How you write your posts and its content is really important! But so are the pages on your blog! Did you realise that visits to your pages can be higher than your posts?
But when was the last time you audited your pages and made improvements? Especially your ‘About Page’ since this is where new readers find out more about you, your blog and decide whether to subscribe to your blog.
Conducting Page Audits
The key with any page on your blog is to focus on:
- Is the page relevant/useful for readers? – if not remove or improve!
- Is the page title meaningful to readers?
- Is it engaging and provide sufficient information to be of value to your reader?
- The best location for the page link – Should it be at the top of the blog or a link in the sidebar?
One option for auditing pages is to use Google Analytics data to help guide improvements.Here is how I’ve done this on my blogs, The Edublogger and this blog.
Below is comparison of the rank of each page in terms of top content viewed on each blog, by pageviews, for the last 6 months:
My conclusions are:
- Readers priorities are helpful tips and resources on The Edublogger – not surprising
- My ‘Blogs I read’ page receives the most pageviews on my personal blog – surprising given the link to the page is in the sidebar only
- Checking out my ‘About page’ and ‘Other Sites’ are a high priority for readers of my personal blog
- My page ‘Want automatic notification?‘ which explains to readers how to subscribe to my blog has poor pageviews on both blogs
Improvements made are:
- Updated both ‘About pages’
- Updated ‘My Other Sites‘
- ‘Want automatic notification’ page obviously not working probably because new readers don’t understand its relevance. This has been renamed ‘Info for First Time Visitors’ and includes more helpful tips
- Have added a Contact page to my personal blog
Another option for auditing pages (better option) is to get readers to review your pages and provide feedback.
If you have time would love feedback on my different pages, especially My Other Sites and Edublogs Help Info!, in terms of is the information relevant, meaningful, engaging – what improvements would you recommend?
FINAL THOUGHTS
Here are resources to help you work with pages and Google Analytics:
- Differences Between Blog Pages and Posts
- Have You Set Up Your About Page?
- Changing Your Display Name and Setting up your Comment Avatar – makes it easier for readers to write more personal comments
- Setting Up Google Analytics on Your Blog
- The Basics of Using Google Analytics
This was part of the Day 5 Task for Building a Better Blog. If you would like to join us in Building a Better Blog – there is plenty of time. Start whenever and do it at your own pace!
Sue Waters 
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