Know thy traffic sources!
I’ve already shared this before (and so you can read it here) but if you’re not using website analytics on your blog then you’re seriously missing out! Without analytics you won’t be able to make your blog better. Period.
So, if you aren’t using any then get some (Google Analytics and WordPress Stats if you’re a WordPress user)!
Now that you’ve set it up you’ll need some time to process the information but if you’ve been using it for some time it’s about time you actually use the darn system, right?
Here are 5 key sources of traffic that you should be seeing in Google Analytics. If you’re not then it’s time to start setting it up!
1. Twitter
This might be an obvious thing to many of my readers but to some it might be a relatively new concept. I always have to remember that many of my readers are engaging with this type of thinking (making money through blogging while having tons of fun) for the first time!
Love me some Twitter!
So, for those that might not be in the know – were you aware that Twitter can be a traffic-generating monster? Let it be known that I have seen up to 17% of my monthly traffic come from Twitter alone on some months!
See bottom left... last month Twitter provided over 7% of my traffic!
That’s astounding! And when you think about it this free service (amazing that it’s free, right?) can be such a huge source of new visitors and readers providing you a channel of “free” traffic!
Sure, there’s a lot of “strategy” that a lot of so-called “Tweet Professionals” could share with you but here’s really my only one: Use Twitter to share your blog posts.
And, that’s about it. My strategy isn’t complicated; it’s simple, and it works.
2. Facebook
Facebook is also a huge source of traffic and is another metric that you should see via Google Analytics. For me it’s mostly from TentBlogger’s Facebook Page but for many others it’s from their own Facebook account directly as they share the link into Facebook.
Facebook is a big community... take advantage of it!
Either one is fine but the point is this: Do you see a significant traffic source being Facebook? And if it’s not in your top 10 then why not? It should be!
Facebook is a huge community and many of my friends on Facebook are not on Twitter. But sharing links into Facebook I get the community there engaged as well as bring new and fresh visitors every time I post a link.
Facebook is a great traffic source for your blog, without question.
3. FeedBurner
Again, I’ve posted my thoughts on FeedBurner, which is an absolute must-have for your RSS and Email Subscription options. For me it’s ranked #3 in my Google Analytics and is a significant source of traffic.
FeedBurner is an EPIC web service!
You want to know that people are subscribed to your site and are committed to receiving your awesome posts every single day. Not only that, but you’ve created such compelling content that they are jumping from their RSS Reader into your site directly to comment and/or engage in the community and conversations.
Do yourself a favor and if you’re not using FeedBurner then get it today!
4. Google
Google, itself, should be of serious interest to you as you grow and mature as a blogger: Your goal, essentially, is to make sure that you continue to increase in pageviews and visits to your blog from Google itself, which means that Google is providing traffic through “organic” search returns.
What does this mean in laymen’s terms? It means that people are searching for content and Google tells that person to check out your site. This is a really good thing.
Google brings home the bacon. Seriously.
Why is this such a good thing? It’s because of a 2 very important things (there are more than 2 but this will be good for now):
- Google sees your blog post (and consequently your blog) as “authoritative”. This means it thinks your blog is more important than others.
- “Conversion rates” via organic traffic have been proven to be significantly higher in almost all circumstances. What this means is that if you’re advertising or selling a product that there is a higher chance that person will buy it/click it.
We’ll go into more details about each later but the point is that you want traffic to come to you from search returns and your blog’s health and growth will depend on it!
5. Referral Sites
The last serious source of traffic that you’ll want is simply strong referral traffic from other sites. In other words, you want other sites and/or blogs to be mentioning you and sending you traffic from their properties.
The gross total of all of those really strong referrals is going to be be a considerable percentage of your traffic and your goal is to get one or two new referral sites every single month (while keeping the really good ones historically).
This will hopefully grow over time as your influence and blog continues to grow – the biggest mistake most bloggers make is assuming that this somehow naturally happens over time (and perhaps it will) but the more intentional you are at generating this portion of your monthly traffic the better.
Remember, intentionality is everything and failing is ok!
How to Bring Home the Bacon
Ultimately the next challenge is this: How does one make sure that people come to your site and blog (and keeping coming)?
To be honest, there are very few tips that I have that don’t ultimately center around this foundational element: Providing exceptional value to your readers, all the time, day in and day out. Remember, it’s your promise to them!
Continue to create valuable content and then use the above traffic sources to share the content generously!
Love to hear your thoughts!
I have just set up a new Christian hospitality blog with my wife, and we’re seeing a great majority of traffic coming from Facebook. Definitely hoping that over time we’ll get referral traffic and Google traffic as well, as well as Twitter and Feedburner. We’re also seeing a lot of traffic from people typing in our address into the URL bar, do you get much of this traffic?
Thanks for the thoughts again!
calum has a great blog – go check it out!
he does!
O shucks, thanks guys!
yes. i definitely have a lot of direct traffic.
I was also going to suggest Reddit, since it is in my Top 10, but when I looked at the average amount of time that people spend on my blog when they come from Reddit, it was less than 1 second!!! So, thanks to Google Analytics, I saw that they were not real readers.
After looking into it a bit, all my Reddit readers came from one post, called Lonely? You’re Not Alone. I’m guessing that when people saw it on Reddit, they thought it was a post for some… female companionship. But when they came to my blog, and saw I was talking about Jesus… well, that wasn’t the kind of companionship they were looking for.
So again, Google Analytics helps me drill down and see where traffic is coming from, and also learn why.
wow, that’s great research! glad to see you taking it one step further!
I would be depressed if I looked at my stats in Feedburner! haha I only have 11 readers!
but are they coming to your site? taht’s the question.
I like the tips on how to get people to view your blogs. That’s my biggest issue.
are you using those servics?
Great stuff John. I’ve really noticed a boost in my traffic since moving to Standard Theme. I’ve really been intentional about setting up and monitoring my traffic goals.
What’s your take on the difference in numbers between WordPress Stats and Google’s analytics?
And I’d love to see what your Google Analytics dashboard looks like.
that is awesome! that’s what i like to hear!
the difference can be slight or significant. typically i take google analytics before wp stats.
When I look at traffic from Facebook and Twitter I’m always amazed at the difference in what articles they read. The demographic I can reach on Facebook is so broad.
have you studied in any more depth?
John, another great source is LinkedIn. Eight percent of my traffic comes from LinkedIn and the average stay is 5.7 minutes with 2 page views. Here’s the kicker, though. All my Tweets are also in my LinkedIn updates which goes out to all my connections, so I don’t know if they are responding to tweets or to posts in LinkedIn within the several groups where I’m a member.
hmm. i’m not a fan of linkedin but i know if you use it well then it can definitely be beneficial! like you!
I’ve been hesitant to value Facebook much as a traffic source because my impression is most of the traffic would be my friends and my mom.
For that reason I haven’t been posting blog posts on my personal page.
I guess to some extent traffic is traffic, but I have such a specific niche that I can’t see most of my Facebook friends being terribly interested.
Also, beggars can’t be choosers.
Do you have a dedicated Facebook Page for your blog? It’s searchable, easy to “like”, and pretty easy to promote as well. I haven’t set one up yet either, but a Facebook page is coming more and more of a no-brainer to me.
I do have a Facebook page for my blog. Not too many users. I’m having a hard time coming up with a reason to put a lot if effort into building a community there. I don’t have a ton of users.
Do you have an email newsletter you send out? Can you promote your FB page there? And then your readers might “like” it and spread the content to Facebook’s user base.
No e-mail newsletter. It’s definitely on the todo list though.
do it!
that… my friend is true.
Twitter can certainly bring in some traffic. An influential Twitter user RT’ed a link of mine last week and it alone brought in almost 600 views to a post and I saw a nice uptick in RSS subscribers and good % of viewers who hopped from the post to my ABOUT page and then followed me on Twitter. I thought, as Charlie Sheen would say, “WINNING!”
#winning like a #warlockbrain.
All great stuff…I have all of these in my top 10 referrals, except Feedburner. I’m just not getting many people to subscribe. I have over 1200 visits monthly, but not many subscribers…only 12. I have over 400 Twitter followers. (BTW…I can’t seem to get the counter on my page to show the Feedburner subscribers…only the Twitter followers.)
show me a screenshot? you might have to open that option up in feedburner.
During the last month, one of the leading referrers to my blog is “support.8bit.io” at 13.43%.
You’re right about the power of Twitter.
My Twitter links generated visits averaging over 19 minutes (as opposed to 8 minutes per visit for the blog as a whole). The bounce rate was 22.22% (vs. 56.31%). Pages per visit, 7.22 (vs. 3.68).
What is your Twitter strategy? Frequency of tweets, times of day? Wording?
Facebook hasn’t had nearly the impact. My folks generally read the one page and that’s it. (Some of them–including those who comment–don’t even do that, instead reading the title or blurb and commenting anyway!).
wow… 7 pages per visit? yikes!
that’s kinda of cool…!
Our Standard Theme community and support forums never fail to surprise me!
Hi
I was hoping you might be able to help me out. I use Google analytics and have recently been spending more time on social media, consequently I am seeing more visitors from Twitter, which is great. However I would like a barchart that shows traffic by source, by month for the last 12 months. Do you know how I create this report/graph using Google analytics?
Thank you
Kind regards
Howard
howard,
i’ve got a series that i plan on doing on google analytics. i believe i will cover this!
I just sent you a question on another blog, the wp stats and API key….you can scratch that…
you answered it here, get both! sha-weet…and thanks!
ah. i see that i did…
also, don’t forget a gravatar: http://tentblogger.com/gravatar/