Google Analytics gives us some great information about the pages that people visit on our blog in the pages visited report. Learn how to take action on it.
Google Analytics is a treasure trove of actionable data! Today, let's talk about what we can do with the pages visited report.
Using the Google Analytics Pages Visited Report
Your Google Analytics Pages Visited report will give you many actionable ideas. Here are the ones we'll talk about.
- Blog post format and topic ideas
- Optimize posts for income
- Check posts on mobile
- Landing and exit page actions
Blog Post Format & Topic Ideas
Review your top 25 or so posts. Take note of the type of post and the subject.
Some examples of post types are inspirational posts, tutorial or how-to posts, list posts, resources posts, checklist or cheat sheet posts, review posts, and problem & solution posts.
Do you see more list posts or tutorials in your top 25? Write more of those types of posts.
Looking at the top 25 posts on my Cub Scout blog from the last year, some of the topics are similar. I see posts about skits, ceremonies, pocketknife safety, hiking, and games. This gives me some great content ideas for more blog posts.
Subjects are going to vary based on your niche, so spend some time looking for commonalities among your posts.
Optimize For Income
Another thing you can do with your most popular posts from the pages visited report is ensure they are optimized for income. Do you have affiliate links in those posts? Are there other products you could mention?
Could you highlight the products in a different way? Here's a screenshot from one of my blog posts. I have several posts about the Cub Scout Blue & Gold banquet, so I turned this into a reusable Gutenberg block so that it's easy to insert into them.
If you have an ad network, check with them for recommendations on how to optimize your posts for the highest revenue. My ad network is Mediavine, and they are THE BOMB!
On a post-by-post basis, Mediavine suggests longer content, shorter paragraphs, and more images. Do your most popular posts have that?
Another ad revenue recommendation for your blog in general is to have larger font and more space between lines.
Check Your Posts on Mobile
Not long ago, I was visiting my sister. She's not a blogger–just a regular internet user. She was reading something on her phone and said, “Evidently, some people never check their website on their phones because it's really hard to read on my iPhone.”
Mobile traffic is huge for most bloggers, but because we tend to do our work on a desktop or laptop, we don't look at our sites on mobile devices very often. But it's important!
Look at all of your top posts on a mobile device. Have your friends look at your top posts on their phones too. Do you have a popup that's covering part of the screen? You might want to change that.
What about your social share buttons? One of my pet peeves is when someone has their buttons on the side of the screen. It's aggravating when you can't read that side of the post because those buttons stay in the same place on the side.
You can add the Device Category secondary dimension to the All Pages report to show you how many pageviews you're getting on mobile vs. desktop.
Here's how you do that:
Start by clicking on Secondary Dimension. Then start typing Devices into the search field. When you see Device Category, click on it.
Actions for Landing and Exit Pages
Landing pages are the first page that someone visits on your site. You may hear folks who sell things talk about their landing pages, but they typically mean a sales page, not the first page someone visits on your blog.
For bloggers, our landing pages are like a first impression. Exit pages are the last thing a reader sees on our blogs before they click off. For both of these, make sure that they provide lots of value to your readers so that they'll want to stick around and read more of your content.
My friend Lynn Terry from Clicknewz talks about the next best click. The “next best click” is the best place your reader can go next–their next step. To figure this out, put yourself into your reader's shoes.
For example, my most visited post is one about where to put Cub Scout patches on the uniform. If I'm the reader who is visiting that post, I'm probably sitting there with a needle and thread in my hand. And if my readers are anything like me, it's probably an hour before my Cub Scout needs to wear the uniform with the sewn-on patches.
So, my readers need a fast way to sew on patches. Luckily, I have another post that shares a super easy way to sew on patches. That's the next best click for readers, and I tell them to “check out the easiest way ever to sew on Cub Scout patches!”
Think about what the next best click is for each of your top landing and exit pages. Make sure you include the link and tell them why they should click over.
If you give them a compelling reason, they'll visit more pages on your site.
What have you done with the pages visited information from Google Analytics? Let me know in a comment.
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