help engage in conversation, form a community, and build upon the information that’s already there. It also helps you get feedback on your content.
Using Blog Analytic Tools
Now that you have a grasp on what KPIs to look for, it’s time to start measuring them and get a better understanding of your ROI.
Many blogging and website hosting platforms will have a built-in feature for metrics. But, if these aren’t powerful enough, many third-party options are available.
The go-to for many marketers and bloggers, Google Analytics is both packed full of features and functions. This popular choice means there are also lots of educational resources available. It’s easy to set up, use, and completely free.
Similar to Google Analytics, Matomo offers comparable powerful tools, but with the added bonus of being hosted on your own server. Unlike Google Analytics, Matomo requires the download of the application onto your computer and can be a little harder to get a grasp of at first.
Semrush is optimized for marketers to keep an eye on not only their site, but also competitors. Unlike Google Analytics and Matomo, Semrush charges a monthly fee.
In Conclusion
Whatever type of content your blog is putting out, it’s important to treat it like any other marketing channel. That is, with a clear purpose and with a clear set of goals and KPIs. Before launching your blog, write down why are you starting the blog to begin with, and what you hope to achieve through the blog. Then, identify what elements would help you confirm whether your goals are being met, and make sure to schedule check ins with your team, or even to do on your own. If your budget permits, take advantage of the many tools available to help track your blog’s success and help improve its SEO rankings. Remember, even with little to no budget, with compelling content, a clear strategy and taking advantage of the free tools available to you, your blog can have a big impact on your business.
Check in with professionals like DUO Strategy and Design to help get you set up – we can assist with any and all aspects of your blog, from set up, to production to management. Connect with us to learn more.
