Marketing experts talk about conversions, Google Analytics lets you measure conversion goals but what conversion goals should you set for your blog?

Once you have defined your goals, you can track your performance in acheiving them. After that, work to improve with a little experimentation and a well-researched strategy.

Sales

Duh! No-brainer - if you sell online, this is the goal that matters.

If you don’t sell online but sell in a bricks-and-mortar shop you can still drive sales with your blog and measure them. Try giving out a printable coupon or discount code on your website and use that to track your goals.

Advert Click Throughs

So you don’t sell stuff but you show adverts. Cool, each click is a conversion and every ad network will let you measure your click through rate. A bit of internet research should reveal other people in your niche bragging (or complaining) about their click through rate, examine their sites and figure out what they do differently.

Feed Subscriptions

Those of us who do not sell online or show adverts still need goals to help us improve and getting more subscribers is an excellent one. Readers who use feed readers are technically savvy, often early adopters and opinion formers. Use Feedburner to measure the number of subscribers to your blog feed.

Comments

Bloggers love comments and interacting with your readership is one of the most important aspects of blogging.

Comment quality is an important factor too. It’s all too easy to get hundreds of spam comments but getting an inciteful conversation going with your audience can improve the quality of your writing. Another great goal.

Clicks To Other Articles

When a visitor comes across one of your pages do they stick around and read another of your posts or just jump straight back out again?

This metric is called “bounce rate” in Google Analytics and reducing it is one of the goals that I have for this blog.

Social Media Links

Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us allow users to share pages they have found all over the internet and can bring a significant boost to your traffic.

Consider each digg, stumble and bookmark and kind of conversion for your blog.

Personal Contact

If your blog has a contact form or you publish your twitter username then measure how often your readers actually use them to get in touch.

Get Measuring

You should have some ideas of what is an appropriate measurement for your blog so set up some spreadsheets and make some records of just how you are doing. When you find a weakness (and we all have them), there is a wealth of information out here on the net to help you improve.

Have I missed a conversion goal that you use? Leave a comment below.

CC licensed Rugby photo by Éamonn