Why Bloggers Need to Pay Attention to Web Analytics

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analytics

Truth be known, you don’t have to, if you don’t want to; but if you have tried using web analytics to understand how your blog is performing in terms of readership and audience, you probably have felt the thrill of seeing stats go up! You probably have also experienced the sinking feeling in your stomach when you see that no one reads your blog. We’ve been there. We’ve done that. We may even have a t-shirt from it lying around somewhere.

In all seriousness, though, blogging – just like most any other activity – requires some sort of feedback. That is, if you want to know how you’re doing, and, if you actually have a goal that you want to achieve. And this, my friends, is the main reason bloggers need to pay attention to web analytics. [Read more…]

Blog Design: What You Don’t Know About Your Blog Audience Can Hurt

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blog design timeline iconI had an interesting discussion with a client last week about when and how to implement a new blog design. She wanted to warn her readers that a change was coming, and take a few months to implement the changes step by step.

We talked about the process and created a timeline for the slow unveiling of the site design, a smart decision for those with a large audience, especially when making dramatic changes to the site’s navigation and content handling. Some audiences can handle it, and love design changes, but some can’t. They just don’t respond well to change.

We talked a little more about her readership, covering some basic web analytics such as where her readers come from, how they access the site (through the front page, single pages, tags and categories, or through aggregators, email or feeds), and I stumbled upon some stunning facts that shifted the entire game plan.

While her site gets a steady stream of visitors, several thousand a day, only 10% return. Of those, only three percent return to the blog at least once week. Honestly, that’s about 9 people a week.

This changes everything. [Read more…]

Are Blog Comments a Source of Referral Traffic?

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Here’s a question. If blog comments are mini-resumes, which comments are bringing the most traffic to your blog?

When you leave a comment on a blog, there are three things at work.

  1. Your desire to participate in the blog conversation and topic.
  2. Your desire to increase your link credits through blog comments.
  3. Your desire to encourage traffic from your comment to your blog.

A lot of pro bloggers cover the first two, but I want to explore the last one. If you really want to drive traffic to your blog through comments on other blogs, is it working for you?

Have you been paying attention to your blog referrals and incoming traffic to see where your traffic is coming from in relationship to your blog comments? It’s a very good question because we blog and comment on the premise that blog interaction helps drive traffic.
[Read more…]