One of the aspects of keep your blogs healthy is analyzing your web traffic. Just as important as knowing how many people are visiting your blog is knowing how long they are staying. Are they just passing by, or staying on and reading more than one page?

Google Analytics has a report under All Reports/ Content Optimization/ Content Performance called "Length of Visit". This report is an extremely valuable measure of the health of your blog. It's worth taking snapshots of this graph over time. But the value of this graph is defined by your own goals. Are you looking for tons of transient traffic, or a solid group of loyal readers? Or both?

Regardless of your traffic goal, your "length of visit" graph will be a great indicator of how close to that goal you are. Keep in mind that for a new blog without a lot of traffic, the majority of your visitors will probably only stick around for 30 seconds or less. So the majority of your visitors will be at the left of your graph. (The example below only shows just over a week of data during the Xmas season, so it's not a true indicator of the blog, but it gives you an idea.)


Over time, your graph should flesh out as visitors stay longer and read more than one page. Some ways of promoting such behaviour is making a good impression, writing catchy but non-cryptic headlines, informative content, and balancing longer entries with shorter ones.

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