Have you just started blogging and want to know how it is performing? Here are the 5 best Google Analytics report you should look at to measure your blog’s performance.
Blogging is not easy. It is a long-term game. To succeed in blogging, you must constantly track and improve your blog. As a blogger myself, these are 5 main reports you should be looking at when it comes to blogging performance.
You will learn all about the types of reports in Google Analytics, check blog traffic, measure blog performance and Google search performance, and more.
By the end of the post, you will be familiar with which report and where to look in Google Analytics to start analysing your statistics.
This post is all about the best Google Analytics reports for bloggers.
Types of Reports in Google Analytics
Before we dive straight into the individual reports, it will be good for you to get yourself familiarised with the Google Analytics interface. I have written a ‘FREE ebook: Introduction to GA4’ here to get you started on what Google Analytics is all about and the purpose of each segment. Claim yours here.
Today, we will only be touching on the “Reports” section here.
Under “Reports”, this is what you should see.
There are a lot of reports to look at here, each for different purposes. We will be focusing on reports that are relevant to bloggers. I am using the free version here. If your sidebar does not look like mine, do not panic.
If yours looks like the above, you will be able to find the reports that I will be bringing you through.
Related post: 4 Easy and Proven Steps to Set Up Free Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress
Blog Traffic
The first report you should look at is the “Traffic acquisition” report. It allows you to see where your readers are coming from.
The difference between “User acquisition” and “Traffic acquisition” reports is that the former only takes into account the “First User”. What this means is that the report will provide information on how the user was first acquired only.
Whereas, for the “Traffic acquisition” report, it provides information about new sessions. In other words, the data will consist of both new and returning users.
When clicked in, this is what you should see.
On the bottom left of the screenshot, you will see a dropdown where you can toggle between the dimensions (see screenshot below).
The columns are the metrics that are available for this report.
To understand more about the definition of the dimensions and metrics, read here.
My personal preference to analysing my blog traffic is:
- Choose the “Session source/medium” dimension
- Case 1: Sort “Users” from highest to lowest
- Case 2: Sort “Engaged sessions” from highest to lowest
- Case 3: Sort “Engagement rate” from highest to lowest
As you can see, I am primarily using only 3 metrics here. The reason why I am using “Engaged sessions” instead of “Sessions” is because a user can have multiple sessions but how engaged they are is more relevant to me. This information will allow me to know whether my blog content is useful or something they would want to read about.
Sometimes, you may find situations where a particular source brings in lots of users, but the engagement rate is very very low. Why is that so? Most of the time, it is likely one of these reasons:
- Your blog content is not something the readers are looking for
- You are using click-bait titles
- There is an issue with the source, or
- A tracking problem
You will have to investigate to find the WHY behind what you see.
Blog Performance
The second report you want to look at is “Pages and screens”. This is where you get to see your most popular and least popular blog posts.
Again, the interface for this report will look the same as the previous one, just with different dimensions and metrics. In the drop-down, these are the dimensions available:
My go-to is “Page title and screen name” as they are more intuitive and easy to read.
The default dimension is the “slug” of your blog.
What you need to take note of here is that your blog has several pages that are not classified as “blog pages”. Filter them out before analysing.
That being said, if you are comfortable with viewing all pages together, that is also completely doable.
If you are an OCD like me, you can do a simple filter in 2 steps.
Step 1: Click “Add filter”.
Step 2: Untick all the pages you do not want to see in the table such as your “privacy policy”, “terms and conditions”, “disclaimer” and “About Me” page.
And you are ready to analyse.
Blog Performance Metrics
For blog performance, these are the metrics to look at:
- Views
- Users
- Sessions (to add)
- Engaged Sessions (to add)
- Engagement rate (To add)
‘Views’, ‘Users’, and ‘Sessions’ are all important metrics to look at, especially if your goal is to enter an ad agency. Ad agency’s requirements change from time to time, so I develop a habit of looking at all of them instead of focusing on one.
‘Engagement rate’ and ‘Engaged sessions’ are metrics that I constantly look at regardless of which report I am on. In the default report, you will not be able to these metrics. The good news is that you can add them in yourself.
Here, we will be adding 3 metrics – ‘Sessions’, ‘Engaged sessions’, and ‘Engagement rate’.
On the top right-hand corner, find the pen icon and click to customise the report.
Next, click on metrics.
Then, add metric. Find ‘Sessions’, ‘Engaged sessions’, and ‘Engagement rate’ by typing.
Lastly, rearrange the metrics and click ‘Apply’ and ‘Save’. The position here corresponds to the position of the columns in the report.
To find your best-performing blog posts,
- Sort all 5 metrics from highest to lowest and write down the top 3 to 5 blog posts
- Rearrange the blog posts that appear more times across all metrics
- Deep dive into the blog posts to find patterns (ie what works well)
To find your worst-performing blog posts,
- Sort all 5 metrics from lowest to highest and write down the top 3 to 5 blog posts
- Rearrange the blog posts that appear more times across all metrics
- Deep dive into the blog posts to find patterns (ie what did not work well)
Blog Demographic
The third report to look at is the audience demographic. Depending on which version you are on, you can find it in 2 places:
OR
Both work the same way.
This report is very powerful because it helps us to understand more about our readers – countries, genders, age groups, and even interests.
Not only does this information allow us to come up with better blog content that they will more likely want to read, but we can also narrow down on specific segments when doing keyword research or even performance marketing.
The same metrics will be used here – Users, Engaged Sessions, and Engagement rate.
Google Search Performance
Lastly, you will want to look at the Google Organic Search Traffic report and the Queries report for 2 main objectives:
- Know how well you rank on Google Search Engine, and
- If you are ranking, what search terms are they typing into the search bar
For this report to appear or have information coming in, make sure you have verified Google Search Console for your website and connect Google Search Console to GA4.
To get you started, read this blog post to learn how to verify Google Search Console.
To connect, go to settings in GA4. Under ‘Product links’, find ‘Search Console links’ and start the linking process.
1. Google Organic Search Traffic Report
The dimensions you can play around in this report are:
The metrics I will look out for here are:
- Organic Google Search Average position – To know how well you are ranking and whether any improvements are needed for your SEO strategy
- Organic Google Search Click-through-rate – To gauge how many people click in after seeing your blog title and meta description
- Engagement rate – To know how engaged your readers are after clicking through
2. Queries Report
The queries report allows you to have a clear overview of what queries your readers are searching on the Google Search bar. In this report, data is recorded only when your blog posts are shown on the Google results page.
Again, these are the dimensions available.
Primarily, I only use the ‘Organic Google Search query’.
3 metrics to take note of here:
- Organic Google Search Impressions – To know how many times your blog posts are shown for each query
- Organic Google Search Click-through-rate – To understand how many readers click in after viewing your post on the results page
- Organic Google Search Average Position – How well you rank on Google search engine
Related Post: 4 Quick & Easy Steps to Verify Google Search Console for your WordPress Website
This post is all about pointing you to the 5 best Google Analytics report when measuring your blog performance.
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