Once you've accumulated some posts, you'll be wondering who is reading them and how they found them. Here are some of my favorite ways of using Google Analytics to slice up details.
1. Home > Real time > Overview. Get a picture of what's going on right now using Google's relatively new "real time" reporting. This snapshot is from Arborwiki, showing 11 active visitors, 3 of which are looking at the popular "Birthday Deals" page.
2. Content > Site Content > All Pages. This example, again from Arborwiki, shows the top viewed pages over a user specified interval. If you've been at your blogging for a while, you may be surprised which old posts turn up on the top of the list.
3. Traffic sources > Search Engine Optimization > Queries. This report shows which search terms are being used to reach your site, and how frequently someone clicks through for the terms presented. It requires that Webmaster Tools be configured. Data from the Vacuum weblog; note the dramatic difference in click through rates, ranging from 0.04% to 9.00%, for the top query terms.
4. Content > Site Search > Search Terms. If you've properly configured your blog's on-site search engine to report details, you'll get a list of terms that people are looking for more information about. Again this data is from Arborwiki. I've used the "compare to site average" bar to look at search exits, and one page pops out from this: "Apartments" behaves much worse than the rest of the site. That's worth exploring.
Google Analytics has a near-infinite number of reports that could be constructed, and when combined with the filters in the system you can zero in on a lot of detail. That's unlikely to be as useful at the start at getting some overview of what's going on overall on your site.
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