How To Determine Your Most Popular Blog Post, Why It’s Important, and What to Do With This Insight

In life, when we do something that works, we tend to do more of that.

Your business actions should be no different. It’s vital to understand what actions you take in your business that work, and determine why they work.

Armed with that knowledge and insight, you will be ready to replicate it and do more of what works.

This article will focus on determining your most read blog articles so you can get more traffic to more of your posts.

First, Let’s Find Your Most Popular Blog Post?

I recently asked the members of my Facebook PetSttingOlogy Training group (reserved for those who have used/are using any product or service I offer) this question:

What is your most popular blog post from the last 30 days?

(Credit is given to the brilliant Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net for this question.)

Why is this question so important and valuable?

It’s always important to understand the Analytics of your website, in general, so you are aware of what’s working, what’s not, and how your visitors are interacting with your website.

The best way to begin to do this is via Google Analytics. (I have an upcoming training session scheduled on this very topic, so stay close for that announcement.)

What should you do with the knowledge of seeing your most popular blog topic over the past 30 days?

Once you are able to determine WHICH article of yours received the most traffic, it’s now time to determine WHY.

Think about why that particular post may have drew the most readers.

Here are a few possible reasons:

• You shared it via social network.
• You sent the link out to your email list?
• The article got shared by others, increasing the page views.
• The topic itself was interesting enough for people to click over to read it (do more of that topic from a different angle).
• You created a relevant, exciting, and intriguing blog title that drew more interest your way?
• The article land organically high in the search rankings (determine what you can replicate technically… IE nice word count, use of images or videos…)

RELATED: How to Create The Perfect Blog Post in 8 Steps [Checklist]

How to Discover Your Most Read Blog Post Through Google Analytics

First things first, obviously, you’ll want to make sure you have Google Analytics (G/A) installed on your website.

You do this by creating and accessing your G/A account though http://www.google.com/analytics.

From the main screen, choose your website profile. Now, look at the menu options running down the left side of the screen.

Choose Behavior > Site Content > All Pages

By default, you will be viewing results from the previous 30 days. If you would like to see stats for any other selection of time, you can adjust the calendar view from the top-right area of your screen.

Do not be surprised if you see your most visited pages including your Home page, Services page, or Pricing page. This is normal and expected.

For the sake of this article, however, we want to determine your most read blog post. So look through your list until you see a blog article listed.

That is your most read article from the last 30 days.

What You Can Do With This Insight

Once you determine your popular blog post from the past 30 days, you can use that knowledge to replicate what worked and do it again.

If the topic itself resonated with your audience, create more posts on that topic.

If the title got attention, create similar titles to attract more visitors your way.

If it got shared on social media, take the same approach with your next blog post.

The idea is to determine what is working so you can do more of that.

And the way you get to the bottom of that is to view and understand your statistics through Google Analytics.

Over To You

Please post your follow up questions in the comments below. Need further understanding or insight into Google Analytics? Stay close for my upcoming training and leave a note below.

Also, post a link to your most read blog article below so we can enjoy it, too, and together we can determine WHY it worked so well.