Today’s post from the Chamber of Commerce features advice on how to use analytics to help your blog.

Many people and businesses have blogs. Everyone has a different degree of expected success when it comes to their blog. Some people may just be blogging for fun and for friends and family to see what’s going on in their lives. Others, often businesses, are using a blog to improve their business credibility or for sales and marketing purposes.

In order to make your blog work for you, it’s necessary to track your analytics. What exactly are analytics? Analytics are the statistics about your blog. This can include how many visitors you get on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, what keyword searches are helping people to find your site, and what pages people are coming to your site from.

Keyword searches – when you use an analytics tool, you are able to see what exactly people are searching for that land them on your blog. This will tell you if people are finding your blog by searching for topics that are posted on it. If you are trying to increase blog traffic, you can write more content that is related to more popular search terms. So for example, if you have a blog about knitting, but people are finding your blog by searching for yarn, then you might want to incorporate more content about yarn.

How to track your page views/hits – analytics will tell you how many people visit your site on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. You can also find out how many pages people visit on average when they come to your site, and how long they spend on each page. You can also find out your “bounce” rate, which is how many people land on your homepage but then leave without clicking on any other pages. If you have a high bounce rate, people may be finding your site difficult to navigate.

Good practices to help your blog be discovered – There are quite a few things that you can do in order to help people find your blog. First you should read up on do-it-yourself SEO tips to set yourself up for success. Make sure that you are using keywords that are related to the topics that you want people to be able to find your blog with. Also, give unique descriptions for each article that you post. Be certain to add descriptions for all of your photos as well. Use headlines for things that are important.

There are several search engines that offer analytical tools, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. It doesn’t hurt to use all of them for your blog, as each may report different things. You will have to sign up for accounts for each one. The site will likely require you to prove that you are the owner of the blog. Most of these services are free for bloggers. You can read the documentation from your blog platform (such as WordPress, Joomla, or blogger) in order to find out how to use analytics. There are many tips online that can help a small business owner use Google Analytics themselves.  If you have someone who runs your blog or website for you, have them check into how to use analytics for your site. Analytics are incredibly helpful when it comes to driving more traffic to your blog.

(Photo Source)

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.