Professional Blogging For Dummies®

Chapter 13. Monitoring and Measuring: Why They Matter

In This Chapter

• Monitoring and measuring: The difference

• Getting a grip on your readership

• Using analytics and reports to improve your results and to forecast

• Making sense of marketing reports and maximizing your revenue

• Forecasting with analytics and reporting

• Gaining some metrics perspective

Can you have a successful blog if you don't monitor who links to you and measure your blog traffic? Sure, you can. The key to building readership is writing an interesting, compelling blog, not obsessing over your stats.

However, when you get a handle on your metrics, you have a much better idea of whether, and how well, you're achieving your objectives. Knowing the most popular posts, common keywords, and most productive advertisers can help you improve your blog and your revenue stream.

In this chapter, I explain the difference between monitoring and measurement, and discuss why both are important. I then dig into your blog analytics as well as advertising and affiliate reports, including how you can use the data to forecast future results.

The most important thing about metrics, though, is to keep them in perspective. Metrics help you improve your blog, but they don't attract and engage your readers. You do.

Monitoring and Measuring Your Blog Activity

Monitoring and measurement are often confused because some of the same tools are used to do both; however, they are two different — but related — tasks. The best practice is to use them in combination ...