Surprising Findings From my Blog's Traffic Statistics

I recently checked the traffic statistics for my blog, Sweetmantra, and was so surprised by some of the numbers that I thought I'd share them with you.

For the last year or so, I've been using Google Analytics to measure and analyze the traffic to my blog. (As an aside, Google Analytics is a terrific - and free - tool.) To be honest, though, I don't spend a lot of time checking the traffic statistics for Sweetmantra because "traffic" is not the main reason I blog.

Nevertheless, when I checked the source of traffic for last month (July 2007), I was rather surprised.

• 65% of my traffic came from organic search results (i.e., search engine queries)
• 18% came from type-in traffic (i.e., people who typed the URL "www.sweetmantra.com" into their Web browser)
• 17% came from referrals (links) from other Websites and blogs

What was I surprised about?

Well, first of all, I was pleasantly surprised by how much of my overall traffic I was getting from search engines. For me, this further proves how search engine friendly blogs are compared to 'traditional' Websites. It also means that a lot of these visitors are probably stumbling across my blog and discovering me and my work for the first time. Thanks to search engines, I'm reaching a new audience, and at little to no cost.

I was also intrigued by the referral source details. Getting traffic from links from other sites and blogs is key to how the Internet works and a great way to generate traffic. Nothing new there. What surprised me was how much traffic was generated by a single blog that linked to my blog. Although I received traffic from 52 different third-party Websites and blogs last month, a tourism Internet marketing blog located at tourismkeys.ca (that I had never heard about and had never contacted) mentioned one of my posts on June 27 and this accounted for 9% of my referral traffic (i.e., 1.5% of my total traffic) in July.

I should also note that I continue to get a steady stream of blog visitors from my profile on two popular social networking sites: Facebook and LinkedIn. If you have a Website and/or blog and aren't linking to it from your profile on these two social networking sites, you're likely losing a great traffic building opportunity.

When was the last time you checked your traffic statistics? You just never know what pleasant surprises and learning may be waiting for you.

Comments

[John]

i totally agree with your sense. good job!