How to track blog traffic in google analytics

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How to track blog traffic in google analytics is written by Ashutosh works as a Product Manager at Refrens.com

Are you a passionate writer?

Does writing and sharing quality content with the audience make you happy?

Seeing the responses of the audience on social media or feedback on posts from the readers proves that every drop of sweat is worth it.  If you have taken the area of your forte as a full-time job, performance measurement through data becomes a critical part. Whether it is growing your audience or decision making, understanding the numbers and statistics is vital for future growth, enhancement and improvement.

Examination of data analysis can help you know the working of your blog and the ways through which you can monetize it. Analytics can be used to find out about the number of views on your blog, where the readers are coming from, what kind of content is doing well, how many people are revisiting the blog, etc.

So lets find out how to track blog traffic in google analytics:

RELEVANT POST: Free Courses for Bloggers: Starting a blog, Pinterest traffic and more!

With the rapid growth in the blogging industry, there is fierce competition around. In such a scenario, knowing and understanding analytics can prove to be a major advantage. With the other number of benefits that it brings along, it can give you an edge over the others.

Are you thinking that grade 10 was the last time I did math and that statistics and numbers are a nightmare? Don’t worry, we got you covered! Read the article below to sail through the valley and reach the mountaintop.

How to track blog traffic in google analytics: Overview

• What is analytics?
• Why analytics?
• What should be measured?
• How to use google analytics
• Analytics Tools

What is Analytics?

It is the assessment and evaluation of data that can result in transforming viewer’s behaviour into actionable business decisions. The pool of information guides you through your blog and audience. It involves drawing conclusions from datasets to uncover patterns that fuel your business strategies.

Why Analytics?

Analytics for bloggers is super important. If you are a website owner, especially a blogger, understanding analytics is extremely important for you. Use analytics tools to grow your blog. You can see what’s working and what’s not so that you can maximize the favourable parts to generate more money. Fix the areas that are not working to create a well-furnished website that the audiences love to visit and bring you more success.

The analytics tools will present you with metrics that will help you in creating better content, identifying what types of posts are liked most, and understanding visitors’ activity on the blog ranging from the number of visits to the active number of hours etc.

Data analytics is behind the scenes of your business performance. A solid foundation created through precise data can lead the business to make more profitable, actionable and scalable strategies. It also aids in boosting business performance and gives clarity on what to focus on for the future.

What should be measured?

Now that you have understood what analytics is and its importance, it’s time to know the major contents that need to be measured for perfect analysis. Various analytics tools provide a variety of features that you can use to measure the further mentioned points.

• Measure how much traffic (visits) you are receiving on a periodic basis, whether weekly or month to month. Even the smallest details like on what particular day of the week or what particular time of the day (evening or afternoon) do you receive highest readers on your blog can prove to be important data.

• Check the traffic you are receiving, either directly or through the different channels. This gives insights into the total number of blog visits per referral channel, e.g. social media, email, web page landing, etc. This helps in understanding how your readers found you.

• Check your ranking on search engines, you can know where to put in more efforts for promotion. Also, keep a track of the search terms people are using to reach your blog.

• Traffic through medium can also be tapped; this is knowing from which device are your readers accessing the blog most, e.g. tablet, phones, laptops, etc. helps in knowing how they are browsing your blog.

• To get a good idea of who is visiting your page, check where your readers are coming from. The different cultures present in different countries may affect how your readers are interacting with your blog or reacting to your content. It also helps in target analysis of to what extent is your website actually attracting the kind of people you want to read your blog. You can publish more localized content too.

• Measure the percentage of people who visit your blog but do not interact with your blog. If this is high, try more techniques to engage your readers. Make your blog more user friendly and interactive.

• Note the number of people who come back to read your blog. This helps to know how many people are genuinely interested in reading your content.

• Know which pages are your readers visiting, which pages your visitors are sent to first and which pages your readers leave from. This might help you in figuring out the reason through which your readers are landing on your page.

• Measure the time readers are spending on each article or at what point are they leaving it. This helps in understanding people’s behaviour. The higher time they spend on one article depicts what information they are interested in more. And the least amount of time or visits on an article shows that the readers are not attracted to that kind of content and hence should avoid it.

• If you have a newsletter, know how many people viewed that subscription form, yet did not fill it. How many people actually subscribe to it. This shows customer loyalty and the number of people who would like to view your content again and establish a relationship for the long-term.

• Know who is linking to you. This means how many people are mentioning you further or sharing your posts ahead or acknowledging your content on any social media platform. This helps to grow your audience base.

We have covered the major critical points. Obviously you could explore more and make the maximum efficient usage of the analytics for your blog.

How to use google analytics

I have created a mini eBook called The Google Analytics cheat sheet which goes through how to use google analytics to your advantage. It included mini activites that you can go through.

You can sign up to my email list to get the eBook for free! I also offer my email list access to my freebie bank, discounts and my income reports all exclusive to my subscribers.

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What we will be covering:

• What is Google Analytics?
• Things you want to know as a blogger
• Steps to take on Google Analytics to find out these things (Activities)
• What to do when you have found the data

Analytics Tools

With owning a digital platform, and the presence of numerous marketing options available, you are often in a confusion of where to focus on. Tons of data is being generated online and there are multiple collection methods around. The data collected is incredibly valuable to your business. Therefore, to develop your business and to know the technical insights through the present data requires you to effectively know and learn the analytics tools.

1. Google Analytics

It is your one-stop destination for everything related to data analytics that you need. It’s free of cost and easy to use. This tool by Google is constantly being updated and refined to provide its best version. It has an easy to use interface, guides to help you, is flexible and a powerful tool. To start with you can also take their Google Analytics course. They have a customization feature to help you achieve any specific goal you have in mind.

2. Google Search Console

This tool helps in making your website shine in Google search results. It’s free of cost. You can check the indexing status and optimize visibility of your website. The biggest benefit of using this tool is that it enables you to see what is happening behind the scene, i.e. what Google engines pictures when your blog name is entered. Along with this, a blog performance report and recommendations for higher ranking and enriching your content are provided.

3. Leadfeeder

A tool to track your customer’s journey. ROI is a vital performance measurement tool. Along with traffic generation it is also important to analyze the behaviour of the viewers, mainly what they are interested in. This tool is free, but provides a premium version too at a price. It works in collaboration with Google Analytics, where they help you identify real companies who are visiting your blog and the kind of content they are consuming. This helps you directly face the companies who would have otherwise gone unnoticed. It also leads to increasing your blog’s conversion rate.

Information is a valuable commodity. When you make optimum usage of a wide range of capabilities of the tools mentioned, no one can stop you from making data driven, astounding decisions for your business. Correct usage of analytics could help you in planning for further content to be published. You can think of what other posts will engage more readers.  Remember data has become a new resource for the businesses in this century.

Thank you for reading about how to track google analytics for bloggers, I hope you have learnt something!

Author Bio

Ashutosh works as a Product Manager at Refrens.com – India’s most powerful platform for freelancer’s finances and growth. He has helped some renowned technology companies with their product.

In this blog, Ashutosh shares the basics about Analytics, its importance and how to use it. You can follow Refrens.com on Twitter, LinkedIn.