Part of learning how to start a blog is also finding out why you need to blog. Because the success of a blog depends on the main goal assigned to each.
Some would attribute their success to the number of email subscribers they have captured over a period of time. Others would look into how their blogs have built a vibrant community, which they could later convert into brand advocates or customers.
Unless you're using a blog primarily for lead generation and relationship building purposes, a blog is measured by the amount of money it generates. Using different tactics to compose a money-making strategy for your blog, you will be able to justify the effort spend on publishing content on each with the money you will receive to compensate for (if not benefit from) your efforts.
But in order to earn money from your blog, you need to track and measure the data received using your chosen analytics tool. This will allow you to see how you can improve your blog's performance and make the most out of the content you produce. Below are the five metrics that you need to observe.
Conversion Rate
If you are selling a service or product on your blog, you will need to create a landing or splash page that encourage visitors to perform the action of purchasing either. Even the calls to action of some of your blog posts should lead visitors to getting them to buy whatever it is you are offering.
For this, you will need to be wary of your conversion rate. This metric refers to the percentage of people who have performed your desired action. If you want to track this goal form your Google Analytics, check out this post which also teaches you how to create a "Thank You" page to effectively measure the metric.
For high conversion rates, it means that you've written your web copy the right way and placed the call to action at a highly optimized spot on your page. If low, then read this guide to increase your conversion rate.
Return of investment
This metric is computed by dividing gain by cost of investment. For example, you spent $500 creating a product to sell on your blog. To recoup the $500 investment, you need to sell more than $500 from your blog to have a positive ROI.
The metric tells you how you can lean up your blog by investing on cost-effetive methods and tactics instead of selling out cash to services that don't bring back the cost you've invested. This allows you to maximize your resources and get the most money out of what you have. Spend only on services that you know you can get back from your blog.
Referral traffic
This tells you the amount of blog traffic coming from different online sources - social, organic (search engine), direct (typing your blog's URL on the browser bar), email, and others. Referral traffic is tracked when someone shares your blog pages on a particular and a user clicks on the link.
From here, you will see which referral channel is the most effective for your blog, assuming that you have had an analytics tool set up all this time. If you have channels that have low referral traffic , do your best to get them up. For example, if your email referral traffic is low, then read this post to raise the numbers.
Top Pages
This metric shows you the pages that receive the most traffic in your blog. If you have top pages that you haven't optimized yet (improved calls to action and webcopy, inclusion of positive social proof to increase conversion rate), this is the best time to do it.
Bounce Rate
This refers to the percentage of visitors who bounced off your page after visiting it. High bounce rates to your sales page if bad news. Therefore, you need to find a way on how to lower the rate to retain visitors and increase the chances getting them to perform your desired action. This post will provide tipsand advice on how you can do this.
Final thoughts: Reading this post should give you a better understanding on how to leverage these metrics to make a much more profitable blog. Never forget to track and measure the performance of your latest posts and sales pages by regularly checking for their analytics and finding ways on how to improve their performance.