Measuring Online Content Using Google Analytics

I’ve written an article about measuring online content for the latest issue of Website Magazine.

A teaser:

“Many editors feel that once content has been created and uploaded, their job is done. That’s not true. If you don’t measure, you can’t analyze. If you don’t analyze, you can’t improve. And the easiest way to analyze is by implementing Google Analytics. It’s free, so there is no excuse not to use it. And, yes, it works for intranets, too.

Using Web analytics, you can measure the effectiveness of content. It is possible to measure how well the content is performing even for purely informational websites, including intranets, that are not supported by advertising or product sales.”

I suggest six things to measure in the article:

1. Readings per writer and writer impact
2. Page impact
3. Satisfaction
4. Time spent writing vs. reading
5. Unread pages
6. Cost per reading