Get the most of out your Google Analytics

Everyone loves more traffic, no doubt about that. I’m a firm believer that in order to be successful in something we must first understand our current status, position and condition. That’s why I really suggest before any of us intend to build some traffics for our blog, try spending few minutes (probably an hour or two) understanding your current blog crowd. See how Google Analytics comes in handy.

Where do readers come from?

Marketing Optimization -> Visitor Segment Performance -> Referring Source

Referring Sources are the main contributers to your traffics. Determine few of the big referrals and learn how to gain constantly increasing traffics from them.

Are your readers increasing?

Check from each source, compare them over time to see if they are increasing. If they are dropping over time, ask why. Traffics from mainstream news sites like Digg.com, Slashdot.org, etc are eventually decreasing. This is normal; traffic from mainstream sites are usually waves. The readers rushed in for particular content and that’s about it.

What’s the favorite contents of all time?

Content Optimization -> Top Content

Content Optimization -> Content by Title

Know what are the hottest contents in your blog. These are likely the entries that contribute the most to your traffic. Identify them and try witting similar entries often.

How long readers stay on my blog?

Content Optimization -> Length of visit

Most readers I’ve noticed do not stay too long within a particular blog (unless they are your fans). 8-15 minutes the most. Readers are usually blog-hoping. There are other blogs to read. They dislike long whining content. Therefore put more thoughts in how to simplify the contents. I use images to ease the reading of contents.

Where readers usually start quiting?

Content Optimization -> Navigational Analysis -> Top Exits Points

Exit point is where readers likely to start quiting your blog; to continue with other tasks, or jump to another blog or so. Stop them, make them stay a little while longer. Here’s few ways I could think of from sketch

• Use Related Content to convince readers they are more content similar to what they’ve been reading
• Show Popular Content of the particular category or archive
• Allow Comments for all post
• Reply to comments. They will come back and see if their comment have a feedback.
• Implement Next Post & Previous Post

Of course these are not the only thing Google Analytics can do, but these basic analysis should give you a good jump start on how to increase your blog traffic. If you have some secret ingredient of yourself, please care to share with the rest :)

[Contributed by Hongkiat]