Delving into your Google Analytics can be daunting and confusing. It’s a phenomenal tool and incredibly accurate, but what if you’re only trying to understand the basics of your blog analytics? Here are 8 important blog statistics to know so you gain a basic handle on your blog’s traffic.

8 Blog Statistics to Know

Visitors – The number of people who have visited your blog in the past month.

Unique Visitors – The number of people who have visited your blog in the past month one or more times. If a dedicated reader visited your site every day for a month, for example, that person would only count as 1 Unique Visitor.

Pageviews – The total number of website pages and/or posts on your blog that have been viewed in the past month.

Bounce Rate – The percentage of people who leave your blog from the same page they entered on, without clicking to any other posts or pages. Higher bounces rates are typical for bloggers since most readers only come from the most recent post, and then click away.

Pages Per Visit – One visitor might view 5 different posts or pages on your blog during a visit. Another visitor might enter and leave from the same page. Pages per Visit is a calculation of the number of Pageviews divided by the number of Visitors.

Time on Site – The length of time a visitor stays on your site. The longer the time, the better.

Traffic Sources – Knowing which other websites and social platforms are sending the most traffic your way is invaluable insight. If you find out that, for example, you receive 4 times as many referrals from Facebook than Twitter, you’ll know where to dedicate more of your time.

% New Visitors – We all want to grow our blog’s audience. Keep an eye on your % New Visitors number as an indication of increased exposure. If you work a lot on SEO, you will likely see a higher-than-average number here.

Google Analytics is nearly endless with all the ways it shows data, but it is important to understand the basics of blog statistics first. Becoming comfortable with locating these 8 metrics in your reports will be a huge step in laying a strong foundation.

What blog metrics do you pay most attention to?