What’s working on my blog? Stats update

I’m a frustrated accountant and with that comes a love for numbers, whether they be campaign stats, JCRs or my own blog stats. I have had a couple of conversations with people about my blog stats, what’s working, what hasn’t, what I need to continue to do and what the average daily traffic is.

I haven’t done any in-depth campaign analysis or planning for what I need to be doing to drive more traffic based on popular posts, search terms or referring URLs. Below are all of the stats that relate to my blog and some key learnings and actions I have taken out of reviewing these stats (scroll to the bottom for learnings).

BLOG TRAFFIC – DAILY

Dom Hind Blog Traffic Day - as at 1 November

The huge spike was due to people investigating my blog after I commented on other popular blogs about topics I had written posts on. Traffic over the weekend dips, but as soon as new content is added on the Monday it usually goes up to higher levels than the previous Monday (except while I was on holiday when there was no new content).

BLOG TRAFFIC – WEEKLY

Dom Hind Blog Traffic Week - as at 1 November

The peak was due to offline media coverage (Australian article and new job notification). The second peak is due to the commenting on others blogs, as detailed above.

TRAFFIC REFERRERS

Dom Hind Blog Referrers - as at 1 November

StumbleUpon has been the biggest driver of traffic to my blog. StumbleUpon is used as a downtime tool, therefore meaning the users spend more time investigating your blog (more time reading multiple posts). The other big driver of traffic is social networks (my own dedicated area). Within each social network, I have updated my URL or even my status to include my blog URL.

SEARCH TERMS

Dom Hind Blog search terms - as at 1 November

The most popular search terms that are driving traffic through are different derivatives of my name, whether it is my name by itself, connected to the blog, the blog URL or misspellings of my name. Overall, there have been 167 ‘Dominique Hind‘ related searches that have driven traffic to my blog. It is interesting that there haven’t been any searches for ‘Dominique Layton‘, my maiden name. The other search terms aren’t driving a high volume of traffic through to the site, but one thing to note is that there are so many different combinations.

MOST POPULAR POSTS

Dom Hind Blog top posts - as at 1 November

The posts that have received the most traffic are around my credentials: Who am I? Where have I been? Industry involvement. This makes sense due to me changing jobs. The non-me related posts that have driven the most traffic are around: emails, driving traffic, Dell Idea Storm, training and viral. It’s interesting that people are interested in email and what’s working [note to self: write more email related posts].

CLICK THROUGHS (LEAVING BLOG)

Dom Hind Blog Top clicks - as at 1 November

I’m really happy that Downstream is the number one clicked through site. The interesting thing is that there are only two links to Downstream in my blog: one on the Where have I been? page right at the bottom and the other in the blogroll under search. It shows that some people are reading all of the content in Where have I been?.

LEARNINGS

1. Offline coverage – This is definitely the biggest driver of traffic to my blog. I need to invest more time in writing offline pieces to help drive traffic online.
2. Weekend traffic – As expected over the weekend, the traffic dips to an all time low. A lot of people aren’t looking at work related blogs or information over the weekend. To try and keep traffic consistent, it’s the perfect time to comment on blogs in the US/UK where there is a bigger population and potentially play the numbers game.
3. Monday traffic – Traffic to my blog is always highest on a Monday, usually after I have had time to prepare a new post over the weekend. To make sure this continues, I need to ensure there is a new blog post every Monday to get people in the behaviour of checking my blog when they get back into the office.
4. Commenting – When you comment on other blogs, it really does help to drive a huge amount of traffic to your blog (second only to offline coverage). Before I went on holiday, I spent some time on the weekend commenting on others blogs, the following week the traffic was really high even without any new content. I need to comment more on other blogs.
5. StumbleUpon – Submit your site to StumbleUpon. After you have written what you think will be a popular posts, submit it to StumbleUpon. One thing to be careful of is not over submitting. I submitted every post on my blog and the traffic being directed through halted for three weeks and has only recently starting directing traffic again. My learning from this is being more consistent with submitting rather than submitting multiple posts at the same time.
6. Social networks – Whenever you join a new social network, make sure you reference your blog URL. Interested friends, colleagues and associates will go and check out what you are writing about (even if it is only once). Tweets don’t drive traffic, but having your URL in your Twitter profile works. Updating your status and including your blog URL helps to drive a lot of traffic.
7. Own name – The biggest driver of traffic from search has come from my name. Therefore, showing that most traffic is coming to understand who I am and what I have done (most would be attributed to starting a new job). It shows that a blog is the best CV you can have (more on that later).
8. Tagging – Users arrive at my blog through so many different keyword combinations. It’s hard to tell what the most popular ones would be, so it’s important to include as many different tags and combinations on every post.
9. Popular posts – The marketing posts that have been the most popular are about email, driving traffic, Dell Idea Storm, training and viral marketing. I need to make sure I am writing more of these posts and then referring to them on others blogs.

Overall, it’s so interesting assessing all elements of your blog and looking at what else you can be doing.

RELATED BLOG POSTS (MINE)

• Traffic driver with results – commenting on posts
• Driving traffic to your blog – what works?
• PR vs email – what drives more traffic to your blog?
• The impact of the word of mouth

Written by Dominique Hind (nee Layton)