It's good practice to check your stats at the end of each month and analyze your traffic sources and the overall performance of your site or blog.
I often publish my stats here on ClickNewz, more to share trends and record progress than anything - they certainly dont award bragging rights, as this blog has only been live for approximately a year and a half. I've focused more on writing content, and growing as a blogger, than on trying to become an a-list blogger.
As you can see in the graph to the right, traffic to ClickNewz.com continues to rise steadily. Some of the things that I watch for in my stats include overall growth patterns, traffic sources, changes in inbound links, popularity of topics/posts, the success of specific keyword phrases, etc.
September 2007 Stats for the ClickNewz Blog:
- Inbound Links (main page): 3,085
- Inbound Links (total): 9,927
- Unique Visitors: 12,531
- Total Number of Visits: 26,067
The first thing that jumps out at me is that my inbound links have dropped dramatically. I'm not sure if this is a change to Yahoo's site explorer tool or if I've actually lost 10,000+ backlinks somewhere along the way. I'd be willing to bet on the former... but that's something to check into (noted).
Also interesting was a substantial traffic spike on September 24th. That was the day the Subscribe to Comments plugin was installed, so I'm assuming it was a combination of that plus the new BlogRush widget resulting in the jump in visits.
The 5 most popular blog posts during the month of September were:
- Watch Movies Online, Free Through Netflix
- Happy Birthday To One Of My Reasons For Working From Home...
- Writing Reports for Money
- Free Blog Marketing Widget
- How To Earn $20,000 in 20 Days - Guaranteed!
Top 5 Referring Websites:
- The Warrior Forum
- V7N Discussion Forum
- BlogRush
- MySpace Bulletins
- Michel Fortin's Copywriting Blog
This doesnt include referrals from my own domains, though my primary site (sswt) and discussion forum are actually the top referrers. Also, StumbleUpon has moved from being listed as a referrer in Awstats, to being listed as an engine. They are currently ranking #2, just below Google, in terms of visitors sent.
Top 8 Keyword Phrases:
1. us postal rates - #4 on MSN
2. free online movies - ?
3. internet marketing blog - #2 on Google, #6 on Yahoo
4. lynn terry - #3 on Google, #2 on Yahoo
5. watch movies online free - ?
6. watch movies for free - ?
7. watch movies online - ?
8. logitech rebates - #12 on Google (#3 with quotes)
A total of 2,559 different keyphrases were used to find ClickNewz in the major search engines during the month of September. A fair number of those are variations of "watch movies online" though a quick search didnt show which engine is sending that traffic...
There are currently 817 posts and 3,917 comments contained within 18 categories.
Not incredibly impressive, but overall showing steady growth and definitely meeting my own personal goals as a blog. I'll be back to working on link building and social networking once the busy holiday season passes, but until then I'll just keep writing... 😉
Technorati Tags: september, blog stats, unique visitors, awstats, stats junkie
About Lynn Terry
Your stats are impressive to me!
Thank you, Stefani. I'm definitely pleased with the growth, and looking forward to meeting some bigger goals in the near future!
I have a great deal of admiration for you, and this is my favorite blog to visit. Thank you for sharing your stats.
Thank you, Valerie 🙂 - How kind!
Thank you for sharing your blog stats info, helps me determine if I'm where I should be (or want to be!).... Thanks again!