I’m not sure how I’m going to drive traffic to my blog with this post, but I’m recording here some thoughts about the traffic I see coming to my blog and some of the analysis that Google gives me. I’m pretty careful to set all the search engine optimization things that I’ve been told are good… and I’m pretty sure that well named/commented images are a big portion of what’s driving traffic to my site; but let’s start with some cool metablog statistics.
75 countries. Wow. There’s a few I can’t even place without using Google maps like “Mauritius” (island about 400 miles east of Madagascar) or “Guernsey” (island between England and France, much closer to France)
1000-ish hits per month. That’s on the rise again. It was very high at the beginning of the “Voldemort” spike, but 1k/month is pretty good, I think. Google says that 90% of my visitors are new (that is: 1st hit ever from that visitor this month) while the other 10% are returning. I suppose I have a few friends, then. Google also records 58 languages in browsers reading my site. Most people spend a few seconds on my site, but 4.9% spend a minute or three and 2.35% spend 3 to 10 minutes.
Even though most people spend very little time, 18% read two pages and 3% read 3. 14 hits per month are from people who have read my side over 200 times. Not sure how to reconcile that. Dedicated readers are reading less often? I suppose I need to update more.
There are little things like Google 70%/Yahoo 5%/Bing 3% or Chrome 40%/Firefox 35%/IE 12% and even Windows 78%/Mac 14% (iPhone 1.57%/FreeBSD 1.47%/Android 1.27%/Linux 1.27% … etc (even have hits from PS3 and Wii)).
But I suppose the most interesting (again) are the keywords. Voldemort is still the top performer generating 275 visits. TF2 (Team Fortress 2) is 2nd at 206 visits. Both of these posts have graphics. The TF2 post even has movies. A smattering of other keywords (like walternate 🙂 go quickly down from there. According to the search rankings that google gives me, I place highly (5.8) for walternate and TF2 (8.3). I used to place highly for voldemort, but I’m now position 23.
Looking at uncommon searches for which I place highly, “Buffy Hush” tops the list, which is cool (it’s also from the Voldemort piece).
I suppose the total of $41 is worth mentioning. It’s been almost a year now. Not much… but maybe it’s just me not writing enough good content. Sigh.