Top 10 Blog Metrics You Probably Don’t Track (and Why You Should Start)

If you’re anything like me, you started refreshing Google Analytics the very first minute after you hit “publish” on your first blog post. I mean, every view counts, right?

Of course, the audience overview tab is usually the most viewed. And yes, it’s important to know how many visitors you have and how your traffic evolves from one month (or even day) to another.

But what about the other blog metrics?

I would argue that there are plenty more metrics that can give you an even better insight into how your blog is performing than the number of visitors. Especially if you run a business blog that is designed to generate B2B leads.

Let’s take a look at them.

10 Blog Metrics You Should Pay Closer Attention to

I’m not one to lecture you on vanity metrics. I track them, too. And my heart even skips a beat when I see a sudden rise in traffic or Twitter followers. There, I’ve said it!

However, I also know that Twitter followers and website visitors don’t magically turn to cash. Sure, some of them can be converted into paying customers – that’s the ultimate goal after all, right? And for that, we need to track the right blog metrics.

1. Sessions vs Users

You can easily make this comparison in your Audience Overview in Google Analytics. Why does it matter, though?

Well, it’s quite easy.

You need to see how many of your visits are from repeat users. How many times do people come back to your blog or website?

As usual, the more, the merrier. When people come back for your content, it means you are doing a good job. It means that your blog posts are exactly what they’ve been looking for.

2. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the term that defines single interaction visits to your website or blog. In other words, visitors who “bounced” didn’t click on any other links and didn’t fill in any form. They just viewed the page they landed on and then closed your website.

A GREAT bounce rate is somewhere below 40%. The average is between 41 and 55%. A bounce rate between 56 and 70% means you may need to look into what’s driving customers away. When you’re over 70%, you definitely need to look into what’s causing it. And if you’re above 90%, you’re definitely doing something completely wrong and you may need to rethink your whole blogging strategy.

While a bounce rate over 85% is definitely something that should worry you, anything below that threshold may be OK, depending on your industry. There are so many sources of traffic that it’s really hard to control the bounce rate.

Of course, authority content always helps to keep your readers engaged and clicking for more. Do play around with formats and blog post lengths, but don’t obsess over your bounce rate, especially if your conversion rates are satisfying.

Need help writing the kind of content that keeps readers wanting more? We can help! Check out our copywriting and content writing services and let’s discuss how we can turn your blog into a well-oiled cash machine.

3. Average Session Duration

This is one of the most telling blog metrics. It shows you how much time the average user spends on your website.

Be careful, though, it’s not the same as Average Time On Page, the metric that shows you for how long an average page is viewed.

A visitor can spend two minutes on a single page or divide these two minutes between 10 pages.

However, this metric speaks volumes about how interesting your blog or website is.

You should aim for an average session duration that is upwards of one minute. Of course, one minute doesn’t give enough time to really read a blog post.

But, as I said before, there are countless traffic sources and you just can’t keep everyone engaged. When your sessions last for longer than one minute it means that some readers took the time to go in-depth and even click around.

4. Pages per Visit

Again, this is one of the blog metrics that shows you success at gauging visitors’ interest.

One page per visit (and a short average session duration) means that people either didn’t find what they were looking for or you managed to bore them from the very first sentence.

Either way, things aren’t looking to good.

5. Returning Visitors

Is your content good enough that people keep coming back to it? This is what “returning visitors” tracks.

Sure, not all the people who return to your website will eventually buy something from you. There’s no way to change that.

But if you’re in it for the long run, this is one of those blog metrics you should definitely track.

You may be dealing with people who are just starting their research, people who are at the very beginning of their buyer journey. If you manage to offer them content that’s relevant to this phase, they will come back for the other ones and eventually maybe even buy what you’re selling.

And there are people who aren’t there yet. Perhaps an agency that’s not yet ready to buy a social media management tool. But they will be when they acquire more clients. Great content keeps you on their radar until that time arrives.

Case in point: I was an avid reader of the HubSpot blog almost since it appeared. But it took years before I actually used their services and became a customer.

Of course, HubSpot is a prime example for content done right. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t aspire to that, though, does it?

6. Traffic Sources

OK, this is a big one.

Your traffic sources bring visitors to your website, so you want to pay close attention to them. Look at what brings the most visitors.

Is it organic traffic? Referrals? Social media?

[A quick note here: Google Analytics sometimes mistakenly labels organic traffic or traffic from newsletters as direct traffic. I remember being panicked about this once, until I got to the bottom of it. So, if a large chunk of your traffic is labeled as direct, give yourself a pat on the back. You’re either rocking your SEO or your newsletters.]

What I like to do when I analyze my traffic sources is correlate them with the bounce rate and duration. This doesn’t just tell me where my visitors come from.

It tells me something a lot more important.

Where my great visitors come from.

People who spend time browsing the various sections of my website or blog are the most valuable to me. These are the people I want to keep targeting.

For me, referral traffic brings the most of these visits. So I am working hard on building more of that traffic.

Whatever your goldmine is, work on cultivating it. And remember that blog metrics are the most valuable when you make correlations between them, just like I did with bounce rates and traffic sources.

7. Top Posts

As far as blog metrics go, this should be a no-brainer. Take a close look at the types of blog posts that get the most visits and you’ll know what your recipe for success is.

Here’s the “but”: blog metrics mean nothing if they are not related to your business objectives. When you identify your top performing posts, make sure they are the kind of posts that also have a high conversion rate.

If they bring nothing else but views, they won’t pay the bills, will they? Well, not unless you have an affiliate blog, but that’s not the scope of our discussion.

I made that mistake once: when I first launched the Idunn blog, I wrote a lot of posts detailing how to write great copy and what mistakes to avoid. They got tons of views and silly me was happy about it.

Of course, they didn’t convert any of those readers into paying customers.

That’s because the readers were copywriters looking for tips and tricks. And that’s great — I love playing a part in bettering the industry. This is why I still write such posts.

But they are no longer my main focus.

My post on mistakes to avoid when you hire SEO copywriters, on the other hand, brought in business leads. Obviously, because it spoke directly to my audience – people looking to outsource copywriting.

8. Conversion Rate

This is a follow-up on the metric above. Check which of your blog posts are best at converting readers into paying customers or leads.

You can easily set goals in Google Analytics and then see which pages of your blog are responsible for the most goals accomplished.

It may be trickier to do so and it may take more time. But just like I said in the beginning of this article, vanity metrics mean almost nothing when it comes to your bottom line. Focus on relevant blog metrics even if they take more time to analyze or set up.

9. Clicks from Social Media

Your blog is only one of your multiple marketing channels. This means that blog metrics have a limited relevance.

However, couple them with something else and then you’ll have winning insights.

I’ll assume that you promote your blog posts on social media. And that not all your social media followers are subscribed to your newsletter.

This gives you access to a whole new target audience, to people who can actually tell you what works and what doesn’t.

By seeing which of your blog posts got the most clicks from social media, you can easily learn which of your headlines are performing best. And, of course, shares and retweets tell you what posts are your best.

This is another great chance to gain insights from correlating blog metrics. When I take a look at my clicks from social networks, I like to also check which networks brought the visitors with the lowest bounce rate.

For me, that’s Twitter. And this short, at-a-glance analysis helped me learn that I should focus on Twitter. Which I did.

The result?

In three short months of focusing on building up my personal Twitter profile, I didn’t just get a ton of new followers. I also got leads from Twitter.

10. Exit Rate

Briefly put, the exit rate shows you the ratio of page views (of a specific page) and the number of visitors that exited your website from that very page.

Confusing?

Let me rephrase.

The exit rate shows you the likelihood of people leaving your website from a specific page. A high exit rate (over 80%) shows that visitors deemed that page irrelevant, confusing, annoying or anything else equally bad.

Much like the bounce rate, it’s not something you should obsess over. Depending on the traffic source, a huge exit rate can be normal.

However, if it’s a generalized problem, it may show that you have a problem with the categories on your blog and that people are finding it hard to navigate.

It’s worth taking a look into it to see which blog posts are underperforming.

Conclusion

The best advice I can give you about blog metrics is to always make correlations and find the underlying cause explaining all the numbers that aren’t exactly what they should be. Use more than one analytics tool if possible – you’ll be surprised at the differences you may find.

Lastly, remember that great content is the best way to improve any blog metric. Work on that and you’ll soon see all your stats improving, from website visits to bounce rate and social clicks.

Need help with creating that great content that puts your blog on the map and transforms all your blog metrics? You have come to the right place! Fill in the form below and let’s work on it together: