Mom On The Run

6-8 weeks ago, Michelle at http://www.megoagain.com had a three part series of posts on how to use Google Analytics.  If you missed it you really should read them:

Google Analytics for Bloggers Part 1: Why use analytics?
Google Analytics for Bloggers Part 2: Set-up
Google Analytics for Bloggers Part 3: An Intro
Google Analytics for Bloggers Part 4: Great Reports

With Michelle’s encouragement I signed up for Google Analytics and began having Google collect stats on my blog.  Now I’m one of those people who’s more interested in spying on individual visitors to my blog than seeing the big picture – Who’s their ISP?  How did they find my blog? What pages did they visit while on my site?  For that information I’ve been using SiteMeter for a long, long time (5 years!).  SiteMeter does have a use…with SiteMeter I discovered co-workers spending ALOT of company time reading my blog 4-5 years ago.  I used that info to block my work’s IP address, and I have also blocked the IP address of a certain ex-boyfriend from highschool.  I can also tell when my mom visits my site, my best friend and my hubby .  But that’s pretty much all its useful for. 

With Google Analytics I’ve been able to collect trends – which days my blog gets the most hits, which type of content generates the most traffic, where my traffic comes from etc.  This is the kind of information you really need to grow your blog community.  The trending data I collected over the past two months actually surprised me:

• I get the most traffic on Sundays – I would have thought it was a Monday or a Tuesday, but no – it’s Sunday. (This means I should spend some time creating great posts for Sundays).
• I get the most hits on my “About” page and my “Blogs I Read” page (I better spend some more time cleaning those up and maybe even add a subscription link there).
• Most of my site visitors come from Twitter (this doesn’t surprise me)
• Authoring posts on Type-A Mom and Blogher brought in next to no traffic – it wasn’t worth the time.
• Guest posting on Complete Running brings in a lot of traffic – I haven’t published a post there in over 6 months but its still my #4 source of traffic.  I should contribute there more..
• 65% of my visitors never come back, 35% do – is this average, or below average compared to other blog sites?
• My Wordless Wednesday posts are not very popular, maybe I should just stop doing them?  
• Posts about social networking, improving your blog etc generate a lot of traffic and subscribers too!
• My one poll post brought in the most traffic over the past two months – people like polls.

Those are just examples of what you can learn about your site visitors from Google Analytics .  If you’re serious about improving your site then I would highly reccommend giving it a shot for afew months – you may be surprised at what you find like I was. I’ve been spying on y’all collecting data for two months, and now I can begin to provide you with more of what you want – great content about social networking on Sundays, family posts throughout the week, polls etc.

I Google Analytics

PS – don’t forget to enter my Exercise Anywhere Cards Giveaway!

Thanks for stopping by!
-Janice aka @momontherun

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