Continuing on with my series of postings highlighting the good and bad, today I wanted to share my Top 10 Referring traffic sites overall and within the last month. I am not shy in posting the good and bad of my blogging experience and ultimately am hoping it helps other newer bloggers. Prior to looking through my primary traffic analyzing tool, Google Analytics, I wasn’t aware of many of my top referrers. It’s quite interesting for me to compare the overall with the month of August. The lesson within this post is to keep publishing high quality content and with time, you’re quality of traffic will improve significantly as your content will appear in more search results and as your reader base builds, many will also share the content with their social networks.
OVERALL – 561,900 Visits from 6,064 Sources
10. Facebook.com – The nice thing about Facebook is that typically people you know are on your Facebook page. By posting content from yourblog on Facebook, you can get quality traffic since many are curious/interested in the work you are sharing. Of the top 10 referring sites, Facebook gives me one of the lowest bounce rates.
Hits: 1,089 | Pages per Visit: 3.56 | Average time on site: 2:40 | Bounce Rate: 48%
9. Google.com – Other than search engine traffic, Google has brought me additional referral traffic.
Hits: 1,097 | Pages per Visit: 2.68 | Average time on site: 1:59 | Bounce Rate: 54%
8. Bildirgec.org - This is a site I am not too familiar with primarily since it’s written in a foreign language. It looks to be a blog, similar to Eazy Cheezy, which focuses on Apps, blogging, etc. What I love is the fact that my content has also been appealing to sites based outside the US, such as Bildirgec.
Hits: 1,126 | Pages per Visit: 2.04 | Average time on site: 2:10 | Bounce Rate: 60%
7. Blogger.com – I started my blog on Blogger, but several months ago transitioned to WordPress. Of the top 10 referring sites, Blogger brings me high quality traffic, providing one of the best Pages per Visit and blowing the competition away in Average time on site.
Hits: 1,141 | Pages per Visit: 4.02 | Average time on site: 8:05 | Bounce Rate: 52%
6. Yahoo.com – It took awhile for search engines, especially those not named Google, to bring traffic my way but the quality of traffic search results have brought me some of my best quality traffic, with the highest Pages per visit and lowest Bounce Rate.
Hits: 1,686 | Pages per Visit: 4.26 | Average time on site: 3:09 | Bounce Rate: 37%
5. Delicious.com – One of my favorite sites, Delicious is basically a collection of bookmarks that you can share with others in your network. It’s my go-to site for finding great bookmarks and it’s also the site that brings me some of the highest quality traffic with theone of the lower rates.
Hits: 1,754 | Pages per Visit: 3.28 | Average time on site: 3:46 | Bounce Rate: 49%
4. Digg.com – Some of my worst traffic has come from Digg. From about October to January, I was a full-time Digg member engaging in the community, Digging other members articles, etc. Even though Digg brought a decent number of hits, the bounce rate was second highest to Reddit. I no longer use Digg, since it takes quite a bit of work and time to become an active community member. For my site, Digg doesn’t bring in quality traffic.
Hits: 3,575 | Pages per Visit: 2.12 | Average time on site: 1:52 | Bounce Rate: 70%
3. Google Organic – Everyone loves Google! Google is my top traffic source for search engines. It blows Yahoo! away in hits, but not necessarily quality. Regardless, Google searches is one of my best sources of quality traffic.
Hits: 66,258 | Pages per Visit: 3.77 | Average time on site: 2:17 | Bounce Rate: 41%
2. Direct Hits - I’m happy to see the number of direct visits is number 2 on the list. This is readers who have found value with my content that visit and revisit the site. The number of Direct hits is perhaps the most valuable of all.The most discouraging number below is the bounce rate, but having so many different topics as I typically do, won’t always appeal to everyone.
Hits: 124,676 | Pages per Visit: 2.53 | Average time on site: 2:17 | Bounce Rate: 60%
1. Stumbled Upon – The success Eazy Cheezy has had with Stumbled Upon still baffles me. I can visit my site one day and have a post that has had little traffic in the past, suddenly get 1,000 to 3,000 hits on a given day. When I see this happen, I always know it’s because a reader submitted my content and it was community members hitting the Stumbled button and giving it a thumbs up. I no longer have the time to be an active member of Stumbled Upon, but it’s a site that is all about good content. If you have something that catches on with readers, the traffic can really blow you away. The quality of traffic is so-so, but with the amount of hits, I can guarantee this has been the biggest contributor to increasing my number of Direct hits within the last year.
Hits: 329,338 | Pages per Visit: 1.81 | Average time on site: 1:07 | Bounce Rate: 61%
Though the overall quality of traffic hasn’t been great over the last year, most of the failures came early and as time passed and more of my content was within various search engine results, my bounce rates dropped significantly. If you’re just beginning with your blog, keep writing high quality content and as time passes, you will achieve more search engine traffic and ultimately much higher quality traffic. To compare my top 10 referrers of the last year, let’s take a look at the top 10 referrers in the month of August 09.
AUGUST 09 – 58,824 Visits from 676 Sources
10. Twitter.com (NR)
Hits: 77 | Pages per Visit: 4.45 | Average time on site: 1:53 | Bounce Rate: 2 %
9. Bing (NR)
Hits: 109 | Pages per Visit: 6.61 | Average time on site: 2:58 | Bounce Rate: 4%
8. Google Images (NR)
Hits: 134 | Pages per Visit: 3.54 | Average time on site: 0:37 | Bounce Rate: 20%
7. Google.com (9)
Hits: 136 | Pages per Visit: 4.20 | Average time on site: 1:39 | Bounce Rate: 8%
6. AOL (NR)
Hits: 147 | Pages per Visit: 6.16 | Average time on site: 2:32 | Bounce Rate: 2%
5. Search (NR)
Hits: 185 | Pages per Visit: 7.43 | Average time on site: 4:39 | Bounce Rate: 10%
4. Yahoo! (6)
Hits: 317 | Pages per Visit: 7.27 | Average time on site: 3:17 | Bounce Rate: 4%
3. Direct Hits (2)
Hits: 8,017 | Pages per Visit: 4.66 | Average time on site: 1:39 | Bounce Rate: 7%
2. Google (3)
Hits: 12,724 | Pages per Visit: 5.09 | Average time on site: 1:53 | Bounce Rate: 3%
1. Stumbled Upon (1)
Hits: 35,138 | Pages per Visit: 3.21 | Average time on site: 0:27 | Bounce Rate: 13%
As you can see, my results changed dramatically, with 6 search engines now appearing in the top 10, compared to just 2 in my overall. The bounce rate is the biggest success here, which tells me that the majority of visitors to my site are not landing on my site, then leaving without reading atleast some of my content.The traffic from Stumbled Upon is great, but most don’t spend much time on my site. If I had to pick an MVP of the referring sites, I’d have to choose Google since I get consistent high traffic numbers, more than 5 pages per visits and a bounce rate of just 3%. I love what Yahoo! is bringing me, but I don’t get many hits with Yahoo users at this point. Stumbled Upon has been valuable for many reasons, but I’ll take quality traffic over large amounts of traffic anyday.
umber that can be assigned. However, getting an idea of how much it’s worth is very intriguing. For entertainment purposes, I found some very cool tools that calculate the worth of your blogs, based on criteria such as traffic rankings, visitor statistics, ad revenue, etc. Each calculator uses a different algorithm and as you’ll see below, expect to get different results with each. Whether you buy into these tools or not, each do provide valuable information and should entertain you.
