We will now discuss Question #6 of 200 blog review questions to help you improve your blog and review blogs. The Ultimate Blog Review Guide e-book covers all 200 questions in detail.
Blog Review Question #6: At what rate is each of these statistics increasing or decreasing: monthly visits, monthly page views, average visit duration, and number of feed/email/newsletter subscribers?
This page will change as I add your input. To start, here's my take:
What matters most is whether your blog's key metrics are increasing or decreasing over an extended period of time – say, 3-6 months or more – and to what degree or at what rate they are doing so.
The age of your blog also comes into play here.
I would be much more concerned about a 2-year-old blog whose monthly traffic had never experienced more than 10% in any 6-month span than about a brand-new blog whose traffic was almost zero.
Similarly, I would be much more pleased with a blog whose average visit duration showed a slow but sure increase over time than a blog whose average visit duration was twice as high but falling fast.
It's important not to obsess over your blog metrics too much. A little is okay, but not too much. 
Watching the rise and fall of your traffic or subscriber numbers can be hypnotic, but it's about as useless as watching a stock price dip and shimmy from one minute to the next.
The approach I recommend is to take a very quick look – no more than 5 minutes – each day just to make sure your metrics are where you expect them to be. Then, once a week, take a bit more time to chart the direction things seem to be heading – perhaps 15 minutes. Finally, once a month and once every 6 months, take an hour or two to brainstorm the big picture and adjust your longterm plans to increase these key metrics as desired.
What do you do if your blog seems to be tanking? For starters, start checking through some of the other blog aspects covered in this guide. Sometimes the reason is very simple but not obvious.
Some of these metrics may matter more or less depending on your overall blogging objectives. Page views matter a lot to bloggers who display CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) banner ads, for example.
Previous – Blog Review Question #5: How many newsletter subscribers does the blog have?
Next – Blog Review Question #7: How many Web pages link to the blog? (e.g. according to Google, Yahoo!, MSN)
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