Comments on: Business Blog Benchmarks

By: Gab

Gab — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:40:02 +0000

Hey Jenn,

My pleasure on the comment – you start intelligent conversations and it’s fun talking to someone who’s got their thinking cap on :).

I hadn’t considered the metrics as a starting point for a conversation. That’s a good justification, so I have to concede that in those situations, you may be able to prompt action by bringing that stuff up.

p.s. Thanks for sharing the mini case study re usability v PVs.

By: Gab

Gab — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:15:57 +0000

“What about engagement measures? Three great measures of how engaged your traffic is include Bounce Rate, Time Spent on the Site and Number of Page views.”

I have to wonder at the usefulness of these metrics.

First, as Avinash Kaushik points out, engagement isn’t really a metric.

Second, the metrics of bounce rate, time on site and page views aren’t particularly actionable in and of themselves.

a) Because you don’t know why those metrics are that way. Are there lots of page views because you buried the contact page on some 5-clicks-from-home inner page? [Likewise time on site.]

b) Bounce rate is kinda like ‘daily visitors’ – so what? Are people more interested because they’re bouncing less? That said, this metric is probably more useful than the others, and I can see the argument opposite to mine (e.g. 95% bounce means that you’re not delivering what people are expecting – so connect the landers to the title/meta description better).

By: Kristen

Kristen — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:38:41 +0000

This post came at a really good time for me. Thanks so much for the benchmarks.

By: Forumistan

Forumistan — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:24:19 +0000

Great post about discussing realistic measures…

By: UtahSEO

UtahSEO — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:41:07 +0000

Oh metrics. They can be tricky, especially when a client has no idea if the metrics actually matter.

Show them the money. those are the metrics they like most.

By: Nick James

Nick James — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:22:17 +0000

Cracking article, Jenn. I’ve been back through the other parts of this series and all I can think is: Damn! I wish I’d written this (Or perhaps even had the foresight to think of writing it). Together it makes up a body of work essential to anybody starting out on a social media campaign, being of particular value to those of us entrenched in the practice of blogging, but still relatively new to running it as a feasible marketing tool for clients.
As you rightly point out, from a business point of view it isn’t about the ‘love of the writing’ but the ultimate financial return garnered from the amount of energy and time put into actually writing the blog. Unfortunately everything has to start somewhere and a slow start (which is only natural for a fledgling blog) can immediately be deemed a failure by business’s suffering a lack of understanding and expecting instant results.
Many thanks for this invaluable insight, Jenn. Can’t wait for the final part.

By: Toronto SEO Consultant

Toronto SEO Consultant — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:40:51 +0000

Good post Jenn! I think too many business blogs make the mistake of having comments enabled when they’re just not getting any visitors. This potentially throws off new visitors towards the quality of the blog, and hence can detriment any return visits.