How to use KPIs to increase blog performance

If you’re someone interested in making a name for yourself, on today’s Internet, one surefire way to garner attention is through a blog or a personal website. Whether you’re a foodie, sports fan, car enthusiast or have a political/social opinion, things don’t get much more accessible and efficient than communicating your thoughts through the use of an online medium that can reach a lot of individuals, in a short amount of time.rnIn addition to this, if you’re someone who is also passionate about numbers, figures or min-maxing & managing your affairs to a tee, then you can tie in your desire to express your thoughts with your love for measurements, through KPIs. For example, if you use Google Analytics or any other web analytics tools, you can measure indicators such as # Frequency of blog posts, # Visitors or % Natural traffic from keyword search, which will give you a generalized picture of how you’re doing at any given point in time, in terms of your online performance.rnGoing into specifics, here are a few other KPIs you might want to consider:

• Social shares per blog – measures how popular your blog is becoming, when it comes to online sharing
• Comments per blog post or % New blog commentators – both these KPIs assess visitor engagement in article-related exchanges between them, through the comment section
• Blog e-mail subscribers, # RSS blog subscribers and % Subscription renewal rate – these indicators track what percentage of or number of people within your audience wish to be kept updated about new posts or features

As your blog gains clout, you may want to start investing time into learning more about Search Engine Optimization – SEO, as % Searches by engine might become one of your best friends, when it comes to measuring your success. rnThis is due to the fact that search engines return results through keywords; therefore, making sure you use adequate keywords, which are both commonly used and relate to your articles, is of paramount importance. Keywords are not to be trifled with. They are by far one of the easiest ways in which someone can find either your blog or any of the articles on it, because of the way search engines work. That’s nice, but what about content? Before we get into specific KPIs yet again, you have to remember that in this day & age, your visual cues are just as important as your written ones. You can come up with the fanciest one-liners, the best puns and jokes or the most witty references – if you don’t have appealing images or gifs, you won’t gather as much of an audience as you’d most likely wish. One way to see which articles really hit the mark with your readers is by using # Time spent per post. This KPI, much like its title suggests, measures how long your visitors interact with any given piece of content. If people spend a lot of time on your articles, then this KPI’s value will tend to be naturally high, which is what you want. However, not all KPIs signal good performance when they present large values. For example, you want % Bounce rate to be as low as possible. Bounce rate represents the amount of people who leave your blog/website or article page almost instantly after arriving. They spend little to no time wandering about on different pages. Naturally, if # Time spent per post is high, then % Bounce rate will tend to be low, as people will not be bouncing off immediately. Both of theseKPIs are highly dependent on how good your content is. If you offer content that adds value to a user’s knowledge, you’ll notice this through these KPIs, as well as others, such as:

• Returning visitors – measures how many users that have already accessed your blog/website previously have paid return visits
• Content downloads – if you offer any downloadable content, this indicator will track how much of it is being downloaded
• Pages yielding traffic – measures which pages from your blog/website receive the most visitors
• Content engagement index – tracks how engaged your readers are, on an X-Y axis, where X measures engagement by user type and Y measures the period of engagement
• Revenue per visit and % Conversion rate – both of these indicators are relevant if you derive financial rewards from your blogging activities, as they measure how much you gain, per visit, and how much of your blogging, SEO and marketing efforts are converted into actual earnings.

Achieving notoriety nowadays can be achieved easier than ever, if one is smart about their blog/personal website usage. How you conduct affairs on your online interaction medium will dictate how successful you can be. There are numerous examples of people who have built highly engaged audiences by providing insightful and genuine content, while others have garnered a following through shock & awe techniques. There is no way to know what type of content might work for your case, however what is known is how to measure your performance once you settle upon a certain style. If you’re still in the blue about KPIs, SEO, keywords, website optimization or any other elements covered in this article, you can find all sorts of online certification courses, professional certificate programs, or even dictionaries that can help you on your path to understanding the success factors that constitute modern-day blogging.