If you’re going to be a successful blogger who makes money with your blog, you’re going to have to do a few things along the way to ensure your success. One of those things is installing Google Analytics.
It’s a simple thing that shouldn’t take even a beginner more than an hour (but most people can do it in under 15 minutes). And it offers a lot of benefits – maybe more than you realize.
11 Reasons Why You Need Google Analytics on Your Blog
- You can track data in real time. (This is amazing – every time I have a post go viral I get a little bit obsessed with this view and take screenshots when the numbers get exciting – yes, I’m a totally bloggy geek.)
- You can find out when the visits are coming – right down to the hour of the day of the week of the month. Why does this matter? It helps you to develop a posting schedule as well as a social media schedule.
- You can see the demographics on your readers – find out who is interested in your content with demographics that include age range, sex, education level, preferences, affinity categories and more. This will help you to develop your target reader profile more specifically, which can help you to create better, more directed content. That can lead to you making more money. You can also find out where they live – so if your blog targets local prospects, there’s a way to know if they see you.
- You can find out who is linking out to you, and this is where your viral traffic will often originate. When someone “bigger” than you in your niche shares or links to your post, you’ll often see a surge in traffic.
- You’ll learn where your referrals are coming from. This is good because it’ll show you which platforms are working for you and which aren’t – and then you can redirect your efforts accordingly, whether it means putting more into the ones that aren’t performing, or focusing the most on those that are. My advice is to focus your primary efforts where you’re actually getting results.
- You can find out where people are clicking on your site and how often. This can help you with design refinement on your blog to make it more user friendly.
- You can find out how long people stick around. If you’re getting a million visits a day and your bounce rate is 100 percent, that traffic is useless to you. Analytics allows you to learn how long people are looking at your site and about how many pages they look at while they’re there.
- You can find out where people go after looking at your pages – do they stay on your site, or do they click away? If they stay, what do they do next? If they leave, are they going to a link you’ve shared, or are they just giving up and moving on? Which content is your highest exit page? Can you fix that? Understanding your visitors and how they interact with your blog will help you to create better content as well as to make the design easier to navigate.
- You can create custom reports. Depending on your needs and which numbers are most important to you, you can create shortcuts and custom reports to quickly see the info you want. This is super handy, especially for special campaigns, goals or pages you want to track.
- You can get blog post ideas as well as ebook and product ideas. Based on what people are reading and searching for on your site (which Google Analytics is happy to spill), you can create posts, ebooks and other products. I almost feel guilty about this one because it is such an easy way to get more traffic – but when you give people real, useful, actionable content – you’re helping them as much as they help you – maybe more. So it’s good karma all around.
- You can quickly and easily connect your blog to other Google services such as AdSense, Webmaster and more by using your Analytics as a verifier (it’s so fast and easy).
Get more tips on how to build a blog that will make good money, right here.
Now it’s your turn: what are your favorite Google Analytics statistics to look at? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
