Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
II
Figure 8.10 shows a typical clicks report. Although a valuable resource, it's missing a lot of context.
Ideally, you'd like to have clicks out divided up by blog post, so you can see what's happening to
users who visit a specific post.
Figure 8.10
See where
users get
their clicks on
your blog.
You can derive this kind of information yourself by matching up URLs to links out you've provided
in various blogs, and you can handle repeated links (such as internal links within your blog) by
carefully tracking and tallying totals over time. However, this would be a lot of work.
There's a positive way to look at clicks going out of your blog. Links are a fundamental part of the
attraction of the Web. If you're offering users links that they like to follow, that shows that they're
engaging with your content. (And, if you have set up links so that they open up in a new window,
as described in Chapter 5, “Taking Posts Further,” there's that much more reason to believe that
your blog visitors might be continuing to engage with your blog even after they click.)
In some cases, you're specifically encouraging your blog visitors to go to a specific link or links, and
in those cases, each click is a small victory for your blog.
In other cases, understand what might drive a visitor to click on an outbound link. If you've linked
to an interesting story or function, what was so interesting about it? Is there a hint there as to
something you might want to provide on your own blog?
