Enhance your Blog Measurement with these Google Analytics Calculated Metrics

Google Analytics has recently incorporated a new powerful feature that offers more flexibility for measuring your own business objectives. I am talking about calculated metrics.

In this post I am going to suggest a list of calculated metrics that you can easily configure in Google Analytics to better measure your blog performance.

As a blogger, when it comes to measure performance of my content, I am very focused on measuring readers engagement with the content I publish. Also, I am constantly looking to increase my readers base, giving my blog more exposure and acquiring new subscribers. Here is an outline of my measurement plan using Google Analytics (I highly recommend this read if you are new on the concept of digital measurement plan).

The new calculated metrics feature gives me the opportunity to customize my own measurement plan. How?

Drawbacks of Using Time Metrics to Measure Blogs

When it comes to blogging, we all know that CONTENT is king. We also understand that social interactions and readers engagement play a primary role for making the blog successful.

So far, so good.

But then it's time to analyse data and make decisions. And that's where we often fail.

We usually take a web analytics tool like Google Analytics, install basic tracking code on pages, and analyze the blog like any other website. We look at most common metrics and take them as standard references to evaluate future performance. But we forget about the unique features that differentiate blogs from other digital properties: content consumption and social interactions.

This post will help you understand one of the most misused metrics to measure blogs performance: I am talking about time on page and time on site. Most bloggers don't understand what time metrics actually measure. So, first of all I will try to explain how they are calculated in a typical web analytics tool (it might be different from what you think!).

I will then discuss some of the drawbacks of using time metrics to measure blog performance and finally suggest a couple of more solid KPI's to better measure content engagement.

After reading this post, I am sure you will start looking at time metrics with a bit more critical thinking than before. And perhaps shift your blog analytics focus to other more powerful metrics.

Let's go!

How to Measure Content and set great KPIs for your Blog

If you are serious about blogging, then you must have a measurement plan. No matter if you have just started and have only a dozen of visitors, or you already have a very popular blog whose primary purpose is making revenue from advertising. As long as you have some objectives for your blog, then you must decide what you need to measure.

Why? Because this is the only way to understand your blog performance and whether you are successful or not for your readers (I assume you are not writing only for yourself!).

Developing a measurement plan is the only way to understand whether you are successful or not for your readers.

In this post I am going to draft a measurement plan for my blog  and use it as a learning exercise to discuss critical aspects like choosing KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) and segments of analysis. Google Analytics will be my reference platform for implementing the measurement plan.