I was debating about writing another yearly update post, mostly because I didn’t think it would add any value for someone to read it. As I thought about it some more, I decided to write it because I figured it may add some value.
One of the hardest parts about starting a web site or blog, at least for me, was generating traffic. It is always hard to put your hard work into something and not receive much traffic. I decided to publish my yearly traffic statistics and other information to show what is possible after two years.
Two Year Traffic Comparison
Last year I wrote a post that outlined my traffic statistics for the first year of Technically Easy’s existence. This year, however, I decided to compare the traffic numbers. I remained active in writing posts each week throughout the year, and partially because of that, my traffic numbers have slowly increased.
A graph of my traffic numbers can be seen below.
As you can see the traffic on Technically Easy has been growing slowly. As I write and post more content, I get more visitors. Most of my visitors come from search engines, which I’ll show later in this post.
The numbers related to the above graph are as follows:
| First Year (2007-2008) |
Second Year (2008-2009) |
Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visits | 74,809 | 317,060 | 323.83% |
It is also important to keep in mind that for the first six months I had barely any traffic at all. It wasn’t until December 2007 when I started to notice an large increase in traffic. It has been growing since then. Technically Easy now receives about 1,000 visitors a day from various sources. Most visitors, however, come from search engines. The next section will show a breakdown of the traffic.
Traffic Sources
I used to display my traffic sources on the advertising page, but I have since removed the numbers. It was not easy for me to remember to update the numbers each week, so I have since included the statistics from StatCounter. The problem is that the stats I link to provide an overall number, and does not indicate the traffic source.
Over the past year I have enjoyed an increase in direct traffic, referring sites traffic and search engine traffic. Traffic from search engines remains the largest contributor of visitors to Technically Easy. A comparison between the traffic sources can be seen in the following table:
| Source | First Year (2007-2008) |
Second Year (2008-2009) |
Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct | 8,833 | 31,208 | 253.31% |
| Referring Sites | 28,720 | 48,553 | 69.06% |
| Search Engines | 37,256 | 237,299 | 536.94% |
As you can see, the biggest traffic source increase came from search engines. This is probably a result of the regular post publishing that I do on Technically Easy. The more content I have, the more traffic I seem to get from the search engines.
From Blogger to WordPress
While I enjoyed using Blogger, and found it very easy to get listed in Google’s search results while on Blogger, I decided I wanted more freedom with my blog. In July 2008 I decided to make the move to WordPress.
I wasn’t sure what was involved in the conversion, but after making the change I realized it was rather easy. I wrote four posts detailing how I managed to convert from Blogger to WordPress:
- Blogger to WordPress – Part 1
- Blogger to WordPress – Part 2
- Blogger to WordPress – Part 3
- Blogger to WordPress – Part 4
Since then I haven’t missed a beat in terms of traffic, but I did my planning ahead of time to make sure the conversion went smoothly. I also had the advantage of using domain name with my Blogger blog so all the external links to Technically Easy still worked.
Overall I am happy with how my blog has grown over the past two years. I’m hoping the traffic continues to increase over the next year and beyond as I continue to publish more content.