As much as I try to I just can't shake my Obsessive Statistics Disorder. So I decided to make something good out of it. For those of you who do not know what I'm talking about, here is my confession.
Monitoring your statistics can help you improve the overall "Jump" factor of your blog. While you want your visitor to jump around as much as they can within your blog, you don't want them to jump out of your blog as fast as they can.
Jumping Around
People like to click, it's a reflex action that has made a few online companies billions of dollars. There is a lot of power in a click - it's how we utilize it is that counts the most. If you provide your visitor easy navigation within your blog/site itself, then your chances of them staying are greatly increased.
Not everybody likes to comment, read why, so when they reach the end of your post or page and no discussions are going on they will look for an exit. This is where you need to provide them enough reason to stay on. Maybe provide a few related articles, WordPress has plugins for that, or suggest some yourself. If you want to take it a step further have your sidebar formatted in such a way that your "Categories" or "Recent Posts" show up parallel to the end of most of the posts you write {sometimes you may write longer posts which is fine, don't worry about them}. Because when related content is within plain sight it's easier to just go to it and click, rather than scroll.
Jumping Out
This is when you actually want a visitor to leave your site, while leaving some cash behind. Monitoring your statistics to find out your most popular posts is a good way to target your advertising to visitors.
Monetizing your blog or site couldn't be easier than it is today. Stuff like this didn't exist when I was 18 - when I had no commitments, otherwise I would be rich beyond my wildest dreams right now. Oh well! At least my kids will know what to do.
As I was saying if you take into account your most popular posts and try to calculate at least 10% of your visitors clicking on Ad or an affiliate link then you can make some pretty good money. The trick is to make them actually click on an Ad instead of the links in your post, or worse not click anything at all. Search engine queries are known to convert well into impulse clicks on Ads as people are in a "Search and Find" mode. So they want to find something and they need it quick.
If a specific post is long, keep the Ads at the top. If it's short, then keep it at the end. Don't put too many Ads, and keep them on topic if you are inserting affiliate links.
So have a look at your blog/site and see how Jumpy you are in both aspects. Just don't get OSD like me.
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