My friend Ken Mueller ran a very popular blog post this year: How I Nearly Tripled My Blog Traffic. I like Ken. He has good ideas. So I’m stealing that one for this post about how my traffic increased over the past year. Thanks, Ken!
My website uses the WordPress platform and has existed since early 2010. I have owned the URL www.marijeanjaggers.com for several years, and the newer URL www.jaggerscommunications.com redirects there. I have been blogging on the site since early 2010, 10 months or so before opening my firm and making the site my official site for my business.
Here’s the year-over-year graphic displaying the traffic to the site in 2011 and 2010. 2011 is in blue.
Visits to the site actually quadrupled in 2011, as did unique visitors. Pageviews increased eight times. The site bounce rate went from an untended 68% to a very intentional 1. 96%
Why did my traffic increase so dramatically?
- I blogged, posting at least three times a week.
- I write about relevant topics to PR and communications and often shared insights gained as a new entrepreneur.
- I shared my blog posts with my network on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon.
- I wrote guest posts for other sites, gaining new followers from my contribution to others’ content.
- I paid attention to what my Analytics told me about what it is my community likes to see — and tried to offer that with some consistency.
I’m pleased with the overall results of my efforts to increase traffic in 2011 — for me, it’s not about getting massive amounts of traffic to the site — I want only to generate engagement, conversation, new relationships and to continue to provide value to existing relationships. I’m setting my goals for increased engagement in specific ways in 2012 and beginning to plan the content I will share throughout the year.
WTG, Marijean! We managed to do the same – quadruple unique visits, increase the percentage of returning visitors, increase the time spent on the site and triple pageviews. One of the ways we did this was to move the blog onto our company domain (it used to be on a completely different domain). We blog regularly and point people back to other blog posts and relevant website content (like case studies and services).
@karirippetoe Kari, I’m so glad you mentioned the migration of your blog. That is a common question and I’m finding that many organizations still have their blog separate from their websites. Good job on your increased traffic as well! Hope to see you in the new year!
Frequency of posting has definite impact on traffic.
@Marijean It’s done wonders for traffic. Plus it just LOOKS so much more professional to have “www.company.com/blog” rather than “company.wordpress.com”.
Here’s what I would like to know, Marijean: how the heck do you get your visitors to comment?
I moved my blog to giovannihashimoto.com in June and have 26,266 visits since then. That’s a huge increase from the 1,797 I got between December 2010 and moving my blog, which is great and I’m happy with the level of traffic but most of my visitors don’t comment. How do you do it?
@Giovanni Hashimoto really? I think it has a lot to do with the cultivation of community. I think you’re doing the right thing by reading other blogs and commenting. It may be the nature of the posts. Are comments moderated at all? That’s pretty off-putting. Do you make it evident that you want people to chime in? Are you posting as a way of generating discussion? Keep in mind that I’ve been blogging since, oh, 2003 or so . . .