A few months ago I wrote a post where I talked about how you measure your blog’s success. In that post I mentioned how it is important to set goals for you blog, and then try to achieve those goals. For me, when I achieve a blogging goal I deem my blog to be successful. With each goal I achieve, I enjoy new success with my blog.
Last month I achieve a goal that I had set early in the year. Throughout the year I worked to achieve my goal and it was very gratifying to finally realize the success of achieve that goal. In October, Technically Easy received 100,000 visitors.
Traffic Goal Achieved
I’m not sure what happened in October, but starting from the beginning of the month I say a nice increase in traffic. The increase was large enough where I noticed it immediately while checking the traffic stats.
In the past few months, daily traffic rose a few times above 3,000 visitors a day, but would drop between 2,500 to 3,000 for the following few days. In October, however; traffic rose about 3,000 and stayed above that level for the entire month. Traffic would even stay about 3,500 for several days.
I haven’t done any research yet into what happened, or what posts began to generate the traffic. I’m not sure if the Panda updates by Google provided more traffic to my blog, but I’ll have to dive into the numbers to see what really happened.
The traffic levels for each day of October 2011 can be seen in the chart below.
Traffic Stats - October 2011
(Click to enlarge)
The interesting thing about the above chart is that there appears to be a wave-like pattern to the traffic numbers. One day it would increase, and then slowly decrease and then increase again. It is a pattern that I hadn’t seen in any month previous to this month.
The increase in traffic can also be seen in the year-over-year numbers as shown in the table below.
| Metric | October 2010 | October 2011 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visits | 53,475 | 102,283 | 91.27% |
| Pageviews | 73,690 | 136,317 | 84.99% |
Both visits and page views had very healthy increases compared to October 2010. The amount of visits increased over 90% while the pageviews increased almost 85%. This was the most year-over-year increases I have seen in a few months, as my traffic growth had slowed the previous two months.
Traffic Sources for October 2011
While I began to watch my traffic increase each day, I was thinking that I was attracting more referring traffic numbers. It turns out that search engines – mainly Google – was sending more traffic to my blog.
The chart below shows the traffic sources distribution for Technically Easy in October 2011.
Traffic Sources - October 2011
(Click to enlarge)
For the first time, search engine traffic accounted for 90,000 visits. This was a nice increase from previous months, and it was more than the total visit count for each of the previous months.
Direct Traffic is second as a traffic source followed by referring traffic. Both also saw nice increases which added to my traffic numbers for the month, although they are still far behind the search engines as a source of traffic.
With my goal of reaching 100,000 visitors accomplished, I now look at achieving a new goal of 200,000 visitors for a month. I’ll try to see if I can accomplish this goal by the end of next year, which will require me to continue to put in the work.
Tags: Blog Analytics, Blog Traffic, Traffic Stats
If you liked reading this post, consider following Technically Easy through the following:
on November 2, 2011 at 9:54 am
Paul, your reporting of stats inspired me to do the same for my site: http://www.windowstalk.org/2011/11/a-year-in-review-at-windowstalk/
I am glad things are on the ‘up’ for you and Technically Easy! Keep up the good work.
James M. Fisher recently posted…Evaluating Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps
Twitter: WindowsTalk
on November 2, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Thanks, James. I always enjoy reading other blog’s stat posts mainly because I am a stats junkie.
on November 3, 2011 at 2:01 pm
I must say you have done a good job as far as the Traffic stats is concerned. Congratulations!
Lalit Indoria recently posted…HOW TO Optimize Your Facebook Fan Page for Search Engines
Twitter: Blog_Tech
on November 3, 2011 at 2:03 pm
Thanks Lalit.
on November 4, 2011 at 7:12 am
Hi Paul
That is some great numbers you have. I also saw an increase from Google traffic on my blog in October. I have a long way to go to get to your level of visitors, but as long I am increasing each month I am pretty happy. Thank you for sharing your numbers.
Thomas recently posted…Review of HTC Radar with Windows Phone 7.5 Mango
Twitter: techwork_dk
on November 4, 2011 at 11:34 am
Thanks, Thomas. I still have to look at me stats more closely to see what my visitor numbers increased so much, but at the moment I’m just happy to see the increase.
on November 7, 2011 at 5:37 am
Congrats, mate. Those are great traffic stats for a tech blog.
I am trying to reach the mark of 100,000 visits at the end of this month but it seems to be very difficult, especially after Google changed its ranking algorithm recently.
Tuan recently posted…Google Ranking Algorithm Update and How It is Killing my Site
Twitter: techwalls
on November 7, 2011 at 8:31 am
Thanks, Tuan. I’m positive that you will reach 100K visitors soon. You have a great site, so it is only a matter of time.
on November 8, 2011 at 1:39 am
Congratulations for achieving great traffic and I hope that it will continously grow in future as well.
Lalit recently posted…Samsung Tablet PC- Features of Entertainment Hub for Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
Twitter: samsungtabletpc
on November 8, 2011 at 8:11 am
Thanks, Lalit. I try to grow my traffic each month. Some months are better than others in terms of growth.
on November 9, 2011 at 10:08 am
Congrats.
Your site has good SERP, in several my keyword search i found technicallyeasy.net in page 1 of Google.
Toni recently posted…Nikon Coolpix P500 12.1 CMOS Digital Camera
on November 10, 2011 at 12:35 am
Congratulations, Paul! Breaking the 100,000 is not easy
Glad that Google Panda seems to have no effect (if not better) to your blog, like mine. Let’s have a race together though I’m aiming for 150,000 per month for now haha
More visitors from search engines, more $$ from AdSense alike
Michael Aulia recently posted…Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 Licenses giveaway
Twitter: michaelaulia
on November 10, 2011 at 8:07 am
Thanks, Michael. A race would be interesting, but you have quite a head start on me. You’ll probably reach 200,000 visitors before me, but I’m hoping I won’t be far behind.
on May 12, 2012 at 2:11 am
Those are some impressive numbers. Nicely done.