Using Google Analytics to Target Guest Posts
April 22, 2010 by Jason · Leave a Comment
Carlos writes for Applied Analytics, where he tries to convince people that web analytics is cool by showing bloggers and small-business owners how to use it for their own nefarious purposes.
By now you should already know: writing guest posts is a key way of exposing you and your site to new readers and of getting some link love back to your site. And while there is tons of great information out there on how to land a guest post—most bloggers still miss a crucial first step simply because they don’t know that bloggers need web analytics to be successful.
How do you pick a good site to submit to? I’m going to show you how using some simple metrics from Google Analytics can give you a solid answer.
Here’s How it Works
First you have to read that blog/site over a certain period of time. Know the voice of the author, see what topics he/she is interested in, and read the comments to get a feel for the readership. But then you also have to comment on the site yourself. Liberally.
Don’t just do it for the sake of doing it—make sure you have something to say. As time goes on and your comments impress the other readers, some will start to click over to your site to see what you’re all about (especially if you’re the first comment on a post, which means you have to learn the blogger’s posting schedule). These users will leave a trail of data on your site which will tell you if a guest post is a good match.
All you have to do is know where to find it and how to read it—that’s where Google Analytics comes in.
Pick a long period of time (at least a month) and go to your Traffic Sources section and then to All Traffic Sources. This will show you where all your traffic is coming from. Now you want to pay attention to two key engagement metrics: bounce rate and time on site. No metric is perfect, but these two give you a good idea if people coming from the site you want to guest post on are a good fit. Do they stay for more than one page and if they do, how long to they stay?
Click on the comparison button on the top right and now you’ll get a cool look at how each
one of those sites compares to your site average.What do you see? Is Awesomeblog.com sending you people stay longer than your average traffic? Do they spend more time on the site? Less?
Here’s what the comparison chart looks like for one of my sites:
What it tells me is pretty obvious: BripBlap.com and FrugalDad.com are sites that send me “good traffic” in that they don’t bounce as much as an average visitor does. They actually send really good traffic—this is where I should submit a guest post.
Summing it Up
If the numbers are average and you really want to submit a guest post, go ahead. If they’re really good, then you’d be stupid not to. But if the numbers are terrible and you still want to send a guest post, don’t be surprised when you do and it does very little for you (except for the backlink).
You’ve just wasted a fair bit of time and you won’t benefit from half the reason guest posts are so great in the first place.
Image by Anonymous
Related Articles From Other Sites- A Different Sort of Guest Post
- 5 Tips to Get More People to Read Your Corporate Blog
- Call For Guest Posts
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March 17, 2009 by Jason · 12 Comments
One of the more time consuming posts for bloggers is the roundup post. A collection of link favorites seems easy enough to the untrained eye, but until you sit down to actually create a few of these posts you cannot appreciate the work involved.
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User Testing Provides Valuable Feedback
February 25, 2009 by Jason · 3 Comments
This is a guest post by WC, who is still in denial about the whole “You have to have a cool name to be a good blogger” thing. He stubbornly blogs about money and writing over at The Writer’s Coin.
If you’re a blogger—regardless of whether you’re starting out or have been doing this for a long time—do yourself a favor and bookmark Darren Rowse’s series on ProBlogger called 31 Days to Building a Better Blog.
That could be the end of this post and it would still be a fantastic tip. But since I’m here to give Jason’s readers as much value as I can (and because I love hearing myself talk), I’ll say a little bit more about this.
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