Are readers enjoying your blog?

You have finished posting an initial burst of blog entries. Now you start to wonder about the perception of your blog. Are readers interested in my blog? Do they think it is good and worthwhile? Are my blog entries too much about me and less about the readers? How does my blog compare to others?

Following are five simple ways to measure the quality of your blog.

1. Number of comments per blog entry – Only quality blogs evoke user responses. If readers took the time and effort to comment on your blog, then it means that they found your blog entry to be of high quality. The following link, lists the overall statistics for our blogs. You should aspire to top the list in terms of the number of comments per blog entry (calculate this by dividing “comments” by “Entries”.

2. Rating of your blog entries – Your blog ratings should give a general sense of the attractiveness of your blog. The more ratings you have, the more accurate this becomes. Obviously, you want ALL your readers to give you rating; you should strive to deserve that with your writings. In any sport, it’s hard to play your best shot if your eye is fixated on the score board. While you should be focused on playing the game well, keeping an eye on the score board from time to time might not be a bad idea.

3. Number of Repeat visitors – Besides your closest friends, are you getting a good number of repeat visitors? Did all the readers who commented on your previous blog entry came back to comment on your current blog entry? Just as in business, there is nothing more indicative of quality than repeat clientele.

4. Number of New visitors – Are you seeing comments from a few new faces with every new blog entry? Good blogs spark conversation among people. If that conversation and word-of-mouth is happening for your blog, you would find a trickling stream of new readers for your blog. (Also see 9-ways to build your blog readership)

5. Number of websites that link to you – While this is tricky to measure, it is a solid metric to evaluate the value of what you write. There are innumerable blogs, forums and websites in the internet today. If you write something valuable, it will be picked up and linked to. You should consider every incoming link (external websites that link to your blog) as a badge of honor and a strong indication of the quality of your content.

Your blog is your brand. It says a lot about you. It defines you in some ways. Constantly keeping an eye on the above five quality metrics and using it to improve your blog is the sure fire way to build a killer brand for your blog.