Understanding Metrics Series (6 of 6) - Blog

In the final part of our 6-part blog series, we’ll examine the top five metrics you should be looking at in regards to your company’s blog, and provide you with multiple ways that you can improve your results.

Blog Metrics

(1) Overall Blog Traffic: Your overall blog traffic, like the name sounds, measures the number of visits your blog gets over a specific period of time. This gives you a general overview of how successful your blog is as a whole.

How to improve your overall blog traffic:

• Promote your blog: Not all companies blog. If people don’t know you have a blog, they’re not going to be reading what you have. Run a couple of marketing campaigns to let people know that you have a blog that will provide them with valuable information that is relevant to their interests. Use social media and email blasts, which can be in the form of an eNewsletter.
• Change up your website: The reason people aren’t looking at your blog may be because they can’t find it on your website. Make it more accessible on your menu, and consider creating a promotional image that links to your blog page and putting it in a sidebar.
• Cover better topics: If visitors to your website’s blog see that you aren’t writing about topics that they are interested in, they probably won’t return to your blog. Focus on creating content that is tailored to your target audience. Take the time to subscribe to industry publications and follow their social media to keep your finger on the pulse of what's topical and of interest to your audience. Remember: you don't have to do it all and it may be more practical to hire someone to produce content for you.

(2) Traffic Source Breakdown: Traffic sources look at how your blog readers arrived to your blog. Did they come from social media? Did they find your article through a Google search of the topic covered? This metric attributes a percentage of your blog traffic to a particular source. The sources may vary depending on the tool you are using to measure this.

How to improve your traffic source breakdown:

• Shift your blog marketing focus: Increase your marketing efforts in the desired area you’re looking to improve in. Here are some ways to increase the most common traffic sources:
  • Increase Organic Search Traffic: Work on improving your SEO, use better keywords
  • Increase Social Media Traffic: Share your blogs on social media, caption your blog-related posts with a call-to-action
  • Increase Direct Traffic: Use shortened URLs on print marketing that link to a blog article
  • Increase Email Traffic: Encourage more people to subscribe to your blog, create a separate marketing group to target people who would be interested in a particular blog topic
  • Increase Paid Traffic: Run more paid campaigns online through Google or through social media 

(3) Time Spent on Page: Looking at the time spent on a page indicates how engaged they are with the content they are looking at. This metric is valuable to blogs in particular because it gives you insight into whether or not people are reading your blog in its entirety, skimming it, or simply leaving the blog almost immediately after the page loads. Keep in mind the time spent on a page should be longer for longer articles.

How to improve the time spent on page:

• Shorten your blogs: People may be leaving your blog early because there is too much text. Try shortening your content so it’s no longer as overwhelming. Keep an eye on things so you can find the ideal length.
• Make your blogs more reader-friendly: When applicable, list things instead of explaining in a long paragraph. Incorporate images to make your blog more visually appealing.
• Write interesting content: Make sure the content is of value. If the content provides something of interest, your audience is more likely to stay and finish reading it.

(4) Number of Subscriptions: The number of subscriptions indicates the number of people who are subscribed to receive updates when you post a new blog article. Subscribers can come from your RSS feeds and your email lists. It is important to look at the number of active vs. inactive subscribers when measuring this.

How to improve your number of subscriptions:

• Use calls-to-action: Remind people that they can subscribe to your blog, and of the value they will receive if they do. Use these calls-to-action when promoting your blog and on your blog page itself.
• Organize your blogs: People may not be subscribing because some of the content you write about doesn’t interest them. Organize your blogs by a handful of topics. Then, allow people to subscribe to the topic(s) of their interest.
• Use internal links: Add internal links to other blog content on your site. This shows your audience that you are consistently producing content of value, which is worth following.

(5) Average Views per Post: Like the name sounds, the average views per post measures the number of views your blog posts get, on average, over a specific time period. Because this number is an average, it can be skewed by articles that have many or few views.

How to improve your average views per post:

• Promote your articles: If you promote some (or all) of your blogs, naturally, the average views per post will increase. Just like videos, blogs can be remarketed down the line as many times as you want, as long as the information is still valuable. However, with blogs you have the flexibility to update the content without having to take down the post completely. Social media is a great place to do this, but you can also consider other methods.
• Stop writing about unpopular topics: Take a look at what topics don’t seem to be getting a lot of traction. Once you determine this, stop writing about those topics. They may not be as relevant to your target audience as you believe them to be. If you want to continue writing about the topic, create a category for that topic and exclude these blogs when measuring the average views per post.
• Remarket older blogs: When you post a new blog that has information or relates in some way to an older blog, don’t be concerned about referencing it via internal link to the new blog. Doing so adds to your authenticity as an expert and can help drive traffic throughout your site.

Understanding Metrics

We hope this blog was helpful in helping you improve the success of your own company’s blog. Click here to catch up on all of the previous parts in this blog series, and reach out to us for more assistance.