IX. Google Analytics
Blog Name: Rich, Born and Became
Last Blog Date: Dec 31, 2011
Date of Testing: 1/12/2012 | Range: Dec 13, 2011 – Jan 11, 2012
# of Followers: 0 | # of Subscriptions: 12 via Feedburner
# of posts: 5 | # of pages: 4 | total # of comments: 0
Total of page views of all time (or in-range): 138
Type of content: Advice and tips in text and images.
Main Features:
- As I document my journey of spiritual growth, physical and mental health, I give recommendations on how to be Rich without money.
Past Social Marketing Plan:
- Post to popular social networks equally or cross-posting
- Non-frequent scheduled posting
- Email subscriptions
- Viewable on mobile devices
- Google AdSense
Improvements using Google Analytics
Figure 1
Figure 2
Section 1: Audience Panel
Currently, only new visitors or unique visitors visit my site. This tells me two things:
- My Content isn’t very value-based to have returning visits
- My blog is only as good as the several posts that keep attention
I would then look at my subscriptions total. There are 12, but subscribers have unsubscribed on and off for the past two weeks (looking at my Feedburner account that gives me detailed stats on RSS Feed and Email Subscriptions). This also tells me that my posts are good enough to grab, but I need more posts to keep them coming back.
The solution would be to introduce Featurettes and produce more content in volume.
Section 2: Traffic sources
Figure 3
The most traffic my blog is getting is through direct traffic at 53.85%. Direct traffic means that visitors are typing in the URL of the site, using a bookmark, or embedded within emails, newsletters, signatures, etc.
The second highest traffic to my blog is referrals at 30.77%. These sources include my web presence.
Solutions:
- I would want all traffic to be somewhat equal say 25% per source for 4 sources.
- I need to increase my search traffic by SEO, email marketing campaigns and viral marketing.
- I need to decrease my direct traffic by letting my site become known on multiple social networks and easy to find websites.
Section 3: Content
Figure 4
You can really learn about a culture and its people by the things they search for. Surprisingly the posts coming in second to the most page views were about the holidays and giving positive advice and mental health wellbeing. In the time when people should be celebrating and having fun, people are searching for hope and advice to better themselves.
The average time on page is impressive at 2:33 minutes considering I only have 5 posts. My bounce rate is at 69% with Exit Percentage treading behind a good ratio is to keep the exit percentage much lower than bounce rate.
Solutions:
- Since the landing page is the list of most recent posts of the blog, I would need to have more content and to keep visitors busy.
- To decrease exit percentage links in posts, embed media and other links to your content within the posts.
There are more sections in Google Analytics such as Advertising (AdWords and AdSence), Traffic Sources (SEO), and Conversions (Goals, E-Commerce and Multi-Channel Funnels), but they are more advanced and have certain requirements. These sections will be covered in a future post not associated with this current series.
X. Conclusion and Task or Project Management
There are many free or costly web management tools that cater to certain projects. A lot of good ones are included with the blog you plan to host it from. It’s important to know what you want to do with your blog or website and make a clear list of how you want to get your content out there. Marketers do this for business, and now you can do it too for your own business or pleasure.
Task or Project Management can come in handy when using web analytics. Actually, web analytics are a part of Project Management especially during the Testing and Feedback phases. If you have project management skills, you’ll be a natural with web analytics. Hopefully these blog examples give you a clear understanding of where you need to look and how to manage your project.
Remember the four C’s of success for any website – Be Clear, Conscious and Creative with Content!
Other Web Analytic Tools:
Yahoo Web Analytics (http://web.analytics.yahoo.com/) – Free
Compete (compete.com) – Competitive Intelligence Tool – Price Vary
Twitializer (http://www.twitalyzer.com/) – Social Analytics – Free
4Q by iPerceptions (http://www.4qsurvey.com/) – Voice of Customer Tool – Free
Google WebMaster tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en) – Free
Project and Task Management Platforms:
Astrid (astrid.com) – Social task management web platform – free
Producteev (producteev.com) – collaborative task management system with multiple projects – free
Trello (trello.com) – collaborative board task and project management tool – free
Mind-Mapping:
Freemind (freemind.sourceforge.net) – open-source mindmapp application, non-collaborative. View my review of Freemind.
Creately (http://creately.com/) – collaborative mindmapp web-based app.
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Read the first 3 posts in the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
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Related articles
- How to Interpret Information Tracked in Web Analysis and Improve Your Blogs – Part 1 (vivaciousentrepreneur.wordpress.com)
- How to Interpret Information Tracked in Web Analysis and Improve Your Blogs – Part 3 (vivaciousentrepreneur.wordpress.com)
- How to Interpret Information Tracked in Web Analysis and Improve Your Blogs – Part 2 (vivaciousentrepreneur.wordpress.com)
- How to interpret information tracked in web analysis and improve your blogs – Part 4 (vivaciousentrepreneur.wordpress.com)