In today’s digital world, having a blog as part of your marketing strategy is more important than ever. It is equally important to measure the success of your blog.
It can be tough to determine how to measure blog success. There are so many factors and variables to consider! So how do you measure the success of your blog? Luckily, there are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) you can track to get an idea of how well your blog is doing.
Before we go ahead and dive into those five KPIs, it’s important to understand that not all KPIs are created equal. What matters most are the KPIs most relevant to your business goals. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, then you’ll want to focus on KPIs that track reach and engagement.
Why Is It Important to Track KPIs?
KPIs are important because they help you track progress and determine whether or not your efforts are paying off. Without KPIs, it would be challenging to track your blog’s progress and make necessary adjustments along the way.
SEO takes time to deliver results, so it’s important to be patient. However, by setting and tracking KPIs, you can get a better idea of your SEO strategy’s impact on your business. This can help you manage expectations with other stakeholders and ensure that everyone is on the same page.
Today, we’re going to discuss five essential KPIs you need to track to measure your blog’s success.
Five KPIs You Need to Track to Get Real Insights
Let’s take a look at five KPIs you need to track to measure your blog’s success effectively. These are the same insights that we use to help our clients measure their blog success.
1. Traffic
The first and most obvious KPI you need to track is traffic. This metric will give you an idea of how many people are visiting your blog.
There are a few different ways to track traffic, but the most popular method is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free tool that you can use to track traffic to your website. Simply create a free account and add the tracking code to your website. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to see how much traffic your website is receiving.
But tracking just the number of visitors to your blog isn’t enough. You also need to track how those visitors are finding your website. This information can be found in the “Acquisition” section of Google Analytics.
There are four main ways that visitors can find your website:
- Direct traffic: Visitors who type your website URL directly into their browser.
- Referral traffic: Visitors who find your website through links from other websites.
- Organic traffic: Visitors who find your website through search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
- Social traffic: Visitors find your website through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Each traffic source is important, but you may want to focus on one or two in particular. You also need to understand the traffic that each of these sources is generating.
For example, if you’re trying to increase brand awareness, then you’ll want to focus on traffic sources that generate a lot of impressions, such as organic traffic or social traffic. On the other hand, if you’re trying to increase conversions, then you’ll want to focus on traffic sources that generate high-quality leads, such as direct traffic or referral traffic.
Here are a few suggestions for how you can use traffic to get real insights into your audience and how they interact with your blog:
Traffic Stemming From Particular Groups
Traffic stemming from particular groups can give insights into how well your content resonates with those groups.
For example, if you create content for a specific target audience, such as small business owners, you can track how much traffic that content generates from that group.
This information can help you understand how well your content performs with your target audience. It can also help you adjust your content strategy to better align with the needs and interests of your target audience.
Traffic Sources
The traffic sources that generate the most traffic to your blog can give insights into how people find your content.
For example, if you see that a lot of people are finding your blog through social media, then you know that social media is an important channel for promoting your content. On the other hand, if you see that people are finding your blog through search engines, then you know that optimizing your content for search engines is a priority.
You can also use this information to adjust your content strategy. For example, suppose you want to increase the amount of traffic from social media. In that case, you can focus on creating more shareable content or promoting your content more on social media. Conversely, if you want to increase traffic from search engines, you can focus on optimizing your content for specific keywords.
Traffic Growth
Tracking the growth of your traffic over time can give you insights into how well your blog is doing. If you see a steady increase in traffic, then that means your blog is growing.
Blogging is time-consuming, so it’s important to see that your efforts are paying off. Measuring traffic growth can also help you identify which content strategies are working and which ones aren’t.
For example, if you see a sudden decrease in traffic, that could indicate that something is wrong with your content strategy. Maybe you’re not creating enough new content, or maybe your content isn’t resonating with your audience.
2. Engagement
Engagement is another important metric to track. Any traffic, if it is all bouncing, is essentially useless. You want users who stick around and interact with your blog. Engagement comes in many forms, some of which are obvious and some are not.
You can consider these elements to measure your blog engagement:
Blog Comments: This is an obvious one. If people are taking the time to leave comments on your blog, then that means they’re engaged with your content. You can encourage comments by asking questions at the end of your blog posts or by using a plugin that allows readers to rate your content.
Social Shares: Social shares are another good indicator of engagement. If people share your content on social media, they’re interested in what you have to say.
Time on site: This metric measures how long visitors stay on your website. The longer they stay, the more engaged they are.
Bounce rate: This metric measures how many visitors leave your website after only viewing one page. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors are not finding what they’re looking for on your website.
Lead Generation Rates: If you have a lead generation form on your blog, you can track how many people are filling it out. This metric can be a good indicator of how interested people are in your product or service.
3. Links
Tracking links can give you insights into how popular your blog is and how much authority it has. The number of links to your blog is a good indication of how popular your blog is. The more links you have, the more popular your blog is.
However, the quality of the links is also important. A link from a high-quality website is worth more than a link from a low-quality website.
Perform A Link Audit
Link-audit your blog to get insights into the quality of your links. This will allow you to categorize your links by source and quality. Since all links are not created equal, checking for links from high-quality websites is important.
You can use a tool like Moz to track your links. This will give you insights into the number of links, the quality of the links, and where the links are coming from.
4. Conversions or Sales
Conversions are the most important metric for any blog. A conversion is when a visitor takes a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter or buying a product.
If you’re not tracking conversions, you don’t really measure your blog’s success. There are a number of ways to track conversions, and the best way will depend on what you’re selling.
If you’re an ecommerce website, tracking sales is the best way to measure conversions. If you’re a service-based business, then tracking leads is the best way to measure conversions.
You can track conversions using Google Analytics. This will give you insights into how many people are converting and where they’re coming from.
5. Quality of Your Blog
The quality of your blog is an important metric to track, but it’s not always easy to measure. Some factors contribute to the quality of your blogs, such as the design, the content, and the user experience.
One way to measure the quality of your blog is to track how many people are subscribing to your RSS feed. This indicates that they’re interested in your content and want to see more of it. You can also track how often your content is shared on social media. This indicates that people find your content valuable and want to share it with their followers.
You can control the quality of your blog by ensuring that your content is well-written and informative. You should also pay attention to your blog’s design and ensure it’s easy to navigate. While writing great content and having a well-designed blog is important, the quality of your blog also depends on how often you’re publishing new content. If you’re only publishing a new blog post once a month, people will likely forget about your blog.
Measuring these KPIs will give you insights into your blog’s popularity, how well it’s designed, and how often people find your content valuable. By tracking these metrics, you can make changes to improve the quality of your blog and ensure that it’s successful.