With any blog that I own or operate there are just a few things I want to know about the people who come to visit. There are many, many different items of statistical data that I could analyze about blog visitors, but for the most part it really boils down to just 3 questions:
- Who are you?
- What are you looking at?
- How did you get here?
That’s it. That’s all I really want to know. I think you’ll find that these 3 questions cover the most important areas of visitor tracking and they also provide a good ruler to measure how well your blog is doing.
Let me break down these questions and explain what they mean to me:
- Who are you? – When I ask this I’m not after a visitor’s name or what they do for a living. I want to know if you are a new visitor, a returning visitor, a search engine spider, etc. User agents, IP addresses and browser cookies do a pretty good job of separating this info out, and this info can then be broken down into their individual parts.
- What are you looking at? – When someone is browsing through a blog of mine, I am interested in knowing which post they are reading. Tracking this data for enough time will tell me what posts are more valuable or relevant to what people want.
- How did you get here? – I am always interested in knowing how people found their way to my blog. Did they run a search on Google? Direct visit? Click on a link at another site? Did someone email a post? This kind of information is invaluable in determining where my blog is being mentioned and how well known it is.
These 3 questions tell me almost everything I want to know that can help me provide a better blog for my visitors. If I know how many visitors, what they’re looking for and where they’re finding me, I can better prepare my blog to provide blog visitors with what they’re looking for.
If you look at the answers to these questions for a while you will probably start looking into another important area, and that is why your visitors are leaving your site. Looking at exit pages and the duration of visits can also be vital information in determining the health of your blog.
What things do you want to know about your blog visitors? What do you use to help keep track of this information?
When you are choosing the layout and look of your Wordpress blog, you will most undoubtedly come across hundreds of themes to choose from. Nearly all of them can be downloaded free of charge, but you will probably find a few that come with a price tag. When you see something that normally is free, you may wonder if the “premium” themes are actually worth the money.
There are many different themes you can pay for, but one theme I see mentioned quite often is Semiologic Pro. I have a good amount of experience with this theme and will tell you what I think about this theme and premium themes in general.
I have used Semiologic for a long time. It is what I originally used to start this site and many of the sites I’ve started for others. It is simplistic, SEO optimized, and built for marketing and Adsense sites. The strength behind Semiologic Pro is split between the theme and the selection of plugins that come with the package. My experience with using this theme for a blog has been positive. After installing, it is very easy to customize your site to add features you want, and delete the ones you don’t.
Using Semiologic Pro as your theme will give you the ability to simplify your blogging. With less to fiddle with, you can post your articles knowing that your site will be presented to the search engines in the most flattering way possible. My past experience has shown that any articles I published using this software has ranked higher than it would have if I had used a different theme setup.
Semiologic Pro has a price tag of about $300 and this allows for a year of updates. As Wordpress updates their software and Semiologic updates their theme, you can keep an up to date version as long as your subscription is current. Is paying $300 a year for your blog theme worth it to have an optimized blog that attacks the search engines with fierceness?
It was for me, and a lot of other people as well. But I have also come to the conclusion that you can get the same benefits by using the free Semiologic theme and a good selection of plugins. There are a few plugins that come with the Pro version that you can’t get unless you’re a subscriber, but the lack of those plugins will not hinder your progress in a major way.
If you want to experience what Semiologic can do for you and your blog, I would first try out the free version of the theme before committing to purchasing the Pro package. If you like what you see with it, then you can take it a small step further by becomming a paid subscriber at their site.
by Top Ten on February 22, 2009
in Goals
Have you ever fired a shotgun before? Even if you haven’t you are probably aware of the differences between a shotgun and a rifle. While a rifle fires a single shot that can be accurate at long distances a shotgun fires multiple shots in a spray pattern that gets bigger as it travels further. It is easy to compare this pattern to blogs as well.
Many bloggers, myself included, have “sprayed” content out from their blogs that imitates a shotgun pattern. Having no clear focus or plan, the material being presented becomes somewhat broad and erratic. While a shotgun approach can be effective for short range goals (just like a real shotgun), it becomes less and less effective for long range goals (also like a shotgun).
A shotgun approach can easily blast away at your short term blogging goals, but long range goals require something with more of a rifle like precision. The way to blog with accuracy is to have a clear blogging plan with goals.
What are your goals with blogging? Are you after more traffic or higher rankings? Are you looking to connect with people on a different level?
Whatever your goals are with blogging you have to have a clear and concise plan of attack. If your goal is to bring about more exposure to your main site through your blog then you have to plot out the steps you want to take to acheive this. Some of the steps you take may include keyword targeted posts that provide relevant information, outbound links to your site, and possibly information on how your business compares with the alternatives.
Whatever your reasons for blogging, you will be able to target your goals a lot better if you use a rifle instead of a shotgun. Keep your focus on your blogging goals and soon you will become a blogging marksman!
