A good blogging practice that I encourage everyone to do is to evaluate your peformance as a blogger and the level of improvement you have done to your blog once in awhile. This will enable you to reflect on your performance, identify problems and device means to resolve them.How do you know whether your blog is peforming well? Here are the free tools that you can use to evaluate the performance of your blog.

  • Traffic Counter: The most common tool that bloggers use to evaluate their blog’s performance is their own Traffic Counters. Traffic counters vary from one blog to another but performs the same function. (e.g. To monitor the number of visits to your blog, length of visit and pageviews) In the case of my blog, I have been using Site Meter and Google Analytics to monitor my traffic performance.

    From the image above, you can see that my traffic since I have started my blog last month has significantly increased. If your blog’s traffic continue to improve, it could be an indication of progress. Traffic alone however is not enough to prove that a blog is performing well.


    The above data is the summary of my traffic as of today (July 29, 2007). The summary highlights two important aspects in my traffic, my visits and my pageviews. Based on my visits, Blogging Mix receives an average of 173 unique visits everyday and a page view of 323. Page view indicates how many times a unique visitor go over your pages.

  • Technorati: Technorati is another valuable tool for bloggers that can be used to evaluate the performance your blog. Technorati ranks your blog according to the number of links pointing to it. Technorati calls it ‘Blog Reaction’. As your blog reaction increases, your blog authority and blog ranking improves. Over the past two months, my Technorati blog reaction has reached 120, my blog authority is 2 and my blog rank is 2,510,968. There’s still a long way to go.
  • Feeds Subscriber: The number of people who subscribe to your feeds can also be used to measure how much your blog has performed. If you have people who subscribe to your feeds, then it’s an indication that you contents are interesting and of value. Over the past two months, 73 people have subscribe to my feeds. I’m determined to increase that number to over 1000 in the months to come. If you haven’t created a feeds for your blog, I advice you to create one now with Feedburner.
  • BlogCatalog Blog Ranking: You can submit your blog at BlogCatalog and join the community. Once you are a member, you can have access to the wonderful services that include a blog ranking system based on several factors. Here’s a shot of my blog statistics.Once your rank goes up, you’ll get more exposure and more traffic referrals from BlogCatalog. It’s also an sign that your blog is performing well. When I first joined BlogCatalog and submitted my blog, my rank was around 25. Over the past two months, after intensive promotion it’s now 66.271 and I am determined to improve it further. You can also evaluate your blog’s performance through the reviews given by the members of BlogCatalog. So far, I have received wonderful reviews from the members with an average of 9.82 from 11 reviews. (1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest)
  • Alexa Ranking: Alexa ranking allows you to check your traffic ranking in general and in particular regions. As of the time being, Blogging Mix has a traffic ranking of 502,549. I’ve also learned from my Alexa ranking that 47.3% of my visitors are from the USA and 12.2% are from the UK. You can check your Alexa Ranking from thier home page.
  • Number of Comments: Another useful way to evaluate the performance of your blog is the number of comments to your posts. If the comment on your blog continue to increase it’s usually a sign of improved performance. Expect that as your blog attracts more visitors, the number of positive and negative feedback increases.


    • In addition to the list, you can always ask your friends, or other bloggers for feedback. Send an email to your frequent visitors and ask them how they feel about your blog. Most importantly, ask them what you can do to be able to improve your blog.

    If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed.!