Chapter 8Understanding Traffic Statistics

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

Albert Einstein

Immediately after you publish and promote an article, visitors from all over the world will start coming to your blog. This is a very exciting moment. It’s important, however, to fully understand the traffic figures from your web analytics suite as well as to keep track of them over time.

Analyzing statistics is particularly important because you should strive to take an Agile/Lean approach to blogging. When you try something out—a new type of article, a new style of headline, changes to the layout, anything really—you need to validate your hypothesis. You assume that a change (or perhaps a ...

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