How to Analyze Blogging Website Performance: A Simple Guide
Wondering how to analyze blogging website performance? Read this detailed post to learn a simple process to help you do just that, quickly and effectively.
Can you prove whether your blogging activities actually generate good results?
You can, if you analyze the performance of your blogging website.
Analyzing can help you identify tactics that work well, channels that generate leads, and whether your efforts generate good return on investment or not.
And, guess what?
While not many bloggers track their analytics, those who do are more likely to report good results.
Image via Orbit Media Studios
Therefore, if you analyze your performance, you can drive results from blogging.
But, what process can you use to analyze performance?
Find out below.
Steps to Analyze Blogging Website Performance
If you don't have a set process to analyze blogging website performance, you are not fully maximizing your content strategy or growing your brand.
So, how do you analyze your blogging website performance?
Let's discuss the steps:
1. Define Your Goals
A prerequisite of analyzing your performance involves identifying what goals you need to achieve with your blogging website.
Are you looking to drive awareness about your brand, establish thought leadership, or boost sales? Choose your end objective and set specific and realistic goals.
Also, have clearly defined timelines for when you want to achieve these goals.
2. Keep Producing Content
Once you've set your goals and timelines, consistently produce great content that you can use to track performance.
Write blog posts, create infographics, produce videos, share ebooks and guides, etc.
Why?
Doing this gives you a benchmark you can use to spot what's working, what's not, and what you can improve.
3. Define Metrics to Analyze Blogging Website Performance
Before you can start tracking, identify tools you can use to analyze blogging website performance. Some of the best ones include Google Analytics, Semrush, Ahrefs, and Google Search Console.
Then, once you know which tools to use, analyze your blogging website’s performance using key metrics for different goals.
Growing Search Presence
In this case, you want to track whether you've optimized your blog content enough to increase your rankings.
Metrics you should measure for this include:
- Organic impressions: Tracks the number of times your blog pages get seen on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Low impressions mean you need to work on your search engine optimization tactics and provide answers to audience questions.
- Clicks: Do people click on your site when they see it on SERPs? If they don't, then you may have to work on your titles and meta descriptions.
- Click-through rates: This tracks the percentage of impressions that led to a click. If it’s low, you need more compelling CTAs.
Increasing Site Traffic
Another key consideration when you want to analyze your blogging website performance is website traffic.
Some of the key metrics to examine for this include:
- Views and visits: These tell you if users engage with multiple pages on your site, how many average views you get on each post, etc.
- Blog post performance: Tracking individual posts can tell you how your audience interacts with different topics. It can help you understand which topics your audience considers important, what should be your average blog post length, etc.
- Traffic source: This tells you where visitors come from and can help you identify platforms that perform well.
Establishing Thought Leadership
With thought leadership, you want to analyze your blogging website’s performance in terms of whether you've grown your reputation and if people talk about you in the industry.
Metrics to track in this case include:
- Branded queries: Do people type search phrases specifically related to your brand? Branded queries show that people in your industry or your customers talk about you.
- Backlinks: Backlinks show that people consider you an authority on a subject. Good backlinks from authoritative sources also boosts your search engine optimization efforts.
- Media mentions: Some mentions may appear naturally the more you grow your thought leadership. However, you may need to pitch articles and bylines to significant publications in your niche to increase them.
Improving Engagement
For this goal, you want to analyze your blogging website’s performance in terms of whether people read what you post.
Metrics to track include:
- Time on page: How long do users stay after arriving on a page? Staying longer could mean they read your entire article and didn't just skim. However, when tracking, make sure you consider the length of various posts and their structure.
- Comments: If you’ve enabled comments on your blog posts, you can use them to gauge engagement. Remember to provide value and include a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of each post.
- Social media comments and shares: Do people share your blog content or interact with it on social platforms? If they don't, then you need to focus on creating content that features emotional elements, storytelling, visuals, etc.
- Returning vs. new visitors: If you don't get a high number of returning visitors, try to understand your audience better and create content they prefer to read.
- Bounce rate: Do visitors leave without reading your content or visiting other pages? If not, then that’s great. However, be careful with this metric. While it's good for people to stick around to read your content, it's also good if they leave a page because they clicked on a CTA.
- Subscriber count: Your blog readership numbers should keep growing. People who subscribe to your blog are likely to re-share content with their network, thus growing your reach.
Generating Leads
To analyze blogging website performance in terms of lead generation, use the following metrics:
- Lead sources: This metric helps you understand what channels drive leads. These can include podcasts, blog posts, webinars, etc.
- Number of leads: These are people who gave you their contact information.
- Qualified leads: These are leads you score and need to nurture to drive conversions.
- Cost per lead: This is the amount spent on capturing a single lead.
- Click-through rate: This refers to the ratio of people who click on your CTAs.
- Conversion rate: This tracks if blog readers complete actions you want them to.
- Revenue: Amount you get from those who converted.
- Return on investment: The profit you get from your blogging activities.
To ensure that the lead generation activities on your blogging website drive results, leverage these tips:
- Use compelling CTAs placed at strategic points in your blog posts.
- Optimize landing pages.
- Align your offer with the content and ensure that it's valuable.
4. Optimize and Create a Repeatable Process
Once you analyze your blogging website performance, examine the results to discover if you’ve achieved your goals.
Then, create a repeatable production process that you can keep improving as your blogging activities grow.
Ready to Analyze Your Blogging Website’s Performance?
When you analyze your blogging website’s performance, you can create a repeatable process that you keep improving for better results and increased revenue.
Do you need help finding out if your blogging activities drive results? Comment below, and we can offer more tips on how to analyze blogging website performance.