Not a lot has changed with the blog since last week. I’m trying to average one post a day, or 7 posts a week, in other words. Coming up with unique topics is proving harder than I thought. This actually reaffirms my decision not to try to go too hard on a niche blog. You might consider this a niche site since my focus is on being somewhat of a financial independence blog, but I tend to want to write about a lot of other things too.
These other topics might not be interesting to everyone, and they’re definitely not targeted or focused, but I think they represent me better as a real person, rather than someone just writing to monetize.
Are personal blogs even relevant anymore? Is there a benefit to having a specific financial independence blog?
To that end, it’s probably a little counter productive. The niche blogs tend to get the most traffic, but only because they are targeting a specific type of reader and then exploit monetization tactics. While I do intend on monetizing some day if the site sees traffic, it’s really not my goal.
As I’ve said before, my hope in creating a general blog about my life, with a focus on financial independence, is that readers from all around will find a use for some, or many of my articles. My goal is to have broad, valuable content. I want readers readers looking for financial guidance to stick around even though it’s not specifically a financial independence blog. Similarly, I aim to be destination for people looking for amusement and general life stories as well.
Ok, ok, I think I’ve beaten the dead horse enough.
Getting started with Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools and Sumo
Blogs whose goal is to attract readers need to focus primarily on content. In the old days of search, there were some pretty basic and easy ways to game the system and get indexed on search engines. Those days are long gone. Search engines like Google are incredibly complex, governed by sophisticated algorithms and petabytes of data.
While there is still value in targeted writing, such as focusing on keywords, search engine optimization, landing pages, and ad campaigns, ultimately content is king. Content doesn’t have to be particularly elegant or earth shattering. It just needs to be written so it is readable, has a general theme, and provides some kind of substance.
My streams of consciousness are usually focused on a broad subject. Many of my posts cover a wide range of topics. If I were a little smarter, I’d divide these posts into organized sections, or, better yet, individual posts, focused on specific keywords. While keywords make sense to me, I think they can sometimes alienate readers… especially the types of readers I’m trying to target.
I want people to visit my site and find a person writing his thoughts and experiences down. I don’t want them to visit and feel like they’re walking into a room full of billboards and advertisements.
Nevertheless, if readers is the end goal, then there are quite a few tools to see how people find your site and interact with it.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the king of user/reader data. Setting it up in WordPress is a snap. Once you have a site running with WordPress, there are a variety of plugins you can download to integrate with Google Analytics.
The first step is to head over to the Google Analytics web site and create an account if you don’t already have one. The interface is fairly intuitive and easy to follow. From there, Analytics will ultimately provide you with a JavaScript tracking code to paste into your site’s header. If you have access to your site’s actual HTML this is super easy to do.
Integrating Analytics without access to your site’s HTML
If you don’t have access to your site’s HTML, Analytics also provides a key for you to use with various plugins. I for one use a plugin called Sumo to manage my Analytics affiliation. Sumo does lots of cool things, including tracking reader clicks on the page, how far they’ve scrolled, and it even has software for reader retention, such as mailing lists and exit screen alerts.
I will get in depth on Sumo in another post, but since I always use Sumo on my blogs regardless, it seems like the easiest way to also integrate Analytics. Once you have Sumo installed as a plugin for WordPress, just continue to its setup/configuration screen and there will be an intuitive step-by-step guide for how to integrate Google Analytics.
From there, Google Analytics will provide you with more data than you know what to do with. It will report (anonymous) data about the cities/countries your readers are coming from, what keywords or search engines they are finding you through, how long they spend on each page, the browser and device they were using… the list goes on.
Google Analytics is invaluable.
Sumo
I already mentioned Sumo above and I’ll write an article specific to it at a later date. The reason it shows up second in this list is because you should already have a Google Analytics account before you actually go about setting up Sumo. It just makes things easier that way.
Sumo is a wonderful tool that integrates perfectly with Google Analytics and provides a lot of usability features of its own. After I found out about Sumo, I realized that the vast majority of my favorite blogs were also using it. There must be a reason!
Google Search Console
Google Search Console, formerly known officially as Google Webmaster Tools is a nice addition once you have the above two items set up. It can take a significant amount of time for the search console to really prove useful, but once your site gets traffic, you’ll see how great it is.
It’s best to get it set up early so that it can start tracking your readers from your site’s infancy. Google Search Console specifically monitors the keywords and queries that are causing your site to show up in search results.
For example, if this were a post about how to create a financial independence blog (which it sort of is), I could see in search console whether that specific set of keywords/query was causing my site to get listed. More importantly, it shows the CTR (click-through rate) of viewers who actually do see your site listed. And then the icing on the cake: it shows where in the search results your site shows up: first 10 results, first 60, first 1,000, and so on.
It will take some time for your site’s pages to get indexed and interpreted by Google’s web crawlers, but once it does, you’ll be amazed at the kinds of keywords and queries your site is showing up for.
Blog Status
So those are the 3 things I implemented this week. I’ve actually had Analytics set up for a while now. Sumo was set up a few days ago, as you may have noticed from the social icons that are now featured on the page, as well as the offer to subscribe to my newsletter and receive new post updates in your e-mail.
I’m now officially indexed on Google as well, so I’m hoping to see some cool stuff in the Google Search Console in the days ahead.
Readers: few and far between.
I’m not concerned about readers at this point. I mean, of course I am, but I am certain readers will arrive at the site organically once Google understands better the type of content I am providing.
Monetization goals: none yet.
For anyone else looking to start their own blog, I hope this is somewhat helpful for some basic steps to get started with reader analytics.
Thanks for reading!