How to Measure Blog Success with 7 Essential Metrics

How do you measure success in blogging? And do you even need to do this?

Well, daily, people make 8.5 billion searches. And there are 1.88 billion sites that are ready to provide any kind of information to users.

Are you 100% sure that your blog will offer the data people are searching for? Or that they will be satisfied with the experience your blog provides? Exactly for this reason you should know how to measure your blog's success.

No matter what industry you are in, there are a couple of metrics that you should track constantly. Today, we will name them and show how to work with the data you get.

Contents

• Overall blog visits
• Time on page
• Pages/Sessions
• The most viewed posts
• The number of comments
• The number of social shares
• Conversion rate
• Conclusion

Overall blog visits

Perhaps, traffic is the most popular answer when it comes to defining a blog's success.

Yet, we'd like to say you should base not only on it when talking about how popular your blog is. Sure thing, it's great when you see your traffic is growing. Nevertheless, even a huge amount of traffic may lead to nowhere.

That said, if your users do not convert - even thousands of visits per month may be useless and have nothing to do with blog success.

So, promise us to employ this metric in combination with other ones. Basically, measuring metrics like blog visits is not too tough. All you need is Google Analytics.

How to measure blog visits:

• Go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels,
• Click on the "Organic Search" sign,
• Then choose "Landing page" to see where your users land.

Then you can choose any period of time that interests you the most. The second column will show how many users each page has attracted.

These are organic visits. That means that users referred to your blog after searching for something on Google.

Sure thing, if people actively visit your blog and read articles - it's awesome. So, quantity plays a role here.

Anyway, let's see what else you should take into account.

Appear higher on SERP to get more traffic >> Get quality backlinks!

Time on page

The user's attention span is getting lower and lower. Now you have around eight seconds to amaze readers. Not that much, to be fair.

That's why even the median average time spent reading a post, that is 37 seconds, seems to be unreachable.

Anyway, you should do your best to keep a reader on the page as long as possible. Google Analytics helps you track this metric as well.

How to track time on page:

• Go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels,
• Click on the "Organic Search" sign,
• Choose "Landing page" to see where your users land.
• Check the "Behavior" column > Average Session Duration.

Study how much time a user spends on the given page. For instance, it's certainly not a good result when your post's reading time is five minutes, and you see only 15 seconds in the Analytics.

Rethink your content, then. Maybe, you are using the wrong formats, do not engage users from the very beginning, or cover the incorrect topics.

You might also like: How to Start Writing a Blog Post to Capture Readers' Minds

Pages/Sessions

Sure thing, traffic and a big number of readers is great. Thus, success also defines by the ability to engage people.

To learn more about users' involvement, employ the following blogger analytics - Pages/Sessions. You can find it in Google Analytics.

How to track Pages/Sessions:

• Go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels,
• Click on the "Organic Search" sign,
• Choose "Landing page" to see where your users land.
• Check the “Behavior” column > Pages/Sessions.

This metric shows the average number of pages viewed during a session. It also shows if you fulfill the mission of making people stay longer on your site.

Simply put, it's commendable if the users continue a journey within your site. That means you can offer more valuable information to them. But on top of that, it allows you to build more trustworthy relationships and overall brand loyalty.

Ultimately, this process may lead to the readers' conversion.

The most viewed posts

When tracking metrics for your blog, you might wish to know what articles are the most popular ones.

It's really a smart thing to do. The top ten to 15 most visited blog posts will give an idea in what direction to move.

In fact, you'll see what:

• Articles' length is the most accepted by your audience,
• Posts' formats your visitors prefer to read,
• Topics are the most popular.

Based on this data, you may develop or totally rethink your content marketing strategy. Eventually, you will be able to master content that will perfectly fit your customers' needs.

After all, when you build a blog that covers all the demands of your readers, you can turn it into a profitable business.

You might also like Top 5 Content Audit Tools to Try in 2024

The number of comments

Some may think of this metric as an unrelated one. Well, wait.

Did you know that Internet users write around 77 million comments on blog posts monthly? That's quite a number. Moreover, comments can show the level of engagement your audience has.

For example, if you read blogs of marketing gurus Brian Deal or Neil Patel, you can notice numerous comments their readers leave. That's the sign they enjoy the posts and find them helpful.

So, if you have thousands of views on your articles but no comments at all, that's a sign of changing something.

Try adding a call to action to engage your readers. Sometimes people need a slight push to start engaging with your blog.

The number of social shares

Another metric in content success tracking is the number of social shares. They will show what content forms and types are the most popular among your readers.

Do you wonder how you can even get them? Well, then you might have no social share buttons on your site. And they are pretty essential for making your blog popular.

We do recommend adding social share buttons to your blog. There are numerous plugins for WordPress if you use them for your blog. Or you can find detailed guides on how to add those buttons if you use another blogging platform.

After collecting data about social shares, the most shared content, and the most used social network, build a further promotional strategy for your blog. This way, you will get the biggest ROI and use the right channels to collect more readers.

Conversion rate

Six out of ten buyers find blog posts valuable at the start of their purchase journey. What does this mean? Obviously, people are reading blog articles before buying goods or services.

Accordingly, you can use your blog to convert users. So, among other blog metrics that show your success is the conversion rate.

So, there are various options for conversion rate measurement. It's not always the easiest thing to do. That's because different blogs have different goals and, accordingly, the definition of success.

Generally speaking, we can describe conversion as visit > lead > customer.

And that exact customer may be the one that buys your products. Or, they have to end up subscribing to your email. Every blog owner has a different final target.

You can use special software to track conversion rate, use Google Sheets to calculate it on your own. Also, Google Analytics is a fit for this goal. It has a special metric called "Conversions."

Conclusion

According to Orbit Media, around 75% of bloggers think that their blogs are successful.

Are you among them?

If you can't agree to this, set your blog KPIs and track them. See how your articles are performing and how readers interact with your blog.

Ensuring blog success is not always an easy task but is not impossible. We believe you can reach any heights you wish. (And we can help you grow your positions.)

How do you track your blog success? What metrics do you normally use? Share them in the comments below.