Getting The Most From Your Blog Statistics

There are many uses for your blog's statistics. Although statistics can vary from one blog to another, yet they share the same functionality, that is, record the blog's past and present status. There's an old saying 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' and it's aptly used for blogs too. Blog statistics serve as a basis here and if you want to be a successful blogger, you need to fix your past mistakes, improve your current strengths, and predict the future. Admit it, even the most successful bloggers do make mistakes.

To get anything from your blog statistics, you need to record them first! It's not like your blog can do it by itself. There are many tools to record statistics. The famous one, Google Analytics, has everything you need to know about your blog. Installing the script on your blog is simple too. You can also have automatic report mailed to you everyday or every week, your choice. There's also Blogpatrol which has much better and more comprehensive graphical reports. Reports such as 'Detailed Analysis Of The Last 25 Visitors' make Blogpatrol my personal choice. Unlike Analytics, Blogpatrol doesn't have an automatic reporting feature, though. Just pick your choice and move on.

Well, so you have set up your tool and have a report/record at your disposal. There are many areas there that represent the blog's status. You need to take a look on these things, analyze them, and make a decision for improvements.


1. Visits per day
This is an average calculation of your blog visitors on a per day basis. The higher the number, the better, but watch out for the bounce rate.

For higher visits per day, you might want to try Blogcatalog or Entrecard since these websites have a good community. With Entrecard widget, you can get a reciprocal drop visit if you've dropped your card on someone else's blog. However, Entrecard's well known as a source of bounce rate increase. Blogcatalog has much more reliable traffic. There a broadcast can give you a sudden boost of traffic. If your blog really has quality content, you might get regular readers from the traffic.

2. Bounce Rate
As defined at Wikipedia bounce "essentially represents the average percentage of initial visitors to a site who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site." They actually just take a look around and (maybe) nothing interests them so they just exit. Or maybe you've designed your blog so the last 5 or 10 posts on the main page can be seen in a glance. Visitors may just take a quick scan and bounce. This is where your overall design and sidebar interest might come into play. Give them an easy navigation and references to popular posts, etc.

3. Visitors Location
If you can write a wide variety of topics, then you could use this to your advantage. Write based on a certain culture taken from the visitor location report. This way, you can have personalized content that might attract visitors from some regions. This might not work for a blog that has specialized content, though, such as sports blogs and blogging related blogs (like this blog lol).

4. Traffic sources
From what sources do your readers come? How did they find you? If it's from Search engines then you're on the right track. For example, once I wrote a random topic about Fight of Characters map for Warcraft 3. I didn't realize this drew so much traffic to my blog until I read it from my Blogpatrol report. When I saw it, I quickly wrote a few more another articles optimized for that keyword. I still see traffic, despite the fact that the posts are getting older fast. You can also look at your bounce rate or time on page to see where the leaks are or the strong referrals.

Basically statistics can help you know more about your visitors and your strengths. If you're weak on certain areas, then create a plan to fix it. Blog statistics serve as a light for you to pass through the darkness in the blogosphere.

Well then, so what are you learning from your blog's statistics?

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photo by Isriya