Introduction

The analysis of data gives decision makers information on patterns and trends. This data leads to strategic decisions, plans, and adjustments.

Data is a very important part of life. It is how marketing works and how trends and predictions are made.

In the month of June 2020 I have decided to track daily. I have attached my blogging stats spreadsheet for you to freely download below. Actually, I have created two versions of this spreadsheet. One that includes columns for those of you who are running Wordads. Both are free to download and are towards the bottom of this post.

Before that

I explain

• my story,
• what the WordPress.com stats page looks like and I provide a brief explanation of what the different numbers represent.
• June 2020 – I want to track my stats daily in June 2020 and I have created a spreadsheet that I want to share with you all – details below. But, don’t just go straight there for the tracker, read stuff in between because it will make your tracking more meaningful.

It is important to understand what is being tracked and what it means. Only then can we make informed choices and decision. Tracking should not be a burden, or a stress. It is a fact finding mission to understand and explore. It should be carried out light heartedly and seen as learning opportunity. It should also be understood one months of data may not be enough to see a true picture. No two months are the same. No two years are the same. And 2020 let us face it is …..!!!

I will prepare and some day my chance will come – Abraham Lincoln

WordPress.Com Stats and Insight Pages

WordPress.com is great it gives us a lot of statistic and insights from which we can create our data analysis. Allowing us to plan, create strategies, and blog smarter. It allows us to make changes to our approach and create space in our timetable. And as the American’s say create “the biggest bang for your buck! “. We all put a lot of effort into our websites and blogs, and if you have been blogging long enough you know it is hard work. But we love it. However, if we can be smarter, image!

Below, are a few screenshot of my data as at Wednesday 27th May 2020. At the point of writing this I had only one blog post – posted (Meditation day 27).

WordPress.Com allows you to see your data broken down into Days, Weeks, Month and Year. But, as the day’s progress into months, you no longer have sight of January daily figures for example.

How to get to your WordPress.com Stats page.

Click on My Site and then Stats both should appear on left hand side of the screen on your laptop/mobile.

By default you will be taken to the Traffic page first.

Traffic Page

What do these stats means? What is views vs a visitors?

• A view is counted when a visitor loads or reloads a page.
• A visitor is counted when we see a user or browser for the first time in a given period (day, week, month).

Referrers

This sections list what website are driving traffic to your blog / wordpress.com site. This effectively hrlos you to see if your SEO strategy is working. Is all the effort your making on Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and facebook working.

Post and Pages

This show which of your posts and pages are being accessed. Obviously, you will expect today’s fresh post to do well. But, you will see that other older post are doing well.

Why is useful? Think about it?

None of our posts should be one time wonders. We should get some mileage from each and every post.

What do I mean?

This data gives you an idea of what people are reading and looking for. Which mean they are good candidates for promotion. Promote the post that appear here on your social media. That is , Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. But, never be spammy. Think of what the hast tag #ThrowBackThursday is doing? Bring attention to an old but golden post of your.

I have written two post regarding social media.  One on Tweetdeck a free twitter scheduler and one on Pinterest.  I will include the links to towards the end of this post.

Country

As the title suggest which are the countries visiting your blog /website the most. How can you use this data? It can help you decide what time to post, or make a post for a National holiday in that country. For example, Mothers Day in the UK is March and the rest of the world it is in May.

Insights Page

This page gives you a summary of a lot data. For me the most interesting section is below. WordPress.com calculation figures out for you the best day and time to post. This means this the day and time that most people are accessing your website. NOTE: this can change!

Secondly, Tags and Categories, Which of your tags and categories are being most accessed. This might be useful, for you when you write your post which tags and categories to use. But, it must fit the post. Don’t stuff the post with tags and categories it must be relevant – if not search engines etc will think you spammy!

I encourage you to get familiar with all the definitions. The best way to do this through wordpress.com official support page on the subject.

Click here to find out the definitions from wordpress.com. WordPress.Com support article goes into much more detail. I have just pu

Ads Stats

You will only have this page if you are running WordAds on your site. I will not go into detail on this, as those who are running adverts will know what the figures mean. If not here is the link to the wordpress.com support document on this.

My Story

In 2016 when I started blogging I tracked weekly the number of followers I had in each platform. I did this for 4 months from May to August. Then I totally forgot about tracking blogging statistics.

Then in December 2019, I decided to track my monthly view, visitors, referrers, etc to see if I could figure out a pattern of what is working what is not. This made me realise that monthly tracking is too high level, it doesn’t give me the ability to see the detail.

This is what made me decide for the Month of June 2020 I would track daily and see if I can figure out different patterns and trends, which will help me blog smarter and better.

I think I might have to track daily until Dec 2020 or until July 2021 or longer. Because the more data you have the more you can pivot and create different charts. No two months are the same, nor are the years. Anyway, let see if I can handle daily in June!

June 2020 – Daily Tracking

I have created a Blog Stat tracking spreadsheet that has two tabs.

• One to track the blog post title and how it is doing, as well as post that people are searching for in Google or elsewhere. ** 18th June 2020 – I have revised this page as the original page did not work for me.
• The second tab to only track numbers.

I hope to then use the second tab to create pivots and graphs so that I can see what is working and what is not allowing me to be smarter when I post a blog post.

Tip: Record your daily statistis on the next day for the previous day. May be at lunch time or in the evening.

Exciting news I am including my spreadsheet here for you to download for free.

Giveaway – Free downloads

I created my spreadsheet for June 2020 and I thought it would nice to share it with you all.

You may also wish to track daily. Below is a screenshot of what it looks like.

I have also created a second version of the spreadsheet for those who want to track wordads.

The spreadsheets are free to download and the links are below. I am suppling you the Excel spreadsheet, allowing you to modify as you see fit.

Before or after downloading the spreadsheets, maybe you could consider making a small voluntary payment to support this blog? No force. Thanks in advance.

Happy Tracking – it will be lovely to know how you get on.

18th June 2020 – I have revised sheet one of the original spreadsheets created in May 2020. I include them here if you prefer to use this. I wrote a blog post on why I made these changes click here to read.

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