How To Effectively Analyze Your Blog’s Traffic

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Note from the red head: Be sure to check out my guest post on ProBlogger about Gchat!

Whether you’re using Google Analytics, Wordpress.com Stats or whatever other stat options are available, most bloggers are keeping track of how many hits their blog gets as well as who goes where.  But I would say that many of these same bloggers are not fully aware of the power that these tools have to offer.  How many hits your blog gets in a given day is not nearly as important as where those hits come from, where they go when they hit your blog and how long they stay.  Learn to properly analyze this traffic and you will be able to fully maximize your future flow.

The FROM Traffic

When a visitor lands on your blog they have to come from somewhere.  It could be from Google, Stumbleupon, another blog, direct and so on.  But as we all know, not all sources are equal in value.  The more we blog, the less excited we become when Stumbleupon sends a few hundred visitors our way.  As quickly as they come, many will click away to their next 60 second destination.  But a few hundred visits from a like-minded blog that linked to your post…now THAT’S something to cheer about.  Already having the trust of the pointing blogger, these visitors are looking to your content with positive expectations.  They will most likely stay longer, click on more links and possibly even subscribe.

Now what about search traffic? These hits can go either way.  Some just happen to fall upon a random post that may have had some keywords that triggered their search hit.  This will often result in a quick bounce to another site.  But many other search hits will be those who are looking for something that you offer.  I receive multiple search hits a day for my Motivate Thyself post, “What Career Is Right For Me“.  Targeted for those looking for answers to this question, I have a lot of web surfers who find this post and many who click the links inside.  To me, this can be some of the best traffic.

The TO Traffic

So where are these hits landing when they enter through the gates of your blog?  Most are probably hitting a particular post and leaving after they read it (assuming they get that far).  It’s important that you have some idea of what posts are getting hits and which ones are not.  Even more importantly, why are they getting the hits and what kind of traffic are they attracting?  If you’re not asking yourself these questions, well…you should be.

The Clicks

No, not the ones that drove you crazy in high school, but those links that your traffic is initiating.  One of the most important pieces of information, this will show you how effective your theme’s layout is and how enticing you’ve made you’re links.  Also, you can get a pretty good idea of how many NEW visitors you’re receiving by where they’re clicking.  If you get a high number of clicks on your ‘About’ page, then you can guess with a high amount of accuracy that those people are new to your blog.  Same with things like ebooks.  I have an ebook image on my sidebar at Motivate Thyself (you can’t miss it) and I know that mostly new visitors will click on it.  As we all know, after a few visits, things that stay the same become invisible to the reader.

Now What?

OK, so now you have all this information you’re trying to pull from your blog’s statistics; what next?  Well, it’s up to you to determine what’s working well and what’s NOT.  You may realize that some kinds of content are receiving zero hits, while others might be drawing traffic, but have a high bounce rate (the rate at which the visitor leaves your blog without perusing any other pages).  So it’s not only important to see what content is bringing in the traffic, but which pieces are turning those visitors into repeat customers.

Next, you want to figure out exactly WHAT made this magnetic content so attractive.  Was it just a fluke that landed on Stumbleupon and gave a brief burst of hits?  Was it the quality of your writing and the information provided that kept them coming back?  Or was it just having the right post at the right time?  These are the kinds of questions we need to ask ourselves, matched with the information given us by our stats, so that we can effectively adjust our blogs for greatest possible growth.  Otherwise, we’re just flying blind.

Eric

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