November Traffic Analysis

As I do every month, I am going to report on the traffic this blog received during the previous month, this time being November. If you’d like to take a look at my previous traffic results you can read the October Traffic Analysis or check out the analysis category for all previous months.

Ever since DotComDud.com launched I hadn’t been able to reach 2,000 page views even though I’d set it as a goal for myself several times. Finally in November I was able to reach that milestone and I can now start aiming higher still. Over 2,500 page views is a nice improvement from the 1,687 I had in October. The 1.57 pages per visit is concerning though and something I’d like to rectify in the future. I think I can achieve this by improving my traffic sources which I will look at next.

This month I’ve decided to expand my analysis and look at the top 10 sources instead of only 5 like I have previously. Yet again Entrecard traffic dominates which might seem like a good thing but the traffic from Entrecard also has the lowest pages per visit and very high bounce rates (almost 90%) so I think it’s time to re-examine how I use Entrecard. Meanwhile Twitter came in at number 4 but the quality of the traffic really stands out with 3.48 pages per visit and a bounce rate around 50%. So if you haven’t already signed up to Twitter, now is the time! You can check out my profile at twitter.com/DotComDud.

I’m still getting some StumbleUpon traffic too, so thanks to anyone who has given my posts a ‘thumbs up’. Gmail comes in at #6 which I assume is from email subscribers, I’m not 100% sure about this though, so it’s something I’ll have to research a bit. The Daily Blog Tips traffic is no doubt from the Blogging Idol contest, where I made a few comments but more importantly was linked to from the Live Scoreboard which would have gotten me a few hits.

Search engine traffic was minimal and was from a variety of terms (over 10 different ones). For most of these terms I am listed several pages into the search results but at least I’m there. That means that if I do some SEO for those terms, I might be able to climb up closer to the first page. Finally the last two sources were from contest blogs that listed my contest. It’s no surprise that these sent some visitors as their own traffic would be highly targeted and blog contests is exactly what they’re after and that’s what I’ve got.

Again I’ve expanded the top content to 10 posts to get a broader look at my statistics. Not surprisingly both my contests featured in the top 3. The reason I am not surprised by this is because 1) My Entrecard linked directly to these posts and 2) my contests have always been the most popular posts on this blog in the past. The rest of the top 10 is mainly individual posts but the traffic for them doesn’t vary a great deal. I didn’t expect to see my ‘about’ page in the list though, so I’ll be sure to update and expand on it when I get the chance. Of my auxiliary pages, I would prefer to see my contact page getting more traffic, as I’d love to hear more from my readers.

So what do these statistics tell me?

• Twitter could be a great source of traffic, I should concentrate on using it more effectively
• Contests get a lot of interest but I need leverage this to highlight other posts somehow
• The search engines know I exist, I just don’t rank very high…. yet!

November was definitely an improvement as far as traffic is concerned but there is still a long way to go until I am getting the sort of traffic I really need. Reaching 2,000 page views is good and my minimum goal in December is 3,000 which is easily achievable but these numbers just aren’t high enough if I expect to become a really successful blogger. I wont let myself get discouraged though and will continue to work hard to increase my traffic every month.