The month of March saw traffic to Technically Easy continue to stabilize and also continue where February ended off. While traffic is still lower than it was a few months previous, at least it has stopped dropping and will hopefully start to increase over the next few months. March also saw the number of pageviews return above 100,000, and my visits increase to almost 90,000.
Traffic Stabilized
While I would like to see an increase in traffic throughout the month, I’ll take traffic that is stabilized than traffic that drops. At least with traffic numbers that are level throughout the month I can start to build numbers to reach my target of 200,000 visitors. I am not quite halfway to my target, as I was at the end of 2011, but I am starting with better traffic numbers this year than last year.
The graph below shows the comparison between March 2011 and March 2012. One encouraging aspect of the graph shows that last year the traffic numbers decreased throughout the month, while this year they remained stable. I’m hoping this is a also a good sign for the remainder of the year.
(Click to enlarge)
For the year-over-year numbers, there was a nice increase in both visits and pageviews. While not as large as I have seen in previous months, especially the end of last year, I still consider the increase pretty good. The table below shows the comparison numbers.
| Metric | March 2011 | March 2012 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visits | 64,911 | 88,699 | 26.82% |
| Pageviews | 91,337 | 114,001 | 19.88% |
While the increase in numbers is good, I have been looking into the decrease in traffic over the past few months. At first I thought it was related to a problem with Javascript executing on my blog, as it had affected other areas. After solving the problem I realized that it really didn’t have a large impact on the reporting of the visitors to Technically Easy.
Doing a bit more research into my traffic numbers I realized that some of the traffic has to do with the fact that my blog is a technical blog. One of the posts on my blog generated a large amount of traffic each month, but unfortunately the post is about a piece of hardware – an older piece of hardware. As the hardware becomes obsolete, less and less people are visiting the post about it, which has caused my traffic to drop.
The fix is to continue to publish posts to try and offset such traffic drops, but it won’t be a quick fix. Over time, however, I should see traffic numbers increase, hopefully, above where the numbers were at the end of 2011.
Traffic Sources
With regards to traffic sources, traffic from search engines continues to lead the way by a large amount. Referring and direct traffic numbers continue to lag far behind the search engines, but combined they produce over 10,000 visitors to Technically Easy. The graph below shows the traffic sources comparison.
(Click to enlarge)
My goal is to continue to find ways to offset the large search engine traffic with referring and direct traffic sources. I have been trying for a few months, and while I haven’t made much headway in that department, I will continue to try. I’m stubborn that way.
Overall, while I would like to have traffic numbers that match the ending months of 2011, I know that it will take time to achieve such targets. I am still hoping that I will reach 200,000 visitors by the end of this year, so I do have a lot of work ahead of me.