One question I get asked all the time by clients is “How can I make my blog as effective as possible?” The answer lies in Google Analytics. As you may know, Google Analytics tracks a wealth of knowledge that can be used to create a variety of customized reports revealing a lot of interesting and valuable information about a website or blog through how it’s used.
Creating a custom report using any of the dimensions available through Google Analytics can quickly provide a picture of traffic flow. Take Day of the Week Name and Hours, for example. Utilizing these as the Dimensions, you are able to see what days as well as hours of that day are the busiest for your website.
Blog posts, of course, are a great way to create and add new, searchable content that can attract attention – and traffic – to your business or organization. By analyzing the data in the custom report we just created, we can see, say, that your website is busiest on Fridays at 3pm. Why then would you want to post your new content at 2am on Sunday? Why not utilize the information you gather to maximize content timeliness and value for your readers?
The most active days for one of my clients are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, ranging from 10am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm. So by posting their blog articles around 10am or 2-2:30pm he’s able to maximize the number of readers he can reach with his blog postings and increase their time on his site with fresh content that keeps them engaged.
By not posting your content when it has the greatest chance of being seen and read, you risk it getting lost in a slew of other fresh posts from other people.