Knowing it is half the battle

I live and breathe web analytics at work so I don't know why it took so long for me to think of putting Google Analytics code on Faraway, So Close, but as of yesterday, we're fully tagged! Comcast Interactive is an Omniture shop, but Google Analytics, somewhat simplistic though it may be, is free and oh so easy to set up.

I was surprised at how excited I was to see it working. I remember feeling the same way when we transitioned Comcast.net to Omniture's SiteCatalyst platform last year. It is very gratifying to see these tools tell us about the people who visit our sites.

Since last night, Faraway, So Close has a respectable bounce rate of 50%! I would think that's especially good for a blog. Of course we've only logged three visits and three page views. So much for engagement. Guess I better keep posting fresh content. Got to build that readership so I can kick the monetization strategy into high gear.

One surprise: in terms of referring traffic, 50% of our traffic today has come from organic search. Someone visited the Tom Turkey's Disguise post from a Google search results page. Sure enough, we rank fourth in Google's organic search for the term "Tom Turkey's Disguise."

If you are interested in learning more about how people are responding to your blog, click here. It's as simple as signing up for an account, having their site generate some code and pasting it into your HTML template. Then go back to the GA site, login and start generating reports, analysis and insight! Fun stuff!