You have published a steady run of posts over the past year, or paid someone to. Now someone asks the obvious question, maybe your business partner, maybe you: is any of it working? You open Google Analytics, see a graph that goes up and down, and are not sure what you are supposed to conclude from it.
To measure blog performance properly, you need to look at three separate things: whether people find each post in search, whether they read it once they arrive, and whether any of them go on to contact you. This guide shows where to find each in Search Console and GA4, how to connect content to enquiries, and how to judge results over months rather than days. Setting up GA4 itself is not covered here; if you have not done it, start with adding Google Analytics to WordPress.
Three questions, three sources
Content analytics gets confusing when every number is mixed together. Separate the questions and each has a natural source.
| Question | Where to look | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Do people find this post? | Search Console, by page | Whether Google shows it, for which searches, and how often people click |
| Do people read it? | GA4, landing pages and engagement | Whether visitors stay, read and move on to other pages |
| Does it lead to business? | GA4 key events, your enquiry records | Whether visits that start on the post end in a form, call or chat |
A post can do well on one and badly on another. A post that is found often but read briefly needs a better answer. A post that is read carefully but never found needs work on what it targets. A post that is found and read but leads nowhere may need a clearer next step.
Search Console: visibility for each page
Open the Performance report, set a long date range and switch to the Pages tab. For each post you care about, click into it and note:
- Impressions: how often the page appeared in someone’s search results. This rises first for new posts that are being picked up.
- Clicks: how often someone chose your result.
- Click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions. A low rate on a page with many impressions suggests the title and description are not persuading people.
- Average position: a rough indication of where the page tends to appear. It is an average across many searches, so treat it as a trend, not a fixed rank.
- Queries: with the page selected, switch to the Queries tab to see what people searched. This is often the most useful part, because it shows what readers expected to find.
Use the date comparison to set the last three months against the three before, or this year against the same period last year for seasonal businesses. That is more reliable than watching day-to-day changes.
GA4: how readers behave on each post
In GA4, the most useful starting point for content is the landing page view, which shows the page each visit began on. Filter or search for your blog posts. GA4’s menus move around from time to time, so if you cannot find a report by name, look for the pages and screens or landing page reports under the engagement or acquisition sections.
For each post, look at:
- Sessions or users starting on that page: how many people arrived there first.
- Engagement rate and engaged sessions: GA4 counts a session as engaged if the visitor stayed a while, viewed more than one page or completed a key event. A higher share of engaged sessions suggests the post holds attention.
- Average engagement time: how long the page was actively in view. Compare posts of similar length with each other rather than against an imagined standard.
- Where they went next: whether readers moved on to a service page, the contact page or another post.
- Traffic source: whether visitors came from search, social, email or elsewhere. Content shared by email or WhatsApp will behave differently from content found through Google.
Be careful with low numbers. A post with only a handful of visits can show wild swings in engagement figures that mean nothing.
Connecting content to enquiries
This is the measure that matters most to a business and the one most sites cannot answer. Visitors are useful only if some of them become customers.
- Track enquiries as key events in GA4: form submissions, clicks on call buttons, clicks on WhatsApp links. Without this, GA4 cannot tell you which content leads to contact. See setting up conversion tracking in GA4.
- Look at key events by landing page. This shows enquiries from visits that began on each post, even if the enquiry happened on the contact page.
- Ask new customers how they found you. A simple question on the phone or a field on the form catches what analytics misses, such as someone who read your post on their phone and called later from their desk.
- Keep a basic enquiry record. A spreadsheet with the date, source and outcome of each enquiry lets you see whether content-led enquiries turn into real work.
Expect the connection to be incomplete. People read on one device and enquire on another, decline cookies, or come back days later by typing your name. Analytics shows part of the picture, and the customer conversation fills in more.
Judging content over months, not days
New posts often take a while to be found and settle in search, and their traffic can move about before it does. Judging a post a week after publishing tells you very little.
- Set a review rhythm. Look at content performance monthly, and make decisions about individual posts every few months.
- Compare like with like. Compare a period with the same period before, and account for seasons, holidays and changes to the site.
- Look at the collection, not just single posts. It is normal for a few posts to do most of the work. That does not make the others worthless; some answer questions for the customers who do find them.
- Note what changed and when. If you rewrote a post, changed the site or started an ad campaign, write it down so you can explain a change in the numbers later.
A monthly routine to measure blog performance
Once a month, take a short while to:
- List the posts with the most impressions and clicks in Search Console.
- Note any post whose clicks or impressions have fallen noticeably.
- Find posts with many impressions and few clicks, and consider improving their titles and descriptions.
- Check which landing pages led to key events in GA4.
- Look at the queries for your top posts and note any question they do not answer yet.
- Add the findings to your content plan: posts to update, questions to write about, posts to merge.
If you report on marketing to a partner or team, content can sit as one short section alongside other channels. The guide on a one-page monthly marketing report shows a format that stays readable.
Numbers that mislead
- Total pageviews on their own. A lot of visits from people who will never buy is not progress.
- Bounce-style thinking. A reader who gets a complete answer and leaves may be satisfied. Judge by the post’s purpose.
- Social likes. Useful as feedback on the social post, not as a measure of the article.
- Average position for a single keyword. One phrase does not represent the many searches a post appears for.
- Short-term spikes. A burst from a share or a newsletter fades. Look at the steady level afterwards.
Measuring is one part of the routine covered in the content marketing for small business guide. For how content results sit alongside ads, email and other channels, see our small business digital marketing guide.
Frequently asked questions
How do I measure a post that I mainly share by WhatsApp or email?
Add UTM tags to the links you send, with a source such as whatsapp or newsletter. GA4 then groups those visits under that source, so you can see how many readers each channel sends and whether they go on to enquire. Untagged links from apps often appear as direct traffic instead.
Can I see which blog posts people read before they bought something?
Partly. GA4’s path and landing page reports can show pages visited before a key event in the same session. Journeys that span several days or devices are harder to follow, so combine the reports with asking customers what they read and how they found you.
Should I remove posts that get no traffic at all?
Not automatically. First check whether the post is indexed, whether people search for its topic and whether it answers the question well. Improve posts worth keeping, merge overlapping ones, and keep useful posts that serve customers even if search traffic is low.
If you would like someone to watch these numbers each month and turn them into a plan of posts to write, update or merge, that review is part of our content writing services, alongside the writing itself.
