I don’t obsess over metrics. But I enjoy comparing numbers now and then in relation to certain events.
Responding to Loic Le Meur and his traffic sources for last month, I’d like to share with you this blog’s sources for the period of November 27, 2008 to January 4, 2009:
- google.com (organic) – 10,486 visits
- direct (browser bookmarks, etc) – 3,092 visits
- twitter.com – 1,822 visits
- yahoo.com (organic) – 1,740 visits
- stumbleupon.com (referral) – 1,263 visits
- facebook.com (referral) -1, 146 visits
- msn search – 387 visits
- live search – 349 visits
- answers.yahoo.com – 323 visits
- google.com (referral) – 314 visits
Seen in a vacuum, these numbers may not mean anything. But they do, especially when you consider I rarely receive significant visits from Facebook, let alone answers.yahoo.com.
If you scroll back to my five-week-old article of tips on how I use Google Analytics to track aggregate data of website visitors, referral sources, browsers and operating systems used, etc., you will note I included data from a three-month period:
- 11,430 visitors
- 20,391 page views
- 1.44 average time per page view
- 1:09 average time on site
- 75.4% bounce rate
- 80.4% new visits
Now look at the last four weeks:
- 21,685 visitors
- 32,844 page views
- 1.36 average time per page view
- 0:57 average time on site
- 81.7% bounce rate
- 88.8% new visits
Here’s a graph of that December traffic (using Quantcast, another tool I recently started using):
Do you want to guess what caused the mountain?
On December 21, I wrote an article about a series of Facebook phishing scams, that at the time, had zero online references. My post now has 69 comments, with new ones appearing every other day.
While you spend an average 60 seconds reading my blog content (typically because you read one post and rarely click into multiple posts), every visitor to the Facebook scam page spent three minutes reading!
Like the cycle of news, blog content comes and goes. But if you write something at the right time, visitors will come. You don’t have to be an A-list blogger; you can be anyone. Just write it and capture the noise. Provide possible solutions. Offer a way for people to ask questions, whether by blog comment, email, or Facebook message (and I received all three).
If you do it right, something will go viral as that Facebook post did.
Enough people told each other, that they came and posted their thanks. Those comments don’t belong to bloggers, either. There are few blog links attached to their names. Most of their comments are attached to random email addresses on yahoo and hotmail. The bulk of those commenters were Facebook users–but if I have anything to say about it, they will become future bloggers.
Photo credit: _federico_
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{ 26 comments }
This post goes to show that the real audience is not the already initiated, but the vast numbers of newbies. Good job helping them understand Webspace. (Also goes to show that Live.com is weak, weak, weak, although they do have a corner on Pictometry flyover city imaging, for now).
I had a similiar experience, when I was ghost writing for a real estate appraisers blog. It happened to be right in the beginning of the housing crises, and Indymac went under a month after I started the blog. The day I wrote a post about the Indymad debacle, I got five times as many hits as any other day, and they kept coming back week after week. That being said, It is hard to be ahead of the pack on a hot story, especially with the amount of people that sit in front of their computer all day checking out every story that pops up. However, as you and I can both attest to, it can be done.
Jennifer Larson´s last blog post..Link Your Way to More Blog Traffic
Admiring your transparency here – and using it to help us all learn…also, massive kudos for being ahead of the curve and the incredible energy you put into this beautiful blog.
Julie Roads´s last blog post..Channel the Saran Wrap
Ari–This is very inspiring. I’m still in search of the “sticky” post for me regarding relationships. I suspect it will have something to do with sex, which can be very similar to a phishing scam, don’t you think? Anyway, I was feeling sort of blah this morning. Your post + my triple espresso now have me optimistic and ready to face down the WWW. Thanks for the inspiration!
Alisa Bowman´s last blog post..Save your marriage—and your happiness
Just shows you what kind of benefits there can be from helping everyone else, especially against a scam. Just like a journalist being the first one to report a story.
Can’ t think of a better way to jump into the blogging scene than with your comment above Ari. Capture the noise….kudos
Marc Meyer´s last blog post..Social Media could be the savior for SMB’s
“If you write something at the right time, visitors will come.” Truer words were never spoken, certainly as it applies to blogs. Spot-on, Ari. That has absolutely been the case with my blog. The intersection of Content and Timing, much more of a sure thing than Sunset and Vine, cannot be overstated.
CGabriel´s last blog post..Blackhawks Win and Lose in Winter Classic
Google Analytics is great. It’s amazing how one post at the right time can bring in so many visitors. It’s interesting to see how many of those bookmark your page and/or sign up for the RSS feed.
Gennaro´s last blog post..3 Perfect Places To Befriend A Buddhist Monk
Twitter: waynejohn
January 9, 2009 at 12:51 AM
There’s hope. That’s what I’m taking with me from this. lol
Wayne John´s last blog post..How To Create An Entrecard Top Droppers Widget For Blogger
Liking your no-nonsense views as I read through today!
Neil Cowley´s last blog post..Get $19 in photo products as a FaceBook Fan!
Not to diminish the value of your great observations (not to mention all the great data to support it), but isn’t the ‘discovery’ fairly common sense to media in general (ala. the uptake on readership for a piece in the Wall Street Journal, for instance)?
Paula Thornton´s last blog post..The New Value in the Web – the Archive – A New Approach to Search is Needed
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
Thanks for this, very helpful. As always, its the quality of the work/content that draws people in, the rest is mostly fluff if the content is not what catches the attention of the reader.
This article has helped me understand a little more about the vast world of WWW. For me it is extremely intimidating trying to come up with something to blog about. Right now I don’t even have one post in fear of starting a snowball of “useless posts” to my photo retouching blog.
I really don’t know what to do! I don’t know if I should start “blogging” on it or just use one blog as a sort of home page to the site. The site is offering services but at the same time I wan’t to be able to blog about it and I have the least amount of ideas as to what to blog about.
This article has helped me understand a little more so thanks.
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Hi,
Do you have any suggestions on how increase the google page rank? How long does it take before I get my blog ranked, anyway of knowing that?
Thanks.
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Don’t worry about Page Rank. It’s just a number. Head over to something Extreme John recently wrote about page rank, and pay particular attention to the comments.
Well, here’s just one more example of how a well placed blog entry can drive traffic to your site; I have just started my blog, and it hasn’t even been indexed yet, so I was looking for some artificial traffic and found this. If it’s any help, the search string I used was, “Post my Blog”, using Google. Edit: I just noticed you have a widget that tells you the search string at the top.
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Twitter: MetacomCreative
May 6, 2010 at 10:40 PM
I find a lot of visits to old posts that I would have never thought would bring me a whole lot of traffic. I also check the Keywords people used to find me, and some are really obscure. But hey, like you said, it all depends on timing and what people are looking for. It also goes to show, if you write good content, people will come!
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Twitter: Murlu
June 9, 2010 at 7:39 PM
I know I’m commenting on an old post but this is still really awesome to hear.
I think the key thing to take away from here is to predict future trends and provide very valuable information for when everyone else catches on. It’s difficult to predict what people will search for but when you’re busy on the web every day, you can find things that are just starting to rumble with excitement – capture this and dominate it.
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I keep a few blogs and have noticed what you mean. Sometimes the timing is just right and you do all the right things and it just works out. Of course there are times you think you have this great post that everyone in your niche will love and it bombs for whatever reason. But the times it works out feels great!
Eric recently wrote How to use Oil Pastels
I did the same thing with YouTube, which I use a lot to market car dealerships. I did a video the moment the new 370Z Nissan came out, and was one of the very very first to do so. Because of this, I received well over 100,000 views each within a month on each of those videos! It blew me away, but it was all about timing.
Big Kudos to you for the big gain in traffic! Love the blog btw
William Bryant recently wrote Google Changes Email Again- Priority Inbox in GMail
Understanding Google is sort of an impossible task, I mean if you are not one of their top position employees, math algos are really difficult to figure out, even more if this one keeps constantly updated and redesigned!
Twitter: dragonblogger
October 19, 2010 at 10:33 PM
I enjoyed a huge spike in traffic on one of my blogs when I wrote a handful of posts about Starcraft II when it first released, I saw my traffic jump over 300% in a week and stay that way for about three weeks before other larger gaming network sites eventually ruled the SERP and my traffic went back to the void. Trends and Viral posts are great while they last.
Justin Germino recently wrote Fiverr- Purchase a Service for 5
People still visit that link…
Twitter: eagleeyeweb
October 24, 2010 at 10:52 AM
Ari,
It’s nice to see an example of this in action. My site is still relatively new (less than 2 months) so I’m still building. Staying relevant is definitely important (i.e. content is king) and I am LOVING your blog! (hence the repeated comments lol)
Charity Van Vleet recently wrote Building a Website- Simplified
This is a great concept to keep top of mind! Because I blog for business, it is easy to get caught up in thinking about key words, or other SEO blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, the best blogs are written to provide useful, interesting, and timely content, and I hope to take that with me into my approach for 2011!
Christine Peterson recently wrote Calgary Area Condo Prices Still Going Down
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