One of my goals for the year was to double theleavingcert.com’s traffic to over 100k unique visits in 2010 and so far, we’re on course for that. On the flip side, my goal for this blog was to increase traffic (from 120k uniques to 200k uniques) and i’m failing on that one. So i’ll try to look at what i’m doing right and wrong…
theleavingcert.com
Look at these stats… January 1st to May 11th (yesterday) 2010, compared to the same period in 2009.
A 377% increase in unique visits, 321% increase in visits, average time spent on site is also up. Direct traffic is up 57%, google traffic is up 383%… they’re the kind of stats i like to see 
We have worked hard on theleavingcert.com but in truth only for about 1 month spell at Christmas.
But the changes i made then have made the difference and catapulted the site to new highs. It was always our intention to sit down and come up with bigger plans for it in the summer, so starting in september, the site will be taken to new levels all together and i’m absolutely delighted i never sold this site after all. It’s really only starting to show it’s potential now and despite the impressive stats, i know i can do a lot better with it.
smemon.com
Looking at the stats for this site -v- theleavingcert.com is hugely frustrating for me. I’ve put in 100 times more effort in to this site than i have done theleavingcert.com yet the stats suggest otherwise. As things stand, traffic is DOWN 41% on the same period last year.
On the plus side, it’s beginning to pick up and the average time on site has increased which is important as it’s an indicator of quality or interest. Traffic from social media tends to be flash in the pan… here one second gone the next. I do get a lot of traffic from stumbleupon and twitter so that explains the odd spike.
Still, the changes i’ve made this year haven’t worked. Designing daily? Nope. Blogging daily for 120+ days straight? Nope. Barebones, simplified design? Nope. So somethings not right somewhere. Traffic from google is actually up 50%, so SEO isn’t an issue, i can slap myself on the back for that. RSS subscribers are up… past the 500 mark.
The big problem when i dive in to the stats, is stumbleupon. Traffic from stumble is down a massive 96% from 31k visits to just 1k visits. So if we excluded stumbleupon traffic, traffic so far in 2010 would actually be up significantly on the same period last year.
But we can’t exclude stumbleupon traffic, it’s now forever etched in to my bottom line traffic stats for 2009. Now the quality of traffic from stumbleupon is usually pretty poor and i’m well aware of that…. it would be fair to say that although traffic is down, the traffic i have now is more valuable than last year, even though there’s less of it.
However, the stats say my traffic is down this year so i don’t really care about other more important stats It’s important for me to recoup those big traffic losses and keep the traffic on the up. Ideally, organic traffic is best, but i’m not too fussy on this site. Although i’m disappointed with the stats, i can’t be disappointed with my work rate and that’s more important.
You would imagine that if i keep blogging & designing daily, i’ll accidentally hit a traffic goldmine soon. Why am i talking about traffic so much? It’s a game to me. I know that the real value of this blog can’t be measured with traffic, but so far, traffic has risen year after year so i have my work cut out to keep that record going this year…