Web traffic is the holy grail of the internet – without traffic, there is no business.
Looking at my February statistics I could certainly use a healthy injection of traffic. There are many ways to generate traffic to your site. Over the next few postings I will cover a few of the basic ones.
Keyword Rich Fresh Content.
Fresh content is important for any site, including a static one that may be selling products, but it is doubly important for a blog. Remember those search engine spiders are hungry for news and information. They are busy crawling the depths of cyber space looking for fresh relevant content so that when visitors come to the search engine’s site, such as Google, looking for information, then the search engine can point the visitor to freshly minted quality content --- our objective is to make that “content” your blog site.
How do you select what content to write about? Of course it needs to be on topic, or something that is relevant to your topic. It could be about something you just read and then you can give your opinion on that article. This can be done for just about anything whether it is a book, a movie you saw or a wicked purse you saw at a cool boutique you just discovered!
Of course if you did as I said (and not as I did), you have a narrow niche blog. Lets stay with purses as an example. Lets say you chose as your niche Versace Purse which according to my research gets some 53 searches per day. Some on topic or related posts could be the latest Versace ad with this drop dead simply to drool over purse that can do double duty as an overnight valise for a quick spur of the moment getaway rendezvous. What about writing about you visit to the local Versace store to ogle over the latest designs. Another time you visit a Versace outlet and spy a to die for purse and are absolutely stunned at your good fortune for the price is oh so affordable. You can write about what it is about Versace purses that you like. The key is to decide on the keyword that you want to fight for and then use it at every instance that you know how. In this case your keyword(s) that you are fighting for is Versace Purse.
However, since I do not do as I say it will be a cold day in hell before I own front page listing on any search engine’s piece of virtual real estate for the term blog as there are close to one million daily searches for that blog and the front page has long been spoken for by the likes of Blogger and other seriously muscle bound blogs. Even keyword blogging generates over 33,000 daily searches. So what is my strategy going to be?
One – I am going to fight for a phrase which I have yet to select. I am considering several and at least one that is a long tail. In the meantime each of my postings will carry either the word blog or blogging in the title. For example the next series of postings will be on generating traffic to your blog. I have wrestled with the wording of this title. Originally I was going to use the word “drive traffic” but research showed that term was mostly connected with the road type of driving. By using the combination of blog/generate/traffic and a sprinkling of some well (I hope) chosen words, I am marketing to a daily search of between 9 and 487. So – micro niche and niche. I will have a better idea of how well this idea/strategy will play out and pay off when I look at my Google Analytics on March 31.
Happy Blogging!
Showing posts with label search engine traffic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label search engine traffic. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
The Good, the Bad - but Not So Ugly! February Analytics
Lessons one learns: before setting out goals have a foundation to support them.
What do you mean, Valentina?
In a minute. First, I am so pleased to announce my first earnings. My first month in business as a blogger I had the following income:
Adsense: $ 5.28
Nitro Marketing $48.50
Total: $53.78
What this amount does is take care of some small bills, for example Hostgator, Wordpress, purchasing Ewen Chia's new book How I Made My First Million on the Internet and How You Can Too!: The Complete Insider's Guide to Making Millions with Your Internet Business
and a coffee or two with my friends. Hey! Its a beginning!
Ok... on to the goals.
What I mean is that when I published my January Blogging Anaylitics I made a few goals to be achieved in February which in retrospect were not well founded. How I made these goals was to look at what January produced and simply doubled the results for February. What Results? What the analytics for February did was to bring me quickly to a realization: if I am going to make goals, there has to be a foundation for reaching them.
What I had in mind for February was to double all statistical figures. It did not happen. Here is what did happen:
Screen shot #1
Screen shot #2
Comparative Data: February vs January 2009:
Number of visits declined by 25% Yikes!
Page views declined by 4.25% - sweating bullets now
Page visits up by 27.88% - redemption yet!
Bounce Rate declined by 7.19% - that's good
Average time on site up by 58.5% (to over 6.05 minutes) WOO HOO! That's really good!
Most popular posts were:
Avoid Time Thieves - Focus on Blogging
Oh Google My Google, Where has the Adsense Gone?
Bloghosting - To Pay or Not To Pay
Traffic Sources
I am encouraged that the search engines are finding this blog. The Search Engine generated traffic is up to 8.5%, up significantly from the January figure of 1.18%.
What do these statistics tell me and what can I do to improve in March?
The good stuff:
#1. I really find it encouraging that the average time on the site is now 6.05 minutes. What that tells me is that visitors are spending time reading the content. Moreover the bounce rate has declined by almost 8%, which again substantiates that visitors are coming to read.
#2. Search engine traffic up by 7.32%. I don't know what a guru's take on that would be, but I'll tell what mine is ... I'm doing cartwheels! I think ideally that one would want the traffic sources to be somewhat evenly spread ... but hey! I'll revisit that when I have a better understanding of the value of each type of traffic. But for a two month old blog, that ain't no chicken feed in my book!
March Focus for Improved Results:
#1. Post more frequently. Image #1 shows a decline in traffic towards the latter part of the month. I stopped posting when I could not deliver my new blog in the way that I wanted because of my technical challenges. So, it is true what the gurus say: post, post, post.
#2. Market my posts: I can do this in several ways:
a. Repurpose the blog post with just a few changes and publish it to Article Directories (at least one - more if possible). What this does is that it gives me valuable backlinks and it just might drive some traffic to this blog. In the long term it will give authority to this blog and drive it up in Google's and other Search Eginge's rankings.
b. Use social media more effectively.
c. Broadcast to my list every time there is a new post
#3 - Launch that new blog already!
As mentioned in a previous blog I opted to use the paid version of Wordpress as the platform for my next blog. It is the platform of choice for professional bloggers and offers many more options than Blogger --- it is also somewhat more complicated than Blogger. I've never done one. Wanting to save myself some techie time grief I accepted Nitro Marketing's offer to install a new blog on Wordpress.
I was impressed with how quickly it was installed for me. Then came the techie nightmare. The installed template was simple and easy to use, not only that but Nitro uploaded 14 more templates that I could easily switch to if I was not happy with the one I got.
Having spent some time on blogs authored by Caroline Middlebrook, Yaro Starak, John Chow and others that are pulling in better than a decent annual income, I decided I wanted something different ... and therein lies the tale of downloading and uploading, cpanel and FTP (never mind, you too will one day cross the bridge).
Jeff at Nitro was most helpful in trying to help me navigate through this maze (of course being the stubborn being that I am, I wanted to know every step that I needed to take so that it is indelibly ingrained in my noggin for the next time), except that for some inexplicable reason my screen was not showing the same as it was on Jeff's. Long story short - it's up. I just want to populate it with a few more items and then voila! We're live, baby! Not perfect, but live!
Till then, Happy Blogging:
Quick Links:
">January 2009 Analytics
">Avoid Time Thieves - Focus on Blogging
">Oh Google My Google - Where has the Adsense Gone
">BlogHosting - To Pay or Not To Pay
Recommended:
PS. Be sure to post your thoughts or comments on this post (or on the blog in general) below.
What do you mean, Valentina?
In a minute. First, I am so pleased to announce my first earnings. My first month in business as a blogger I had the following income:
Adsense: $ 5.28
Nitro Marketing $48.50
Total: $53.78
What this amount does is take care of some small bills, for example Hostgator, Wordpress, purchasing Ewen Chia's new book How I Made My First Million on the Internet and How You Can Too!: The Complete Insider's Guide to Making Millions with Your Internet Business
and a coffee or two with my friends. Hey! Its a beginning!
Ok... on to the goals.
What I mean is that when I published my January Blogging Anaylitics I made a few goals to be achieved in February which in retrospect were not well founded. How I made these goals was to look at what January produced and simply doubled the results for February. What Results? What the analytics for February did was to bring me quickly to a realization: if I am going to make goals, there has to be a foundation for reaching them.
What I had in mind for February was to double all statistical figures. It did not happen. Here is what did happen:
Screen shot #1
Screen shot #2
Comparative Data: February vs January 2009:
Number of visits declined by 25% Yikes!
Page views declined by 4.25% - sweating bullets now
Page visits up by 27.88% - redemption yet!
Bounce Rate declined by 7.19% - that's good
Average time on site up by 58.5% (to over 6.05 minutes) WOO HOO! That's really good!
Most popular posts were:
Avoid Time Thieves - Focus on Blogging
Oh Google My Google, Where has the Adsense Gone?
Bloghosting - To Pay or Not To Pay
Traffic Sources
I am encouraged that the search engines are finding this blog. The Search Engine generated traffic is up to 8.5%, up significantly from the January figure of 1.18%.
What do these statistics tell me and what can I do to improve in March?
The good stuff:
#1. I really find it encouraging that the average time on the site is now 6.05 minutes. What that tells me is that visitors are spending time reading the content. Moreover the bounce rate has declined by almost 8%, which again substantiates that visitors are coming to read.
#2. Search engine traffic up by 7.32%. I don't know what a guru's take on that would be, but I'll tell what mine is ... I'm doing cartwheels! I think ideally that one would want the traffic sources to be somewhat evenly spread ... but hey! I'll revisit that when I have a better understanding of the value of each type of traffic. But for a two month old blog, that ain't no chicken feed in my book!
March Focus for Improved Results:
#1. Post more frequently. Image #1 shows a decline in traffic towards the latter part of the month. I stopped posting when I could not deliver my new blog in the way that I wanted because of my technical challenges. So, it is true what the gurus say: post, post, post.
#2. Market my posts: I can do this in several ways:
a. Repurpose the blog post with just a few changes and publish it to Article Directories (at least one - more if possible). What this does is that it gives me valuable backlinks and it just might drive some traffic to this blog. In the long term it will give authority to this blog and drive it up in Google's and other Search Eginge's rankings.
b. Use social media more effectively.
c. Broadcast to my list every time there is a new post
#3 - Launch that new blog already!
As mentioned in a previous blog I opted to use the paid version of Wordpress as the platform for my next blog. It is the platform of choice for professional bloggers and offers many more options than Blogger --- it is also somewhat more complicated than Blogger. I've never done one. Wanting to save myself some techie time grief I accepted Nitro Marketing's offer to install a new blog on Wordpress.
I was impressed with how quickly it was installed for me. Then came the techie nightmare. The installed template was simple and easy to use, not only that but Nitro uploaded 14 more templates that I could easily switch to if I was not happy with the one I got.
Having spent some time on blogs authored by Caroline Middlebrook, Yaro Starak, John Chow and others that are pulling in better than a decent annual income, I decided I wanted something different ... and therein lies the tale of downloading and uploading, cpanel and FTP (never mind, you too will one day cross the bridge).
Jeff at Nitro was most helpful in trying to help me navigate through this maze (of course being the stubborn being that I am, I wanted to know every step that I needed to take so that it is indelibly ingrained in my noggin for the next time), except that for some inexplicable reason my screen was not showing the same as it was on Jeff's. Long story short - it's up. I just want to populate it with a few more items and then voila! We're live, baby! Not perfect, but live!
Till then, Happy Blogging:
Quick Links:
">January 2009 Analytics
">Avoid Time Thieves - Focus on Blogging
">Oh Google My Google - Where has the Adsense Gone
">BlogHosting - To Pay or Not To Pay
Recommended:
PS. Be sure to post your thoughts or comments on this post (or on the blog in general) below.
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