EVERYONE wants more traffic to their site. I take a periodic look at where my traffic is coming from to optimize what's working and to either improve upon or eliminate what isn't.
My recent look at my Google Analytics for the Hot Dog Truck revealed the following top 6 traffic sources:
I am getting 27% of my traffic from Google Search. I have my site loaded with the keywords I want to be searched for, I have meta tags installed and I have a healthy amount of links to my site. Search engines like my site!
I am getting another 27% of my traffic from Yahoo. Ditto what I said about Google.
Nearly 11% of my traffic comes DIRECT. This is folks who have bookmarked my site or type the URL into the browser directly. Much of this traffic comes from local sources who want to know about the Hot Dog Truck-when it's open etc.
This next one surprised me. Blog Catalog sends me 5% of my total traffic! That is powerful stuff. If I were a new blogger, I would definitely sign up for Blog Catalog!
Blogger.com, where my site is hosted, sends along 4% of my traffic. This is from the "next blog" button and internal Blogger searches.
Stumble Upon sends 3.5% of my total traffic. I have been trying to get more referrals from Stumble Upon over the past few months. Darren Rowse, the ProBlogger, has a good article on making your site Stumble Upon Friendly. I was getting ZERO referrals from Stumble Upon two months ago, so I was very pleased to see the recent numbers!
The rest of my traffic comes from other referral sources too numerous to list here. These are the top referring sources that any newbie should try to use. I would like to see the Stumble Upon numbers go up and I'm working on it! I'll keep ya posted.
Evaluating the Value of Referral Traffic
South Dakota and Wyoming
I get readers from all over the world-over 60 countries on all the continents (except Antarctica). I am truly global!
I also have visitors to this site from 48 States in the USA. South Dakota and Wyoming are the only two States that have not sent visitors to the Hot Dog Truck!
Come on guys, PICK IT UP!
Hangin' Out at the Hot Dog Truck
If you'd like to have your Blog in my "Hangin' Out at the Hot Dog Truck" spot at the top of the second column for 3 days, leave a comment and a link. If you have an image of your page I'll put that up too! Why pay rent when you can just hang out at the Hot Dog Truck?
Make Money Online
There are a host of "make money with your Blog" sites out there. Sifting through them all, I have realized that some are junk, some are excellent and many are repetitive.
Before you go spending money on some e-book or manual that tells you how to make money with your blog (like the sites, there are good ones and bad ones-certainly check out their claims), you should look at the quality, FREE information that is available to you. Read more on the Bloggers Affinity Group
There is also a great way to drive exponential traffic to your site. If you're using Blog Explosion or Blog Mad, this seems to be a good complementary way to get more "eyeballs" to your site. I'm trying it with one of my other sites. They explain it better than I could, so click HERE to learn more.
Blogger's Affinity Group
I have been swirling an idea around in my head for weeks. I am experimenting with a new, organic means of generating traffic to my site and others. Check out the Bloggers Affinity Group and become part of the experiment!
