46 Google Analytics Goals You Should Be Tracking

If you want your blog to be successful, you'll need to know what makes it successful. A good way to do this is to have the best possible understanding of your visitors and how they interact with your blog. Google Analytics is awesome, but you're missing out on a lot of useful information if you haven't gone the extra mile and setup goal tracking. Not only do you need to setup goal tracking, but first you need to identify what the right goals are to track. The following is a list of 23 goals you should be tracking on your blog if you aren't already.

Google Analytics Goals You Should Track

1. Advertisement & Affiliate Clicks
2. Track Google AdSense ad clicks, Affiliate images & text links, Banner ads, etc.
3. Social Follows
4. Track when visitors follow you on any of your specific social media accounts.
5. Social Shares
6. Track when visitors share your content on specific social media channels.
7. Blog Searches
8. Track when people perform searches on your blog.
9. Author Clicks
10. Track when people click on items surrounding your blog authors, this indicates interest in the individual which generally indicates these users are true fans.
11. Email Clicks
12. Track when users click on your email address (if you list it on your website that is).
13. Code / Syntax Box Clicks
14. Track when users click on specific code you've shared, indicating they have copied and likely used it.
15. Elements of Interest Hovers
16. Track when users hover over elements on your website that are related to conversion, but aren't links or actionable in and of themselves.
17. Phone Number Clicks
18. Track when mobile visitors click on your phone number, indicating they attempted to call your website phone number.
19. Specific Sidebar Links
20. If nobody clicks on certain links, images, widgets or other types of elements in your sidebar you should probably just remove them or replace them with items people do click on.
21. Specific Button / CTA Clicks
22. Track specific buttons or other calls-to-action to see which ones are most effective.
23. RSS Feed Clicks
24. Track when users click on your RSS feed icon, indicating they are attempting to subscribe to your feed.
25. Image Zooms
26. Track when visitors zoom in on images on your website if you use a JavaScript image zooming library such as lightbox, indicating they are interested in that specific image or it's thumbnail is simply not nearly large enough.
27. Video Plays, Stops & Pauses
28. Track how users interact with your video content. Wistia is best for this, but you can get some insights without it.
29. 404 Error Page Views
30. Track what URLs people are visiting that return 404 errors and how frequently these pages are visited. You should know if lots of people are hitting 404 pages on your website and how they're getting to them.
31. Subscribe To Blog Form Submissions
32. Track when people subscribe to updates on your blog.
33. Address / Map Clicks
34. Track when visitors click on your address, indicating they are figuring out how to navigate to your office or simply curious where it is.
35. Contact Form Submissions
36. Pretty damn obvious.
37. Partial Form Fills Without Submission
38. Track when users partially fill out your forms without attempting to submit them.
39. Form Error Messages
40. Track the occurrence of specific validation errors in your forms.
41. External Link Clicks
42. Track all clicks on all of your external links.
43. Comment Submissions
44. Track when people write comments, these are particularly engaged visitors and usually your biggest fans.
45. File Downloads
46. Track downloads of any files on your site

What Goals Do You Track?

Did I miss a goal that you find to be absolutely critical? If so, please share your wisdom in the comments!