If you follow financial news, you may have read or heard headlines like “UBS upgraded Google today from a neutral to a buy.” There are lots of factors that go into valuing companies, but one tool is particularly useful for evaluating and growing blog traffic. That tool is called period over period analysis.

What is period over period analysis?

Period over period analysis is simply comparing a time period to the same time period in the past. To continue our Google example, the company reported $1.5 billion in profit in 2005 and $3.1 billion in profit in 2006. That ’s period over period improvement (big time!). You can also look at shorter time periods like quarters, months or weeks. For example, compare January 2007 to January 2008. Analysts really get excited when a company consistently shows period over period improvement. Period over period improvement for 27 months in a row indicates that management know how to run a profitable business.

Evaluate your blog using period over period improvement

Relative to a blog, you might look as RSS subscribers and compare January 2008 to January 2007. If your blog is really new, you might compare Wednesday of this week to Wednesday of last week. Has your readership grown? Did it decrease?

The key to using period over period analysis is to understand what was different between the two time periods. Here are a few things (metrics) you can evaluate to see what’s going on:

• Posting frequency - more vs. less
• Post length - short vs. long
• Social media activity
• Quality of your posts
• Time of day when your posts were published

I would recommend looking at any metric you feel is important to your blog traffic.

Take action to increase readership

Next, you should create an action plan based on the insights you gain from evaluating your blog period over period. For example, if your readership grew when you posted less frequently but the posts were longer, you should consider writing that way more often.

Did morning posts increase readership more than late night posts? Try scheduling your posts to publish in the morning (even if you finished them at 2 am the night before).

Did a particular post topic strike a chord with your readers? Try giving them more content on that subject.

Your goal should be to show consistent period over period improvement in your blog. By consistently targeting period over period growth, your blog will gain momentum and traffic. And best of all, your readers will be getting the quality content they crave.

Summary

• Use period over period analysis to evaluate your blog
• Choose time periods and metrics that help you understand your readers
• Create an action plan that tailors your content, style and post frequency to your readers
• Target period over period improvement to build momentum and grow readership.

In the end, it’s all about giving your readers what they want: quality content. Period over period analysis is one approach to identify what you do well on your blog and what could be improved.

What other methods do you use to understand your readers?

Image by epak