Think blogging is dead in 2023? Think again!

Blogging is still a valuable skill to have in the age of digital communication. With its popularity continuing to rise, there has never been a better time to expand your brand presence through blogs. 

Thanks to advancements in analytics technologies, checking blog traffic in 2023 is easier than ever. But how do you make sure your blog stands out? How can you gauge the performance of your blog? 

You can decipher tons of data related to your blog by taking advantage of social media data, SEO strategies, and analytic tracking tools.

Keep reading this blog post to stay informed on how people engage with your blog or website in 2023, so you can enjoy the fruits of your labor sooner!

Blogging Metrics to Know

Bloggers and website owners should pay attention to blog traffic data to monitor the performance of their sites. 

How do we begin with understanding what these statistics mean? Analytics can be daunting, as your website has tons of data to digest.

Some of the most important metrics to follow include:

• Page Views: How many times a particular page of your blog, or your website, was opened throughout the month
• Unique Visits: A measure of exactly how many individual people visited your website over time
• Referral traffic: The number of incoming visitors from another website linked up with your content (like, your social media platforms!)
• Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.
• Organic traffic: Visitors who land on your website from free search engines like Google
• Click-through rate: The number of clicks your website received divided by the number of times it appeared in search results

All of these are essential metrics to understand your website traffic better. The top metrics you should track each month are your page views, bounce rate, organic traffic, and referral traffic.

When armed with the knowledge of data analytics, you can understand what content resonates with your audience!

What blogging metrics are most important?

Understanding your blog traffic is critical for those running blogs in the online space.

Knowing which blogging metrics are the most important for reaching our goals is essential to managing a successful blog and business.

But, how you measure success shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach— what works for your website may not work for someone else. Analyzing the key metrics that matter to you and your blog readers can help you track progress. 

As I mentioned, some metrics will be more critical than others. But all of them are crucial to understanding your website’s performance.

Your page views and unique visitors indicate how many people are coming to your website each month and if any are return visitors! Return visitors are a good sign. It means your content is helpful and resonates with your target audience.

Similarly, your website bounce rate lets you know if people are visiting more than one page on your website or leaving on the same page they enter.

A high bounce rate isn’t necessarily alarming, but it can be if you use a social media links page and have a very high bounce rate, which indicates that people likely aren’t clicking through to other pages on your site. So they aren’t clicking through to see your unique content, products, or services!

Organic Traffic vs. Referral Traffic

There are two different types of website traffic you want to track on your site. The first and most important is your organic search traffic. This traffic comes directly from Google and other search engines because you prioritize SEO for your website! Round of applause to you for the hard-earned organic search traffic.

On the other hand, referral traffic is your website traffic from other sources – like social media, a news article, or even your email list. Don’t get me wrong. We love referral traffic too. There’s just something different about driving organic traffic to your blog through SEO!

Using Blog Metrics to Improve Your Website Traffic

It pays off to research analytics platforms and reporting options so you can gain detailed access to your blogging insights. After all, you want to fully understand how to check blog traffic and identify the most critical metrics to grow your business!

Statistics and metrics are great for tracking progress and measuring the effectiveness of your blog. You also get great insight into how visitors interact with your content!

If you are wondering how to check your blog traffic in 2023, looking into your website analytics tools and reports should be the first step.

It’s also always great to get a website audit to help you chart a clear course for improving your website’s performance and SEO.

Improving your blog traffic comes down to better understanding your website metrics and crafting content that keeps your readers interested.

What metrics are essential for monitoring your website?

When it comes to your metrics, you want to pay attention to your overall page views and website traffic, the time spent on the site or particular posts and pages, and your bounce rate!

For example, suppose you review metrics and notice you have a viral blog post that people are spending a lot of time on. You could optimize that post with additional content upgrades or calls to action about your product or service.

Understanding your blog traffic is essential for growing your website, and it all starts with gathering the right data!

The best part is it doesn’t have to be complicated. You can use Google Analytics to check how many visitors your blog receives and what content they interact with most. You can also use Google Analytics to determine the geographic location of your website visitors, which is essential demographic information about your target audience.

You should be checking Google Analytics like it’s your business… Because it literally is! You learn what content resonates with your audience by studying these stats regularly. Now, you can make data-informed decisions to improve your blog performance and drive more traffic to your website.

Knowing which posts get the most page views, how people find your blog, and where they land on it will give you valuable insight into what works best for your content, audience, and SEO. Understanding these metrics also helps you hone in on topics that increase page views and stay up to date on industry trends so that you can take advantage of potential new readers. Blogging success depends heavily on these stats; learning how to use them will not only maximize the impact of your content but also help drive increased web traffic in the long run!

How to Use Analytics Tools to Monitor Your Website’s Traffic

Wondering how to monitor traffic to your blog? Today, various power tools are available to help you get an accurate picture of your blog’s performance. From analytics to real-time reporting, you can use the data provided by these tools to determine how your content is doing and how visitors are engaging with it.

A key part of succeeding as a blogger is knowing how much traffic you get to your blog. After all, you can’t optimize and make strategic improvements if you don’t know how your blog is performing in the first place!

To evaluate your web presence, you need to know your blog’s traffic statistics: page views, bounce rate, and the works! 

If you use a tool like Google Analytics or Google Search Console, you can check your blog’s web traffic simply by logging into the analytics dashboard. You will be presented with insights about visitors to your site, top pages, and shareable reports that can help track popular content over time. 

One of the biggest SEO mistakes I see is when people neglect to install Google Analytics (or analytic tool, for that matter) on their website! 

Never used Google Analytics before? Here are the basic steps you need to follow.

1. You must be signed in with a Google account and follow the insights setup wizard.
2. Depending on the website platform, you’ll also need to add a tracking code or plugin to see any data points associated with your blog analytics.
3. Once everything is set up accurately, you can begin viewing page views, unique users, time on page, demographics, and much more – making it easier for you to make the necessary adjustments needed for improved performance! 

Check the instructions for your platform using the resources below!

Install Google Analytics for WordPress.org

Install Google Analytics for WordPress.com

Install Google Analytics for Wix

Install Google Analytics for Shopify

Install Google Analytics for SquareSpace

Install Google Analytics for Showit

Popular Blogging Analytics Tools

Thanks to the internet, there are tons of tools and plug-ins to help track the performance of your website. Obviously, Google Analytics is the most popular tool – and it’s free! But if you’re looking for something that will display directly in your WordPress dashboard, you have some options!

MonsterInsights & JetPack

These are both WordPress plug-ins for monitoring your website traffic. You can install the free version of either to get a taste of what the plug-ins offer. JetPack and Monsterinsights enable post-level analytics, so you can see detailed tracking information about a specific post on your blog. But these tools aren’t necessary for understanding your blog traffic. If you get started with Google Analytics, you will be in good shape!

RankMath SEO

RankMath is everything! If you have a Showit website, unfortunately, you are stuck with Yoast. It seems that Yoast is the only SEO tool compatible with those using Showit to build their blog.

But for all my WordPress users, RankMath is where it’s at! RankMath gives you custom reports and analytics data to track your SEO keywords and rankings better. Understanding the keywords you are ranking for is crucial so you can better optimize your content and grow your organic search traffic.

I absolutely love monitoring my website’s SEO with RankMath. This is an affiliate link, so I may earn a small commission should you choose to purchase using my link!

Why is it important to track your blog’s web traffic?

Knowing how to track and analyze your blog’s web traffic is essential to blogging success. It helps you understand your content’s reach and the most effective marketing strategies for your business. If Pinterest is driving more traffic to your blog than Instagram, you know to focus more of your content marketing efforts on Pinterest over IG. 

The ability to review your blog’s statistics and performance is crucial to monitoring the performance of your content strategy and better planning out future posts!

Tips for Improving Your Blog Traffic Over Time

Leveraging analytics provides valuable data that, when acted upon intelligently, can make a major difference in the growth trajectory of your blog.

Driving traffic to your blog is essential if you want to build an online presence and gain readers. So, how do you achieve this?

It starts with regularly creating content and engaging in online activities that will get potential readers’ attention. Create content for different topics that align with your blog’s purpose. Then, share that content everywhere! Optimize your blog posts for search engines, and share them across social media, newsletters, and guest podcasts. Then, use tools like Google Analytics to measure what marketing avenues are the most successful!

Optimizing your content for SEO involves using strategic keywords that make it easier for people to find your blog in search engine results. Sharing informative and intriguing snippets about upcoming posts can also help attract new readers and land you a featured snippet on the first page of Google. SEO is essential to building your following over time and driving more traffic to your blog.

If you’re ready to learn how to drive more traffic to your blog through search engine optimization, join my SEO Simplified Masterclass!