March 29, 2024

Analytics Goals

Blogging GoalsBlogging Goals

Setting up Analytics Goals for Your Blog

 

If you have a WordPress website or blog then to add Google Analytics is easy and from within Google Analytics you can (and should) set up visitor-related goals. You should have website goals and blogging goals.

That Which We Measure We Tend to Improve.

Just like any management activity – that which we measure we tend to improve – we need to measure and improve our blogging activities. If you have a website or blog (or both) then you will want to set goals and measure performance against your goals. After all you invested in your website and/or blog why not track and improve the performance to improve your investment results. It just makes sense.

Setting up your business objectives and goals is the first and most important step towards your success online. Without website and blogging goals, you might as well not start it at all. With Google Analytics, you not only see stats about your visitors, but Google Analytics also lets you create and measure your website or blogging goals and objectives.

What goals should you measure and track?

I want you to become comfortable making measurements and setting up goals so for starters, I recommend you measure:

  • Engaged Visitors:  Visitors who stay on your website or blog longer than the average.
  • Readers: Visitors who read more pages on your website that the average.
  • Email Subscribers: Visitors who sign up for your newsletters or free downloadable items.
  • Customers: Visitors who purchase a product.
  • Ad Performance: If you run ads or have an ad campaign running somewhere else then you need to know which one is performing best. Don’t spend money on ads without being able to track performance.

Let’s see how it’s done.

First, log into your Google Analytics account. You will be presented with the audience overview page and it will look something such as this. Click on the Admin link.   

Measuring Blog Goals - SEO Notebook

 

Once on the Admin page then click on your website URL.

Measuring Blog Goals - SEO NotebookOnce you click through then proceed to the Goals set-up page.

Measuring Blog Goals - SEO Notebook

 

Google is generous. You can set up to 20 goals (4 sets of 5 goals) that you can specifically track.

Measuring Blog Goals - SEO Notebook

 

In the example above I am tracking:

  • Engaged Visitors (time on site)
  • Interested Readers (pages per visit)
  • The Number of Time My Blogging Questionnaire is Downloaded
  • Sales of my Landing Page eBook
  • People Interested Specifically in my Blog
  • People that Visit the Real Estate part of my Blog

These are important metric/goals to me. Your goals will be different but the process to set up a goal is the same.

You can set up Google Analytics goals for your specific objectives and track them specifically without having to figure anything out. Google Analytics does the tracking work for you.

You can become quite sophisticated with goal tracking but this is a basic overview. Once you get more familiar with this I am sure that you will be setting up and measuring goals like a true 21st century business professional.

Blogging Goals Summary

For any business activity it is important to have goals and objectives. We have them for our business projects, we set them for our employees, we have goals for the money we spend on business projects.

It should be no different for your blog or website. Google Analytics make the precess of setting up blogging goals and tracking them easy and efficient.