Website trends.
Blog analytics.
Traffic patterns.
Popular Keywords searches.
Popular tags or articles.
Where are my visitors clicking?
Is our banner and advertisement getting feedbacks?
Which audience do we wish to engage?
If you are curious about all the above, Google Analytics will help.
Where do we start?
Google Analytics can be bulky and technical (navigating the menu and the terminologies etc) for normal bloggers like you and me, but if we drill down a bit, we can identify some useful information.
1) We are familiar with the audience stuffs, where are the visitors coming from, the popular keywords etc etc.
2) It is difficult to forget a blog name like SengkangBabies.com, and this is why our No1 and No2 keyword searches are “SengkangBabies” and “Sengkang Babies” π
3) Try In-Page analytics, it can highlight where visitors are clicking (in %)
The higher number of clicks, means more visitors are interested in that event or article.
From the image below, we know the popular pages are “About Sengkang Babies(5.6%)“, and “Holidays(9%)“.
4a) If you know your visitors’ preference, check out how to further engage them.
Our blog is popular for holidays, that explains why we are placing our Holiday-trips (HongKong, Taiwan, Malaysia) on the left column.
Our popular posts are all related to family friendly Fun itineraries, so we should cater more holidays-related topics for families.
I am happy to see 8.9% click for our older blog entries. It means visitors wish to read more about our adventures.
4b) (Example) If you know visitors are flooding your Food reviews, and if are targeting F&B industry, this analytics can be your blog’s selling point when you engage advertisers or marketers.
Engage our blog readers.
If they like our vision and writing style, they will help to advertise or reference our blog. Word of mouth recommendations are much sought after π
People are always curious to find out more about your blog, purpose, and vision.
I would like to know more about other bloggers’ style and motivation too.
5) Remember to introduce your blog and encourage audience to comment, email, and follow you on your social media platforms.
6) Along the analytics learning process, we will understand a bit of how Social-Media marketers work. It helps if you wish to reach out to more audience, monetise or generate more hits on your blog.
We can then try to accommodate PR’s requirements and constraints.
End of the day, the PR marketers has a budget, and they want to create an impact. If they need influencers, they will likely target blogs with higher ranking.
Superficial but true, but most PR will let bloggers’ passion, content, and style (but with lower statistics) take a back seat. Most will not even bother to cultivate a relationship.
(Disclaimer, clicks does not translate to sales)
~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Lastly, do not dwell too much on analytics, it is very broad and time consuming to digest. Although ranking, visitors and visibility are important, I still believe good content is crucial, as we need credibility and quality to enhance our blog’s profile.
Stay true to our passion and always remember why we start our blog in the first place.
Read up more on SEO :
– www.google.com.sg/analytics
– http://www.mybloggertricks.com
– Google “tips about google analytics” and you will get 100 pages of tips !
Thanks for sharing on Google Analytics! I had little idea on those data, now I have learnt something new today!
Like your last sentence – stay true to our passion!
Waiwai recently posted…O Christmas Tree Tutorial
hi Waiwai, have Fun researching and exploring π
Do not go too deep :p
The other most important feature I use is URL tagging, which has been really invaluable in telling me where my traffic is coming from and what content they are most interested in. Especially in this day and age of Facebook’s walled garden.
ndru1 recently posted…Where Do Army Songs Come From?
hi Andrew, can share more? Seems like you need customisation to run the query.
Google now hides majority of the “search terms” π
Thanks in advance.
One of the things I am most interested in is traffic sources, which you can see at a glance form Acquisition/All Traffic.
Unfortunately, you will find that the vast majority comes from either Facebook.com (which means the link is shared off Facebook) or (direct) / (none) which means Analytics doesn’t know, but usually indicates that they come from links shared over email. This is not very helpful in itself.
By tagging your URLs, you are able to at least detect which channel brought in the most users. For example, you can share the same URL over Facebook, Twitter, and in various community sites, all with different taggings.
Here’s an article with more details:
http://www.lizlockard.com/analytics-direct-traffic/
ndru1 recently posted…The Best of Amazon’s Free International Shipping (Parent’s Edition)
Thanks for the tips Andrew π
About the “search terms”, forgot to reply earlier.
It is not that Google hides them. But if the surfer is logged into Google, there is a different way of passing the search terms which means Analytics cannot pick it up. And because most people these days use Gmail or some other service, this means we don’t see the search terms for most of them.
ndru1 recently posted…All I Want For Christmas Is Ant Poison
Great tips! Thanks man! π
Kelvin Ang recently posted…Sensational Christmas Fun at AMK Hub
Bro, most welcome, but you must Press Nuffnang to customise a portfolio for you hee hee :p
They got the money and know-hows.
I hardly use Google Analytics unless the PR firms request for stats.. thanks for the tips π
Ai Sakura recently posted…StickerKid | Personalised Labels & Stickers {International Giveaway + Promo Code}
You are welcome, Ai.
Analytics offers another dimension for us to understand whether our own “outreach” initiatives are working π