I’m a big fan of Dashboards in Google Analytics (GA). A dashboard can give you quick access to monitor sections of your website or track an advertising campaign. The options are endless, and you can share dashboards seamlessly between views. Handy, especially if you monitor several websites or in my case dozens! Here is one of my free Google Analytics Dashboards that I’m sharing for tracking blog performance.

Dashboard – Blog Performance

To get started, you’ll need to first add the dashboard to your desired view. GA makes this very easy. Make sure you’re logged into Google, then click the share link below:

https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=gACSIyfhTk-UhJA9zsB_Sw

Next, you’ll need to locate the url of blog or news section of your website, then edit each widget to include that url. If you have a website with the blog in a subdirectory (like I do, “/sem-blog/”), then you’ll need to edit that filter. If you’re blog is your homepage, then you may just remove the filter in each widget. Below are some screenshots to guide you.

Setup Screenshots

What Metrics Are Used to Track Blog Performance?

The blog performance dashboard is setup to give you insights to how well your content is reaching people and the quality of that traffic. It measures real-time users, real-time top content, real-time Pageviews, top content for date range by titles, locations by date range (global and US), quality of visit, and real-time traffic sources. Try “cloning widgets” and adding a few new ones to meet your needs, but remember there is a 12-widget limit on dashboards in Google Analytics.

Now that you’ve gotten started with dashboards, try creating your own to suit your needs. There are literally thousands of options, but if you want to get some ideas, then check out the Google Analytics Demo account. There’s also a library of shared dashboards available through Google. Happy monitoring!