Improving Blog Stats Pt 3: Revealing The Results

In early October, I decided to undertake an experiment to improve the total hits to my blog. Did it work? YES! Actually, it worked much better than I ever thought it would. I want to share what happened in the few weeks since I started my new blog regimen.

First, I posted: Just the Stats Ma’am: Improving Blog Stats on October 9th and I put out a list of activities I was currently doing, and asked my readers and blog visitors to comment on how to make improvements. I got a ton of great suggestions to choose from!

People suggested everything from re-tweeting blog links to Twitter, to writing more blog posts each week, to doing tag surfing on WordPress and commenting on blog posts I liked, to many other things. As I write this, there are 17 comments in that post, check them out for tips.

Next, I posted an update to my readers on how things were going: It’s Official: My Best Month Ever for Blog Hits to let everyone know that by October 22nd, I had just passed my prior number for most hits, which was 329 hits to my blog.

So, here we are, one day before the end of this month:

I don’t know if you can see it clearly, but since I started my blog back in March, this is clearly the best month ever with a current total of 549 blog hits for the month. In October, I’ve thusfar averaged 19 hits a day, handily beating all previous months I’ve been blogging.

So what is the secret to this success? What have I done differently?

There is primarily only one thing I’ve done this month that is a big change from previous months: I’ve posted many more times this month than any prior month. I’ve tried to maintain a (difficult) posting schedule of five times a week and that has seemed to make a HUGE difference.

Other things I’ve done this month to help ‘nudge’ my stats along include trying to post humor more frequently, and spending more time reading other people’s blogs and “Liking” posts I liked, and commenting on posts I enjoyed.

If I were even more saavy about this, I’d install some fancy stats package to look at my numbers in more granular detail and try to figure out what time of the day is best for me to post, what day of the week, blah blah blah.

I don’t think I’ll do that, but I do enjoy posting with greater frequency because I realized (only after having done it) that it creates a much more active conversation with the blog audience (that’d be you, dear readers.) You post comments more, you Like my stuff more, and I can chat with you more on the blog. Thanks again for all your support too.

The number one tip I’d recommend for anyone who wants more visitors to their blog is post more frequently and give the reader ideas and humor they’ll enjoy. I wish you the best of luck on your blog adventure too!

It’s Official – My Best Month Ever for Blog Hits

Several days ago I wrote a post about how I might increase my blog hits and get more readers for my blog and I got a zillion responses to that post (you know who you are) which were very helpful. (Thank you.)

One of the top suggestions was posting to the blog more frequently. Although the idea of posting 4 or 5 times a week was daunting, painful, intimidating, terrifying…you get the idea…I decided to take on the challenge as an experiment. What the heck, I said to myself, it’s worth a try.

Now, it’s up to you out there in blog-land to determine whether or not you’ve enjoyed the posts as much as posts prior to the experimental phase which kicked in about 2 weeks ago, but hopefully my posting quality has not suffered. I’m still trying to bring you my most tortured thoughts, my publishing triumphs (few and far between as they may be) and the occasional humorous rant (have you read the one about the lucky underwear?)

ANYWHO… the bottom line is: IT WORKED!

As of today I will surpass the best blog hit month I’ve ever recorded! Muahahahaha!

It’s not an insane number or anything, but previously 329 hits per month is the absolute best I had achieved in this seven month period, but October will surpass that today. I have no idea how many hits I’ll have by the end of the month, but it would be AMAZING if I wind up having my first-ever 400 blog hit month. Now, I don’t want jinx myself, but if I write at least something reasonably amusing for y’all, I may just get there.

I’ll let you all know.

Thank you for listening to me continue to rant about this…I know I’m obsessed.