Let’s start with the good news. According to my Google
Analytics report, my one visitor was engaged enough with the blog to spend an
average of six minutes and two seconds on the blog. This is valuable
information because it shows that the content was relevant to the visitor.
Since content is the most import aspect of a blog (Raj, 2011; Odden, 2011), hopefully
the visitor found some useful information on the blog and will come back for
more. Better yet, maybe the visitor will tell others about the blog and they
will visit too. Another interesting insight Google Analytics showed is that the visitor came from a blogger.com referral. This finding made me think about the power of blogrolls. Blogrolls are an easy way to get your blog in front of readers on other blogs. The hope is that some of those readers will click on the link to your blog off the blogrolls, and find your content interesting and enjoyable, turning them into loyal readers (Gunelius, n.d.). This sounded like an easy (and free) tactic to try, so I updated my blog to include a blogroll all of my classmate’s blogs. Perhaps they will reciprocate and include my blog on their blogrolls. (Hint, hint.) Next week, I can check Google Analytics to see if I received more referrals from their blogs on blogger.com.
Since Google Analytics shows where my traffic sources are coming from, I sought out to see where else I could post my blog to generate traffic. It is common practices for people to post links to their blogs on their social networking sites like Google Plus, Pintrest, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (Raj, 2011). Frankly, I am too embarrassed to share my coursework with my friends and family, so I looked for other ways to get my blog out to professionals who may be interested in my content on web analytics and search engine optimization (SEO). A blog about blog traffic recommended submitting my best posts to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit as a way to quickly boost traffic to my blog (Gunelius, n.d.). I was intrigued by the quick aspect of this approach. After all, we are in week five of a nine week course. I went to all three of these sites and became quickly frustrated. With Digg and StubmbleUpon, I couldn’t figure out how to publish my posts. I consulted help sections and it seems others are pretty frustrated too. With Reddit, it was simple to set up an account, but it wouldn’t accept my article. What now?
Some blogging experts suggest leaving comments on
popular blogs with your blog URL can get you a ton of traffic (Raj, 2011; Gunelius,
n.d.). Caution should be used to make sure the comments are meaningful (Gunelisu,
n.d.). For blogs on my topic of interest, there probably isn’t any better than
the author of our textbook, Web Analytics 2.0, Avinash Kaushik. His blog Occam Razor contains hundreds of
posts about web analytics and SEO. We have similar posts
about bonce rate, so I thought I
would leave him a comment. My comment is as follows:
“Mr.
Kaushik, in your Web Analytics 2.0 book, so you said bounce rate is the sexiest
web metric ever. I agree. What I Iike best about bounce rate is that it identifies
the low-hanging fruit that need to be fixed now. If people are turned off by
the page, fix it. My student blog on Online Accountability offers some advice
on addressing Bounce Rate. Check it out at http://terabuckley.blogspot.com/2012/05/boing-boing-boing.html”
The post is awaiting his approval. Let’s see if anyone bites on it. With all of the measurements Google Analytics offers, I am most interested in discovering if my blog attracts search engine traffic. Specifically, I would like to know what search terms prompted the visitor to land on my blog. There are a number of things I can do to improve my chances of being picked up by a search engine:
1. Links: Links are one of the most
powerful parts of a blog. Not only are links noticed by search engines, but
they also act as a tap on the shoulder to other bloggers who can easily
identify who is linking to their sites. Linking helps to get noticed by other
bloggers who are likely to investigate the sites that are linking to them. This
may lead them to become new readers of your blog or to add links to your blog
from theirs (Gunelius, n.d.). Good news, I am already linking within my blog!
2. Tag Posts: Tags (or Labels in Blogger)
are easily noticed by search engines. They also help readers find your blog
when they perform searches on popular blog search engines such as Technorati
(Gunelius, n.d.; Alexandrou, 2012). Labeling my posts with key terms was a
simple fix. I could also optimize labels by using Google to identify key search terms.
3. Images: Images don't just make your
blog look pretty, they also help people find you in search engine listings.
People often use the image search options offered by Google, Yahoo! and other
search engines, and naming your images with search engine optimization in mind
can easily boost your traffic (Genelius, n.d.). Awesome. I am going to update
my post that doesn’t have an image and include one in this post too! The
downside to Blogger vs. WordPress is WordPress automatically suggested images
for a post based on content. I miss that feature in Blogger.
4. Titles: Write an attractive title to
reflect the essence of contents of the informative post you have written. There
is no need to repeatedly stuff in keywords (Raj, 2011). I am following this tip
in a sense (with the exception of the Boing, Boing, Boing post). The title
could be strengthen with the words bounce rate in the title.
5. Write Well and Write Often: Frequently
updating your blog with useful content is the first step to building your
blog's audience. The content you write is what will keep readers coming back
for more (Gunelius, n.d.; Alexandrou, 2012). This is obvious advice but not to
be overlooked.
With all of these improvements, I am hoping for some
improvements in the traffic report next week.
References
Alexandrou, M. (2012, May 16). On-site SEO still works. ClickZ. [Web log
post]. Retrieved June 21, 2012, from http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2174910/-site-seo
Gunelius, S. (n.d.) 15 tips to increase blog traffic.
About.com. [Web log post]. Retrieved June 21, 2012, from http://weblogs.about.com/od/bloggingtips/tp/TipsIncreaseBlogTraffic.htm
Odden, L. (2011, November 7). Optimize and socialize
your way to better business blogging. ClickZ. [Web log post]. Retrieved June
21, 2012, from http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2122820/optimize-socialize-business-blogging
Raj. (2011, July 20). Build traffic to your blog:
how to generate and increase traffic? [Web log post]. Retrieved June 21, 2012,
from http://mtherald.com/build-traffic-to-your-blog-how-to-generate-and-increase-traffic/
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