During my session at Affiliate Summit East last week someone asked me about something I said. How can you use analytics to increase page views? There are multiple ways to do this, but the one I talked about is the easiest for anyone with Google Analytics to use and apply. By not using analytics you can include images with small text and say click here to view full image. Then have the image open on a new page and include a link back to the original page which increases your page views, but this one, in my opinion, is better off for the overall health of your site, the experience of the visitor and can be tested, tracked and grown without having to spend a ton of time or money on it.
You simply write the content you would normally do, set up your goals and then assign, apply and test them. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, below you’ll find clear instructions and examples of exactly how to do this. It can not only help you to monetize your traffic if you sell on pageviews and impressions, but it can also help to get people onto the content you want exposure for. This includes quality content like posts and infographics that can generate an increase in social sharing and backlinks if the right people find it.
How to Increase Blog & Website Pageviews Using Google Analytics.
1. Set up your quality content and resources to rank.
The first thing to do is to make sure you have interesting content to share. The content has provide a better user experience or a clear explanation for multiple posts and provide value to the posts you write about for this to work. It could be infographics, how to guides, detailed posts about a specific topic or even a dictionary or directory of definitions or explanations. Once you have these resources, keep a list of them. You can also have further deep links inside these resources. The deep links are what is going to be key to helping you increase pageviews using analytics and goals.
2. Create a list of these so you know what, where and how to reference them, and then measure if they are actual quality content.
By creating a list of the resources you can reference, you won’t forget about them and you can continue to measure the success of them. If you constantly drive traffic through references in newer posts, and it causes bounce rates or people leave quickly or to not share, you know that it needs tweaked or fixed or might not be a good resource (at least for that specific post). If people stay on it and look at it and share it then it is good content. If they look at it, read it or share it and then go back to your original post, you know it did it’s job if your goal is increased pageviews, and they are still interested in the original content which means your original post is also quality content for that specific visitor.
3. Now write your new blog posts or articles for your website.
Now that you have the resources lined up, begin writing your post. As you come across a topic that is confusing or interesting but needs more of an explanation or can help to enhance the experience of the current article, use the resource you created to explain it with a link to it. Sometimes your goal could be to link to that resource and have the person also click through to a second page into your site before clicking back. This is common with getting people to infographics or to get them to resources you want backlinks to. We’ll get into why this is important, how to measure, test and manage shortly. Once the article is written and you have referenced everything properly you are ready for the next step which is guiding your visitors through your goal paths.
4. Make sure to label the links with what to do.
Because your posts or infographics may be long or have a ton of information, let the end user know exactly where to go. You could say, click this link to read about blue widgets. The information is in the middle of the page or in section XYZ. You can also say “click this link to open a new tab so you can come back to this article if you need more information about blue widgets”. By telling the end user what to do and what will happen (i.e. you will open a new tab and on the new page, read paragraph 2) they know they can learn more and easily return to your original post. You could even have a further link in to explain something from that post…but each link further into your site provides a longer path and can stop people from completing your actual goal (coming back to the original post), unless that goal is to find the final piece of content.
5. Set up your paths for your goals in Analytics and assign a value and name to those goals.
Now take the different paths you want to send people through and set up goals and funnels in analytics so that you can measure them. Name the goals the same as the post or something that you can remember easily and as the resources you are linking to.
Next, set up the original url then the next url you link to. If you are going two deep, you can start with 1. Original URL 2. Reference Article 3. Infographic and then back to the original url for the final goal. If the ending goal in the example above is the infographic, not to return back to your original post, you can have the goal finish on that step. Then you need to assign a value to the goal and you’re done with this step.
6. Monitor for fall off and find out where it exists.
Now that your goals and paths are clearly marked and in theory tracking the users, watch as traffic flows through your site. If people fall off and don’t return to your original article (if that is your goal), create a new path, shorter path or remove the path and start trying to test new paths for your visitors. By knowing where they fall off, using in page analytics and heat maps, you can help to start to figure out where your visitors are clicking and make a better guess as to why they are falling off. You can then go in and tweak those pages or infographics to help decrease the fall off.
7. Test the fall off with shorter paths or different resources.
I already said what to do in 6, but it is important so I wanted to say it again. Test shortening paths, making them longer, tweaking the content or infographics on the paths and figure out where you can get the most pageviews while keeping people on your site and finishing going through your content. By constantly testing new things you can help to increase your pageviews and drive people to the main content you want shared or linked to.
Using analytics to increase pageviews on your website can be very easy to do if you have traffic and know how to use and read analytics. There are a ton of ways to do it and the strategy above can be a great one if you have the traffic because you can continuously test, edit and increase page views since you can gather daily or even hourly data. It can also help you to provide a better user experience, increase social signals for SEO and help you learn what your visitors (at least from the original referring post) think is good or bad content so you can tweak and adjust it.
