Like It Is

One year ago today I set up my first blog. So on my first blogging anniversary I can’t think of a better time to reflect on what a great year it has been for this formerly “accidental blogger” and share some of my successes so far.

First off, I want to thank all my regular commentators – your comments make for such great conversations and debates we have here. I enjoy sharing my take on life with you all.

And thanks to readers and commentators who send me links and articles they feel I’ll be interested in, and who contribute links in your comments. I appreciate it.

So, apart from enjoying blogging, and sharing great conversations and great comments what else do I see as my high points? What else do I want to be able to do on Like It Is?

Some stats…

Number of posts: 253. Number of comments: 1,228. Number of categories: 47. I don’t use all categories, so perhaps some scope to reduce them, that’s for sure.

Thanks to the wonderful Akismet, my blog has been protected from 1,352 spam comments.

OK… More Stats!

One of the reasons I moved to hosting my own Wordpress blog was to get a better handle on my stats. I found the stats at wordpress.com frustrating, in that they told me almost nothing and even the nothing was limited. Every blog or website owner should have a healthy interest in their blog statistics. Who’s visiting, where are they visiting from, what do they like to read? I had that interest. What’s your most popular content? Over how long? In case you’re interested, I use Mint, Sitemeter, ClusterMaps, and Google Analytics and they all give me a slightly different picture, depending what I’m looking at.

But any statistics package no matter how fancy, can only give you a glimpse of what’s going on on your blog. Not how to improve it.

For months I was at a loss at how to increase traffic to my blog, particularly from Google. I’d hear other bloggers say that 50% or more of their traffic came from Google, while my Google traffic languished in the low double digit territory. What to do? I was stumped.

I made it one of my goals to increase both my Google juice and my traffic in general (being found by Google in a users search is great for exposure). I did both. I started tagging my posts, thanks to some advice and help from Brian Groce who helps me with my upgrading and some of the more trickier plugin installation I haven’t the time or inclination to deal with.

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? So here’s the picture from Google Analytics.

In February 2007, my percentage of visitors from Google was 13.4%. In other words, whichever way you looked at it, it was low.

By the first week of May 2007 the percentage of my visitors coming from Google had shot up to nearly 60%. Result! And not only is Google the gateway of choice, but overall visits are up as well.

I should say that I also submitted my site to all the search engines, (although I’m unconvinced that has had as much effect as tagging) and installed Google’s xml sitemap (which I am convinced has helped).

Another reason I am sure my blog traffic went up is content, the frequency at which I post my content and the keywords I use in my posts. In fact I am sure the key is content. I noticed that Google crawls my site at the frequency I post. I know a little about Search Engine Optimisation from my Web days, however not as much as I’d like to, mainly because of time commitments. But it is something I believe all bloggers need to know about if they want more people to find their blog from a search engine and increase traffic.

And, I also made some simple customisations to Like It Is to give commentators more visibility when they commented (Recent Commentators), make my past posts available (Archives) and include Technorati tagging (which I hadn’t been using previously).

Joining other social networking has helped more people find Like It Is.

I joined StumbleUpon last November and hits to my blog were in the high hundreds when someone stumbled one of my posts. This was great, however I learnt that these hits came in peaks and troughs… big highs then big drops. I still do get many referrals from Stumble Upon though, and I find that you need to Stumble regularly to really get the benefit of this particular site which is only fair. The more you stumble the more stumblers come to check out your stumbleupon pages – though not necessarily your personal blog pages. Time spent on stumbling of recent… very little compared to when I began.

I joined MyBlogLog very recently, and this was more to find and visit more blogs. Since I joined less than a month ago I’m still assessing the benefits, however so far it’s good. I have found some very interesting blogs, I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise.

What else do I want to be able to do?

Apart from completing my To-Do list, I want to be able to visit and comment on other blogs more than I do. It’s a constant challenge, however I do believe that visiting and commenting on other blogs is one of the best ways to make others aware your blog exists. The constant challenge in my case is time. Between work (full-time), researching, posting, answering comments, updating and upgrading blog, studying – and having a life – time is at a premium. While I may not comment on every blog I visit ( I tend to comment only if I feel I have something to contribute) I always keep in mind how nice it is to get comments, the currency of blogging. I think that if I enjoy getting them, others probably do too. So my aim is to do more visiting. At the end of the day though, I still think compelling content and conversation is what turns visitors into regular readers. After all, if I give them nothing to read or infrequent updates, why should they return?

I’ve added more feeds to my feed list, so I’m hoping to be able to at least stay up to date on my fave blogs.

And I plan on learning more about Search Engine Optimisation, I still have a lot to do to increase searches and referrals from the other search engines as well as from Google. Although one might argue that Google is the only one that matters.

What will the next year bring? Who knows?

Hopefully more good stuff on Like It Is. More people finding Like It Is.

I hope you’ll stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: blog statistics, Google juice, tagging