Blog Audit Challenge 2020
Welcome back for the final month of challenges for the Blog Audit Challenge 2020!
I hope you did well with the November challenges. Remember to link up your progress reports in the Link Up on the 5th December.
Each month we'll concentrate on a different area of our blogs.
Life is strange for most of us this year with Coronavirus, Lock-downs, etc... If you fall behind with the monthly tasks don't worry. Just catch up when you can. This challenge lasts the whole year.
The Challenges:
December- Know your stats
Monthly link ups
In order to keep us all on track, and give us a way to see each others progress, I'll be hosting link ups on the first Saturday of every month where participants can share their links and discuss their progress.
#BlogAuditChallenge2020
December Challenges
We did it! We're now in the home stretch. Thank you to those of you that have joined me in this adventure over the course of this year. This month we'll be taking a closer look at how we've progressed during the Blog Audit Challenge 2020.
You guessed it, our focus for December is on know your stats.
The December challenges:
1. Check your analytics
Whilst most blogging platforms have their own built in stats section where you can view pageviews etc... taking a more in-depth look at the analytics of your site can work wonders. Google Analytics is free to use and offers some great insight into the workings of your site. Check your stats with them here: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/
Yes pageviews are important. Increasing the traffic to your site should be one of your top priorities as a blogger. Having good traffic to your blog can be a great way to secure sponsorship and other benefits too so the higher the better.
Pageviews aren't the only stat you should be looking at though. Another important stat you should consider is the session duration of your visitors. How long are people staying on your site when they visit? Again, the higher the better. You want to keep your bounce rate to a minimum, and ideally have visitors clicking from one blog post to another... to another.
If you remember we discussed this back in the June challenges when our topic for the month was targeted to links. A good place to check to see what internal links are working on your blog is the "user flow" which will show you the post that brought the visitor to your blog and which posts they then clicked on from there up until they left your site. Once you do this you will then know which older posts you can improve to increase session duration for your site.
With analytics you can go further into demographics of your visitors, interests, location, the technology they use to view your site, and more. All of which is information you can use to improve your blog.
If you're new to analytics, or even if you've used it before, I suggest taking at least the beginners course offered by Google at Analytics Academy. It's completely free, doesn't take much time to do, and teaches quite a lot about the different elements of the analytics dashboard, why they are important and how to use them. You can even earn yourself a free certificate of completion to add to your CV. Here's mine:
2. Use your stats to plan for the new year
Where is your traffic coming from?
Which are your most popular blog posts?
Which are your least popular posts?
How can you improve your bounce rate and user flow?
Is your blog mobile friendly?
What worked? What didn't?
Use what you've learnt during the Blog Audit Challenge 2020 and from studying your blog statistics to build a solid plan for your blog for 2021.
3. Plan your content calendar for January
Map out the blog posts you intend to create for publishing to your blog in January so you can start the new year with a bang. You can of course, plan further months too if you wish.
Take into consideration information like "which days get the most traffic" when scheduling posts for publication.
Also consider how you promote your blog posts and use social media to build your blog brand. Think about what changes you could make, new sites you could try out, etc...
Free downloads: You can grab copies of all the extra materials for the Blog Audit Challenge 2020 for free here.
Save the Date!
The monthly link up post for sharing your December progress will be on January 2021.
16 comments
Thanks for sharing. I love your blog audits. X
ReplyDeleteI'm really pleased with the feedback from this years Blog Audit Challenge. I'm already thinking about what challenges to do for 2021.
DeleteReally impressed by your Blog Audit Challenge posts, Jo! I've been blogging for years but mostly on a very casual basis - I have a new site launching in 2021 which I'm trying to do more with, and I know these will really help me!
DeleteThat's great Jim! Congrats on launching your new site. I'm really happy my tips are useful for you.
DeleteI am such a poor blogger, I will confess that I am far too lazy. I'd rather spend the time reading ;)
ReplyDeleteYou're a great blogger!
DeleteI actually really enjoy learning more about blogging and marketing in general. It's interesting to me to see the new developments in technology both for websites, algorithms, and social media. I'm a bit of a geek. As technology a topic that is in constant evolution I always have something new to learn too.
This was such an excellent idea, and you kicked butt on it! Great job.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kate. I've had fun creating this blog audit challenge. It's all tasks I wanted to do for my own blog and I figured that others might like to join me in the challenge which is how it all started. I'm considering doing a social media related challenge for 2021 (liked back to blogging). I might do another blog audit challenge too though. I find the structure of doing a challenge like this helps to keep me motivated in doing the tasks.
DeleteThis is such a great idea
ReplyDeleteThanks Ashleigh. You're welcome to join in any time. Just hop back to the other monthly posts and catch up where you can/want.
DeleteYou did such a great job on this challenge and packed in a lot of valuable information for other bloggers!
ReplyDeleteThank you. I'm happy the blog audit was so useful.
DeleteJo, I am glad I can get back to these posts anytime as I dropped out of this challenge after the first couple of months.. and your google analytics certification reminds me I need to get back to completing mine... Thank you so much for the blog audit challenge and your resources; I hope to actually finishing it over the next few weeks.. (after the Cybils awards reading marathon is done)
ReplyDeleteYes definitely. Hop back through the challenge any time.
DeleteAre you planning to do a blog challenge in 2021?
ReplyDeleteI will be organising a new challenge for 2021. I'd really like to develop my social media presence more next year too and so may do a challenge targeted towards leveraging social media as well as improving blog results. I hope you'll join me
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