Been using Google Analytics a lot lately and thought I would share with you a quick tip on some data I like to look at often for measuring progress on my blogs. As you are aware one of the most important standards we hold ourselves by as Bloggers is that “following” factor. How big is our following?

Traditionally this has been measured by the number of total RSS subscribers we have. While this can be a telling metric, it’s not the only measurement to look at when measuring your Blog’s true following. That’s where the Returning Visitors metric comes into play. It’s easy to analyze this data in Google Analytics. Let me break it down for you.

Segmenting All Visits vs. Returning Visitors

One of my favorite features inside Google Analytics is the quick and easy ability to create segments of your data on the fly. This is important when you want to see metrics based of certain types of data. For example it’s nice to be able to see all your Google Analytics data just from Organic Search Engine Traffic. This is just one example as there are many segments already built into your Google Analytics account.

Here’s what you do. Locate the Advanced Segments dropdown located near the upper right hand corner of your Google Analytics interface. All Visits should already be checkmarked, now add a checkmark to the Returning Visitors option then click the Apply button.

After letting Google Analtyics take a second to think, you are now presented with your main dashboard for Google Analytics only this time there is some new data. First you are given a graph that compares All Visits for a given time period vs. Returning Visitors for that same time period. Here’s what it looks like…

What is this data telling you?

Basically you can see the difference between your overall traffic and your returning visitors. These returning visitors metrics give you an idea of visitor loyalty or in other words because this is a blog we are talking about, your following! You can see from this particular data I am showing you that even though the total unique visitors is around 1,000 per day, my true following is somewhere around the 200 per day mark. Pretty interesting huh? Therefore I am going to assume that my blog’s following is somewhere around the 200 person mark and I am going to make some actionable plans toward increasing that to 250 or 300.

A Few Things You Should Know

First that the data you are comparing is Visits to Visitors. Meaning that the total number on top is All Unique Visits while the Returning Visitors number is reporting Visitors. This is what makes this report so good. You get a direct idea of your true following based on a Visitor level.

Second this is not the only way to measure your blog’s following. Another metric to take into account is your RSS subscriber list. Depending on the nature of your blog, you could have a majority of your followers subscribed via RSS or little to none at all. It all depends on the content and vertical market you are writing in.

Overall I find this to be a great way to get a pulse on the type of following I have. Remember that once you setup this Advanced Segment now you can go through and pull any type of Google Analytics report and it will continue to measure these two segments. So if you want to go to Traffic Sources >> Keywords you can see what keywords your returning visitors are using to re-enter your site. Pretty interesting. For more helpful information on how to take full advantage of the Google Analytics application I highly recommend RSS subscribing to the official Google Analytics Blog.