Top 5 Blog Metrics to Track for Growth and Success

Last Modified on January 22, 2025

Who needs endless metrics when 5 can improve your content?

This guide covers the top five blog metrics you need to drive growth and success, with detailed instructions for tracking and interpreting each.

Instead of exploring all the possible metrics to optimize your content, those in this post offer enough insights into how your content is performing, what your audience values most, and where you can improve.

These work whether you’re starting a blog or managing a content-heavy website. Here are the top 5 blog metrics:

1. Blog Traffic
2. Average Engagement Time (or User Engagement)
3. Key Events (aka Conversions)
4. SERP Rank Tracking
5. Growth with New vs Returning Users Insights

We’ll also briefly discuss additional metrics only as options to support deeper analysis.

Let’s get started!

1. Blog Traffic

Monitoring your blog’s growth and identifying areas for improvement all start with understanding how much traffic your blog receives.

Before getting too caught up in achieving high numbers, ask yourself these questions: Are you just starting with limited content, or is your blog already content-heavy? Are you operating in a narrow niche with naturally less traffic, or in a broader space where numbers can be higher?

Blog traffic refers to the total number of users ( both unique visitors and returning users) who view your blog. Traffic provides a foundational understanding of your blog’s reach and audience engagement.

How to View Total Blog Traffic

1. In the left navigation of your Google Analytics 4 account, click on Reports.
2. Go to Acquisition. 
3. Click Overview.

How to View Traffic per Post

1. From where we left off, expand the Engagement section.
2. Click Pages and Screens.
3. In the table, look for the Active Users column.

🚨Note: We’re using Google’s free demo account, which features eCommerce pages. The steps will remain the same for any GA4 property focused on blogging. If you have a blog page path such as www.abc.com/blog/example, you can type /blog in the search bar to include only your blog posts.

💡Pro tip:
– Establish Your Benchmarks: Before comparing to industry averages, focus on understanding your numbers. For example, determine how much traffic you typically generate with X articles per month.
– Identify Trends: Look for changes over time. A sharp decline in traffic might indicate a tracking issue or reduced interest in certain topics.

2. Average Engagement Time (or User Engagement)

How much time do visitors spend actively engaging with your blog posts? This metric provides a quick window into user behavior and reveals how long your content holds a user’s attention.

What Is Average Engagement Time?

In GA4, Average engagement time measures how long users actively spend on your blog posts (or any part of your site). It’s calculated as:

(Total time your website was in focus across all sessions) ÷ (Total number of active users)

This metric is derived automatically from the engagement_time_msec parameter in GA4.

How to Find Average Engagement Time:

1. In the left navigation, click Reports.
2. Expand the Engagement section.
3. Click on Pages and Screens. 
4. Locate the Average engagement time column in the table.

The benefits of using this metric are:

• Shows Content Effectiveness: It reveals how well your content retains users’ attention.
• Highlights Potential Issues: If long posts have low engagement times, it might indicate problems like uninteresting content, poor visuals, or bad formatting.

Advanced Tracking Methods for Engagement

Engagement can vary across different websites, so sometimes you may want to work with blog metrics beyond average engagement time and try techniques that help you better understand engagement. These techniques can also work with or improve average engagement time.

Some examples of these techniques are tracking when:

• A visitor scrolls to at least 75% of the page.
• A visitor clicks on a specific call to action button.
• A visitor spends 10 seconds on a specific section.

We cover all these topics in detail on our blog:

• Scroll Tracking: See how far users scroll on your pages.
• Click Tracking: Monitor interactions with buttons, links, or other elements.
• Element Visibility Tracking: Measure how long users focus on specific parts of your blog, such as text blocks, images, headers, CTAs, etc.

Practical Applications

Compare engagement time with post length. For instance, long posts with short engagement times may indicate unengaging content. Identify top-performing pages and examine these pages to keep users engaged to replicate their success.

3. Key Events (aka Conversions)

Key events track critical actions users take on your blog, such as signing up for newsletters, downloading lead magnets, or submitting forms. These are direct indicators of your blog’s impact on business objectives.

What Are Key Events?

In GA4, key events are events that you tag as conversions. For example, events like newsletter_signup or generate_lead can be marked to track how they contribute to your goals.

Why do conversions matter: 

• They tie directly to your blog’s success metrics, such as generating leads or building a subscriber base.
• Tracking them helps you identify which posts drive the most conversions.
• You can use this data to refine content and amplify high-performing posts.

How to Track Key Events

This applies only if you’re already tracking events. If you’re not, see our guide on Conversion Tracking in Google Analytics 4 (Key Events)

1. Go to Admin.
2. Find the Data Display card.
3. Click Events.

4. Toggle the switch on to mark an event as a key event.

To analyze key events for your blog, you can return to the Pages and Screens report, and filter the table by a Key event. This allows you to know which blog post contributed the most to which event.

In the Pages and Screens report: 

1. Find the Key Events column and click the dropdown arrow near All Events.

2. Select your Key event.

Practical Tips for Key Events

• Focus on high-performing posts and try to replicate their success.
• Use insights to refine underperforming posts by applying the successful strategies of top-converting content.

Naming Suggestions for Blog Key Events

Event Name	Purpose
newsletter_signup	Tracks newsletter subscriptions
generate_lead	Tracks lead captured via forms. This method is flexible and works for many types of forms, such as newsletter subscriptions, lead magnets, contact forms, etc. It’s a popular choice because it lets you combine all your lead events into one. You can then use event parameters or even the page path to identify which lead magnet the event comes from.
[lead_magnet_name]_download	Tracks specific lead magnet downloads

4. SERP Rank Tracking

If your post ranks at the top, it’s more likely to gain the traffic you’re aiming for.

One effective way to see if your blog posts are climbing the rankings or if they need improvement is by using a SERP rank tool. For example, Serprobot lets you check where you rank for keywords for free.

There are many keyword tracking tools available online, but most come with limitations. For instance, some tools only allow you to search rankings for specific countries instead of offering a global perspective.

Others limit how many keywords you can check at once, especially in their free versions. SERPRobot, however, stands out as a free alternative that provides insights into multiple keywords.

The only drawback with SERPRobot is that their server may experience high traffic, so you might have to wait a couple of minutes for your results. However, in most cases, the wait is short, making it a great free tool for bloggers and marketers.

How it works: 

1. Go to https://www.serprobot.com/serp-check. 
2. Type in your information.

🚨Note: if your boog is not region-specific, leave the Choose your region field as Global / US (www.google.com).

3. Enter your keywords. 

Note that you can enter up to 10 keywords. 

4. Check the verification box.
5. Click Check Serp Now.

Wait a few seconds to see detailed results, where you can check the position of your keyword and post compared to the top 10 search results.

5. Growth with New vs Returning Users Insights

If growth and retention are important to you, a simple and quick way to assess your position is by examining the New vs. Returning Users metrics.

New Users represent the number of individuals visiting your website or app for the first time. Returning Users refer to those who have visited your site or app at least once before.

The ideal balance would be an equal number of new and returning users. Of course, this is rarely achievable. However, your focus should be on increasing the number of returning users, as this metric is often too low.

In terms of percentages, a returning user rate of 30% is considered good. If it falls below 25%, you likely have a retention issue.

🚨 Note: Ensure you are looking at the correct date range. For content analysis, consider extending the period to 3, 6, or even 12 months, depending on your goals.

Two places where you can find these blog metrics:

• Retention report
• Explorations

For the Retention report: 

1. In the left navigation, click Reports.
2. Click Retention, under the Monetization.

For Explorations:

1. Click Explore in the left navigation.
2. Click the blank card with the plus sign + to start a new Exploration.

To add new and returning users: 

1. In the Variables pane, click the plus sign+, near Metrics.

2. In the search bar, type in your metrics. 
3. Select them.
4. Click Confirm.

5. Double-click your metrics to see their values in the canvas.

🚨Note: Adding dimensions works the same way.

You should now see the number of Returning users and New users. 

You can start digging deeper to uncover the factors driving these numbers.

For example, you can analyze blog metrics like Device category, Session source/medium, and Page-related dimensions to determine which posts are attracting specific types of users.

Here’s an example focusing on the device category:

🚨Note: We are using Google’s Merchandise Store demo account. Please assume that the shop page path represents a blog instead. For example, /shop/lifestyle should be interpreted as /blog/lifestyle.

To get insights for your blog posts, create an exploration with the following dimensions and metrics: 

Dimensions	Metrics
Page path and screen class (or query string)	Views
	Total users
	News users
	Returning users

Your exploration should look similar to this one: 

What insights can we get from this?

Pages like /shop/apparel/womens have a low number of new users (43) but a higher number of returning users(1428). This suggests that most of the traffic to this page comes from users who have visited it before.

This page could benefit from strategies like retargeting, email follow-ups, or personalized promotions to encourage even more repeat visits.

Pages with higher returning users, such as /shop/new, can benefit from targeted campaigns like loyalty rewards or exclusive offers to capitalize on repeat visits.

You can also use retargeting, as it usually costs less to re-engage existing users than to attract new ones.

6. Blog Metrics Bonus: Social Shares & Likes

Promoting your blog through social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Instagram can significantly increase traffic beyond organic search.

By tracking social shares, you can identify which content resonates most with your audience and use preferences and engagement patterns as factors for future posts on your blog to generate more traffic.

💡Pro Tip: By tracking social shares, you can:
– Identify Popular Content: By understanding which blog posts are most shared, you can replicate the success of popular content across other posts.
– Understand Platform Performance: Tracking reveals which platforms work best for promoting your content, allowing you to focus your efforts accordingly.
– Repurposing: Use high-performing posts to create similar content or repurpose it for other platforms and be more confident about generating engagement or conversions.

How to Track Social Shares

Using UTM Parameters

The best way to track social shares is by doing some preliminary work, which consists of adding UTM parameters to your URL before your blog post links on social media.

These tags will then allow you to recognize in your analytics tool, how often your posts were shared across social media platforms 

UTM parameters are custom tags added to your URLs. For example, a standard URL like www.yourblog.com becomes www.yourblog.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=share

utm_medium=share lets us know that a post’s link with this parameter was shared. 

🚨Note: We’re quickly going over an example using UTM tagging. If you’re struggling to make it work for you, see our guide on How to Track UTM Codes in Google Analytics 4.

Tracking Social Shares for Your Blog Posts

After tagging your blog post links and adding them to your social media share buttons, follow these steps to identify the most shared posts and analyze other metrics, such as average engagement time:

1. Go to Reports > Engagement> Traffic Acquisition.

2. Set the primary dimension to the Session source/medium, with these steps:

Click on the primary dimension with the dropdown arrow.

3. Select Session source/medium. 

4. Click on the plus sign + near the primary dimension.

5. In the search bar, type Page page path and screen class and select it from the list.

6. Back to the table, type share in the search bar to include only results from shared posts.

This way ensures that every shared link carries detailed traffic attribution, allowing you to identify shared posts and their performance.

Without UTM Parameters (Fallback Method)

Even if you forget to use UTMs (not recommended), you can still get insights into shared content by following the steps we went through previously. It won’t be ideal, but will do the job.

Summary

We’ve looked at the top five blog metrics to drive growth and achieve success for your blog.

We’ve also covered how to track these metrics and provided examples of insights you can use to attract more of the users you want and retain those you’ve worked hard to acquire.

If you need to understand your users’ behavior in more depth, you’ll find useful information in our guide: 11 Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Metrics To Better Understand User Behavior.

What techniques do you use to build a more engaging and successful blog? Let us know in the comments.