Continuing our discussion of things you could be doing right now to improve your blog, today’s tip is:
5. Check your metrics for “hot posts”
One of the tasks that I build into my own blogging on a monthly(ish) basis is to dig into Google Analytics. I do a number of things while digging in but one simple task that can have significant impact is to look for “hot posts”—posts that attract a higher rate of traffic than normal posts.
Most blogs have a few hot posts in their archives, and they’re not always the ones you’d expect. These posts are real opportunities—there are people viewing them and chances are that once they do, they then disappear never to return.
Once you’ve identified your hot posts, think about how you can optimize them. You might put a bit more time into optimizing them for SEO, you might want to think about how to hook visitors of that page into subscribing, or you might want to even think about promoting a product (yours or someone else’s) from that post. Really what you do will depend upon your goals.
Does your blog have hot posts? And have you optimized them?
