How to Check if People Read Your Blog?
Blogs are a great channel for sharing unique and quality content with the world. However, before starting your writing career, it’s worth determining the target group of your entries. In this article you’ll find the answer to a common question – how to check whether people read my blog?
Although many people perceive running a blog as a relic of the past, this tool can have a really positive impact on your company, especially when taking into account the internet marketing era we live in. A company blog is an effective marketing tool by means of which you can increase your business revenues and make your company stand out from the crowd. However, in order for this to happen, you need to make sure that your content reaches potential readers and customers.
Benefits of running a company blog
Before discussing the merits, let’s talk about basics – what are the benefits of running a company blog? At the very beginning, we’ve mentioned that regular blogging is a great marketing tool that enables reaching better and better positions in the search results. Regularly published content supports the SEO process of the website and consequently helps to increase the positions of given keywords on Google.
Moreover, your “online diary” can be also a way to meet customers’ expectations. Providing users with guidelines and answering questions that bother them should satisfy the needs of your target group.
A blog can also become a communication channel for the company and its customers or clients. Make it possible for users to comment on your articles and discuss them with other readers thanks to which your company will be perceived as an open-minded entity caring about customers’ reviews. When mentioning various benefits of running a blog, it’s necessary to mention SEO. Valuable content that corresponds to popular search queries can significantly improve your positions in the search results.
Ways to measure your company blog performance
Even though we’ve begun from mentioning all the benefits of running a company blog, users still remain the most important factor. In order to answer the titular question of this entry, first, you need to find out what are the necessary measurement tools. Blogging isn’t solely about activities performed on given websites, it also comprises elements such as paid marketing campaigns, social media activities, or whispered marketing.
Drawing appropriate conclusions from your blog’s statistics will allow you to come up with numerous solutions that can help you to refine your blogging activities. Analyze what type of content is preferred by your readers or how engaged they are. This way, you’ll obtain valuable guidelines indicating if there’s a need to implement a foreign language version of your website. Moreover, you’ll also be able to assess whether the mobile version of your website meets the requirements of visitors and which of your posts are the most popular.
When it comes to WordPress, you can take advantage of its Activity Log which allows monitoring published comments and tracking any login attempts. However, although these plugins are effective, they won’t outdo Google’s world-renowned system of statistics. Obviously, we’re talking about Google Analytics offering very accurate statistical analysis which helps to improve the condition and efficiency of the analyzed website.
Google Analytics is the answer to the question “how to check whether people read my blog?”. All you need to do is to set up a Google account and provide the necessary information concerning the monitored website. Once the registration is completed, you’ll receive a code used to track the indicated page. Then, put it in the place you want to analyze to get the most reliable feedback concerning your readers.
Google Analytics is an effective monitoring tool
The use of Google Analytics to measure your blog’s statistics and draw appropriate conclusions will certainly contribute to increasing the quality of the content you provide. The tabs on the left-hand side of this tool give you access to information about your visitors, their location, demographics, the attitude of both newcomers and regular readers as well as the browser they use.
Although this data may seem to be too detailed, it’s helpful in the process of determining the profile of an average person visiting your blog. Moreover, it’s also important to monitor the countries the users come from as an increase of readers from abroad may trigger the company owners to implement a foreign language version of their website.
Google Analytics channels as a transparent method of measuring user activity
One of the most prominent forms of analyzing traffic to your website is the use of Google Analytics channels. Each of them measures a different type of traffic:
- Direct – refers to visitors that enter your website directly by typing its URL into the browser or clicking on the bookmark.
- Organic Search – means visitors who enter your website after finding it in the organic search results.
- Referral – refers to all users who are redirected to your blog from another website or social media platform that provides a redirect link to your page.
- Social – means traffic to your blog through social media.
- Paid Search – refers to visitors that click on a paid ad and are redirected to your blog.
Properly analyzed Google Analytics data can be the real “mastermind” of your website. Moreover, combining the abovementioned tool with Google Search Console may indicate the keywords on which your blog is displayed in the search results. The Google Search Console section with links redirecting to your company blog is another factor that can significantly facilitate your linking as it provides you with valuable data concerning traffic to your site.
Moreover, Google Analytics allows taking a closer look at statistics concerning users. It provides information about the number of active users, their country of residence, or even the device they use to browse the website.
When it comes to visitors using mobile devices, short web sessions may indicate that the content that isn’t engaging enough to attract users’ attention for longer or that there are some problems with website navigation, in case of which it’s advisable to improve the responsive design.
For bloggers, the most important pieces of information are those concerning people visiting their site. This indicator can be measured with the use of page views, meaning the number of people who entered the website. In the case of unique users, each visitor is counted only once. The last parameter that helps to assess your blog’s readability and the number of users who visit it regularly are sessions that information about all user interactions like visiting a few subpages, publishing comments, or clicking on a link in a post.
The ratio of new readers to returning ones can also be very helpful as thanks to it you can easily check whether your content is engaging enough to encourage readers to visit the blog again. Content is king also when it comes to blogging as it can inspire the target group to browse through the website. Therefore, with the use of Google Analytics, you can monitor which entries attract the greatest number of visitors and which don’t meet the expectations of the recipients.
Useful blogging tips
Before taking any steps that are supposed to encourage users to visit your blog, it’s essential to set certain priorities to follow while creating your blog entries. First of all, specify the subject matter of your upcoming posts. Consistent articles full of useful guidelines will certainly help you to increase the engagement of the readers.
Second of all, define your target group. If you decide to target your content at younger recipients, then, you’ll need to use completely different messages and language than in the case of elderly users. It’s also crucial to specify the markets you want to reach by publishing the entries.
If you aim at reaching an international audience, you need to have an overview of the most popular search engines used in particular countries. Although Google dominates most of the markets, there are several places (e.g. Russia) where other search engines such as Yandex are more renowned. In this situation, your SEO activities should be tailored to the dominant search engine so don’t limit yourself only to the services provided by the Silicon Valley giant.
Regardless of the search engines, you want to do SEO for, it’s essential to focus on a few details that will significantly improve the quality of your blog. Once you make sure that all the activities on your website are performed properly, you can start looking for readers and attracting their attention.
In order to encourage people to visit your blog:
- Regularly publish posts related to the subject matter of the blog;
- Ensure proper spelling and grammar of your entries;
- Comment on blogs related to your field;
- Consider writing guest posts on blogs that may help you to attract new readers;
- Provide links to quality articles and sources to increase the chances of others linking to your content;
- Be active and regularly publish in social media;
- Be active in discussion groups and forums;
- Consider creating a newsletter and blog subscription.
The take-home message
Effective blogging isn’t only about writing and publishing articles. It requires regularity and the ability to provide substantive pieces of information. As you can see, there are numerous ways to encourage users to visit your company blog.
Following the guidelines discussed above can bring you satisfactory results and improve the conversion rate of your website. There’s a thin line between making users read your content and encouraging them to purchase your goods or services. Therefore, a proper company blog can become effective advertising and sales tool.
I exactly got what I want!