Editors note: I have an unhealthy relationship with statistics — programs like Google Analytics and Sitemeter are the biggest creative distractions ever, so I post these updates to increase my sense of accountability to my goals and also extract a little bit more value from all the time I spend staring at spreadsheets.
Welcome to the third installment on my monthly traffic reports. Traffic has been explosive over here at Dealerity! November saw a huge improvement in visitors. I exceeded most of the goals that I set for last month, which is great news.
The stats
Unique Visitors: 655 vs. 289 last month!
Visits: 771 vs. 350 last month!
Time on Site: 1:48 vs. 1:50 minutes last month
Posts in November: 6 (vs. 7 in October and goal of 10). I’m committed to sticking with this blog for the long haul but it’s been disappointing to see that my posting frequency is moving in the wrong direction. While I had initially planned on posting several times a week, I’d really rather focus on writing content that I’m proud of. I’ve already gotten a decent start to December, so hopefully we can reverse the trend without compromising on quality.
The Dashboard
Google Analytics Traffic Snapshot for November
Search Engine Optimization
As you may recall from last month, one my posts got picked up on the first page of Google for a bundle of long tail keywords, which were collectively sending 15-20 visits to my site each for a few days. In November, I got really into learning about keyword research and on and off page search engine optimization.
I spent a lot of time doing keyword research and wasting time in Market Samurai (which is a really useful and addictive application). It’s been really helpful in learning about keyword difficulty and niches. Yet for all my efforts my #1 keyword is for blue beach scenes — the irony : ) Despite this, my efforts really have been paying off. As you can see, my search traffic has really picked up:
Google search results went through the roof!
Techno-what?
My Technorati ranking went way up this month. For those of you that don’t know, Technorati is a blog search engine that rates how influential blogs are within their niches and gives them an “authority” rating. The personal finance niche is very crowded, with hundreds of well trafficked blogs. I’ve just now started officially tracking my authority and it was as high as #63 over the Thanksgiving holidays, which is really great. In fact my overall ranking on Technorati (as of 12/5 was around out of over a million blogs). I’m not sure what I’m doing that’s working so well, although I know participating in blog carnivals helps with the link love.
This is more of a December update, but I just joined the Yakezie Challenge which is a community of bloggers working to achieve an Alexa ranking of below 200,000 (basically be one of the top 200,000 sites on the web).
I want to give a shout out to the NCN Blog for a ton of traffic from one of my carnival posts. Great job hosting the carnival!
Goals for December:
-8 quality posts 3 posts per week / 12 posts per month
-1500 visits
-2500 pageviews
-1000 visitors
Thanks to everyone for following the blog! Let me know what you’re interested in reading more about (or what you don’t care for) so I have a better sense of what’s working. As fun as following the traffic stats is for a data hound like myself, I’ve been blown away by the response you’ve had so far. It’s inspiring and motivating to hear that I’m helping you develop a more conscious relationship with your money. I’m glad we’re on this journey together, laying a solid foundation so that we can chase after our dreams, whatever they may be.
How can you help?
Tell a friend about Dealerity. There are lots of ways to share the content. Look below each post and you’ll see buttons to Facebook post or Tweet an article that you particularly like. Also, you can subscribe in the upper right hand corner and receive emails via your RSS reader or email. This is a really good way to make sure you’re alerted if there’s a new post. Last, but not least, link to me! If you like the blog, add me to your blogroll and shoot me a message and I’ll return the favor (provided it’s content I think Dealerity readers will enjoy).
