Typepad 101: Your Blog And Google Analytics

You put a lot of work into your blog and you're getting comments but not all readers leave comments.  Who else is reading your blog?  One way to find out is by checking your Pageviews under the "Overview" tab which shows you where your visitors are coming from.  This is included with every Typepad blog.

If you want to gather more information on your blog visitors, you have the option to connect your blog to Google Analytics for free.  There are a lot of features and doodads to learn about your blog through Google Analytics.  Today we will go through the more popular features that will show you the information you really want to know.

WHEN? (How about right now?)

A pretty cool feature is their "Real-Time" option which shows you a live picture of who is looking at your blog right at that very moment.  Want to really see how it works? Open up your "Real-Time" page in your Google Analytics account, tweet out your latest blog post, and see the number shoot up!

WHERE?

Besides Real-Time, the "Audience" section gives you a detailed demographic of your readers including geographic location.

HOW?

Let the Acquisitions section be your best friend.  Here is where you can see if your visitors are clicking from Google, Facebook, Pinterest, or another blog linking back to you.  You can view this through Acquisition > Overview > All Traffic > "Referrals" or "Source/Medium."  

See if your tag and keywords in your title and post are working in search engines with "Search Engine Optimization."  You may even discover some new keywords and phrases visitors are using to discover your blog that you may not have thought of.  Here is a shot from my personal blog:

Who knew quoting a Pharrell Williams song would get so much attention?

WHAT?

You can get statistics on specific blog posts by viewing "Behavior" where it shows statistics for specific permalinks. This can be individual blog posts or a certain Page.  You can also track what page on your blog visitors are arriving to first (Landing Pages) and leaving your blog from (Exit Pages).

Google Analytics has more tools to help give you a clearer picture of who is visiting your blog. Having a better understanding of who is visiting your blog and what they are most interested in will help you produce better blog posts in the future.