Last month was a great month for traffic for Technically Easy. The months saw some record numbers in terms of traffic to this blog, which I am definitely pleased with considering the drop in traffic at the beginning of the year. Over the past six months I have seen the traffic numbers continue to climb, and it was no different in September. The year-over-year numbers were also the best I have seen in almost a year.
The Increase Continues
The traffic levels for September remained fairly level throughout the month, which is welcome since the numbers were higher than previous months. As the month continued I could see that it was going to be a good month, provided any Google algorithm change wouldn’t impact my organic traffic. The graph below shows the traffic level throughout the month.
As you can see there were a few high points that would followed by minor dips. The larger dip near the end was a result of too much CPU usage (again) that caused my blog to be disabled. Luckily, the downtime was in the early morning (my time), when I don’t receive too much traffic or earnings, so I was able to mitigate the effect on my traffic numbers.
I have disabled a plugin on my blog that may have caused the high CPU usage for the past two months, but only time will tell if this will work. In the meantime I am hoping that the traffic numbers will continue to be good throughout this month.
As for the comparison to September 2011, the chart below shows the numbers.
| Metric | September 2011 | September 2012 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visits | 86,895 | 121,413 | 39.72% |
| Pageviews | 117,506 | 152,530 | 29.81% |
Both the visits and pageviews numbers are both records for Technically Easy, with the 121,413 visits for this month being the first time Technically Easy went over 120,000. The increase compared to the same month last year is nice considering it was about this time Technically Easy started to receive good traffic to end 2011 on a high note.
I had set a visits target of 200,000 for this year, and while I may not achieve that goal, it is looking more promising to reach that goal early next year perhaps.
Traffic Sources
I won’t go into great detail with regards to traffic sources, but search engines remain my primary source of traffic, by a wide margin. Direct traffic to my blog went over 10,000 for the first time, and is much higher than last year which is a good sign.
I am happy to see that search engines sent over 100,000 visitors to Technically Easy, which is the first time since last December that this has happened. I’m hoping this a good sign going into the holiday season, which is typically my highest earnings months as it probably is for most sites.
Overall I am pleased with the traffic numbers for September 2012, and feel that I have turned a corner with regards to traffic. After starting the year on a downward trend in terms of traffic, I am glad to see the numbers back up to record highs. While there was a Google algorithm change at the end of September, it hasn’t affected my blog, mainly because the update affected EMD (exact-match domain) sites, which Technically Easy is not.
This month looks like it is starting out where September ended, so I’m hoping for even better numbers in October.