Today is Day 21 of the Be A Better Blogger series. We’re using the outline offered by Collis Ta’eed in an article titled 31 Days To Becoming A Better Blogger, and our topic for the day is:

Day 21. Sit down and analyze your blog stats for the last month. Statistics can tell you a lot about what worked and what didn’t. Analyzing stats over an extended period can reveal visitor trends, popular posts and which of the promotional activities you undertook were worth doing…

Today’s task will be a fun one! I like to analyze my blog stats on a regular basis, and I usually even publish them here at the end of each month.

If your web host has cPanel, then you have awStats as part of your hosting package. This is the stats program that I use and prefer, but there are a lot of options out there. I would recommend you choose one that you are comfortable with and that gives you the detail you need, and stick with that.

Some of the things that I look for in my stats are signs of growth such as: unique visitor count, total number of visits, most viewed pages/posts, external links that drive traffic, specific keyword phrases used on the search engines, etc.

You’ll often find something interesting in your stats that will help you get even more readers to your blog. For example, I found that reviews attracted a lot of visitors from the search engines, and that those visitors often left comments and ultimately became regular readers. After publishing a few reviews and following my stats for a few months, I decided to create a category just for reviews and publish them more regularly.

You can also see which days of the week and what times of day you get the most visitors, and manage your publishing schedule so that you offer new timely content at the best possible times.

For example, Monday and Tuesday are the busiest days here at ClickNewz, so it would make sense to have some of my best articles published and near the top on those days. My best traffic hours are mornings, from 7am to a bit after lunch, so it would be best for me to have new content published by 5am each morning.

Sure your readers can read yesterdays news when they arrive each morning, but imagine their perception of reading something with a current date each and every morning. Its a great way to make a better connection with your readers

Another thing you want to pay attention to is the External Links section. This shows you who is linking to you, and how much traffic they are sending your way. Analyze these links closely. The types of links, or the types of sites, that send you the most traffic will be good examples of the new links you need to seek out. Are they links in forum posts, mentions on other blogs, blogroll links - make note, and duplicate it!

If you have any questions, or you find something interesting in your own stats today, leave a reply in the comment section below and let us know.

Best,