Analytics… Definitions and Descriptions To Help You Understand What It Means
Analytics can be confusing. Especially when you first start blogging. Being able to understand analytics and what the terms mean can help you get and stay on the correct path to making your blog grow and flourish. In this post I’ll go over some of the topics and meanings that you’ll see when you are looking at metrics that are used in measuring your site’s analytics.
Bounce Rate– This analytic covers the percentage of visitors that view a single page during their visit.
This is one of the best metrics to determine if there is a major issue with your site from a design or compatibility standpoint. If your site-wide bounce rate is high (above 85%) it could indicate there are design problems.
Standard rate of 65%-80%
Compare your mobile vs non-mobile traffic. If mobile has a high bounce rate you may need to look at your site’s mobile compatibility. If there is no issue there it may be caused by bad traffic sources.
Drive relevant visitors to your blog via social media, niche forums, or backlinks.
Exit Rate– The ratio of page views on a specific page and the number of exits from your blog on that specific page.
Exit Rate represents the likelihood of someone leaving your site from a specific page. It can be used to help identify specific pages where visitors are leaving your site. It could indicate it’s not what the visitor was expecting, they didn’t see the relevance. If you have set up certain flows from our blog you can analyze the exit rate of the pages to determine what pages need your attention.
High-above 80%
Traffic Distribution– The breakdown of your blog’s traffic by channel
If you understand the distribution of your blog traffic you can better understand the health of your blog. Click To Tweet- Organic- Traffic from search queries run on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing.
- Direct-Traffic that isn’t from any of the other four channels. This includes directly typing in your site address, a bookmark, and traffic from emails that don’t have a UTM tag in their link.
- Referral-Traffic that came via a link on another site
- Paid- Traffic that came to your site via paid channels.
- Campaign- Traffic tagged with UTM tags.
Organic Traffic– Can be improved by adding relevant keywords that help drive more search traffic to your site. This is highly relevant traffic and converts well.
Share-ability of Post– Average number of shares your post generates
*This is important because it indicates the relevancy of your blog traffic, the quality of your writing, and readability of your post. Tools: Social Metrics WordPress plugin, Feedio
Pages viewed per visit– The average number of pages viewed by an individual per session *Helps indicate how easy it is to navigate within your site. 3-4 page views per visit is considered excellent. This indicator helps you see if visitors are viewing multiple blog post.
Time on site– The average amount of time an individual spends on your site per session.
*Helps indicate the site appeal to your visitors
Call to Action conversion rate– You should have at least one action that you want your visitor to take. It could be- signing up for email, purchasing an e-book, clicking on an affiliate link.
Google Analytics:
Audience- Visits, Unique Visitors, New vs Returning Visitors
Page Tracking- Bounce Rate and Average Session Duration by Channel
Goal Conversion Tracking- Conversion and Conversion Rate by Channel
Cost Analysis- Cost per Conversion, Profit and ROI by channel
Want More?
Check out the Blogging Dictionary
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