Last week I had two consecutive record breaking days in terms of unique visitor numbers to my blog. And it was no April Fool’s joke!
My best ever traffic day before last week was February 27th 2009 when my 8 things bloggers can learn from Perez Hilton article went a bit viral and sent me 923 unique visitors. That all changed last week.
From 923 to 1324 to 2799 unique daily visitors
Thursday April 2nd saw me break that record as 1324 unique visitors stopped by my blog. And even better, on April 3rd the new record was more than doubled as 2799 unique visitors stopped by.
These are some huge numbers for a blog like mine. If you remember well, this blog went live on October 25th 2008 with 2 unique visitors. 6 months down the line and 2799 visited it…
Reasons for this traffic increase
- One of my posts went popular on Digg
My top 5 Twitter plugins to use on your WordPress blog was submitted to Digg by a prominent user Notyavgkat. Notyavgkat had made some 60+ stories popular on Digg before, so it means that most stories he submits will get some attention. So did my Twitter article. It got some 200+ diggs (also thanks to The_GMan for tweeting about it), was made popular, was included in Digg RSS newsfeed and had a short run on the Digg front page. From the 2nd until April 4th Notyavgkat’s submission brought me 1617 unique visitors from Digg.
- I got a great link from Thesis Theme website
Thesis Theme website occasionally links to useful Thesis resources around the web and late on April 1st they posted a link to my how to magazine style your WordPress blog with Thesis Theme article. My article was in a list of 8 different resources, but for some reason I was listed as number 1 which definitely contributed to me getting a lot of clicks. From 1st until April 4th the link from Thesis site brought me 924 unique visitors.
A look at the top 6 referrers over the 4 days…
Note that my regular marketing activities still work. Twitter sent me 630 visitors in those 4 days, StumbleUpon sent me 200 visitors and Google sent me 604 visitors.
Effect on the most popular posts
My top 10 most popular blog posts plugin in the sidebar changed dramatically. Twitter plugin post went from spot number 5 to number 1 and will probably stay there for some time. Thesis magazine style post entered the top 10 for the first time and is currently on number 7.
Effect on the RSS subscribers
FeedBurner seems to have some problems these days as my RSS feed counter jumps several hundreds subscribers up and down from day to day but today’s counter shows 957 subscribers which is the highest number of subscribers I have ever had.
Be motivated, continue working regularly…
What this shows is that it is important to keep working on your blog. Write new articles, connect with your audience. Once in a while you will get a very good link or someone with authority will find your article useful and will submit it to social media, which has potential to bring you tons of new visitors.
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{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s awesome Marko! I saw that link about your Twitter post being retweeted by someone, so I just had to Digg that.
I also saw that HowToMakeMyBlog was put up on the Thesis blog. I thought that was awesome to see, and congrats on that. I just put my blog onto Thesis, hopefully I could get featured there some time as well if I started writing tutorials.
Thanks for all the nice words!
@Alex – Welcome to Thesis world!
@Adam – Yeah, Twitter is a great marketing tool. Just see the screenshot I included, lots of visitors from Twitter, and also a large number of direct traffic is from different Twitter tools, it’s just that google analytics didn’t figure that out yet.
@healthy ashley – WordPress (self hosted one) is so much better than anything else on the market. I would recommend swtiching over. See for example my step-by-step install guide.
@herocious – I haven’t really figured Digg out yet other than that you have to get someone prominent to submit your article, and you do not shout out your article. For several articles on growing subscribers, see my blogging tips archive.
@Gerald Weber – That’s too bad. It could have sent me many more visitors…
Marco;
I always look forward to reading your posts. Every one of them have several gems in it.
Thanks!
Congrats on hitting the frontpage!
Great stuff. I actually discovered this blog (and became a subscriber) from someone that retweeted about your post on top plugins. It’s funny how you can find blogs like this that turn out to be of great value from just a little “tweet”
Adam
Sometimes blog traffic can be a frustrating thing. Congrats on your recent success! (I feel like the last kid picked for kickball since everything seems to be for Wordpress and not Blogger!)
Endurance pays in the world of blogging. You’ve come a long way since Oct 2008. Must feel good. Any tips on how to get your article dugg and how to increase your subscriber base?
Wow that is so awesome and inspiring. Conrgats to you. It must be feel good to see your hard work pay off. I caught this article through your tweet on Twitter. I’m glad I decided to stop by and read.
It’s cool that the post went popular. It seems it was buried almost right away when it went popular unfortunately. For some reason sites like Digg and Reddit are prejudice against Twitter, and sometimes social media, blogs and the like.
Always good to see some success stories, you just need to try and keep those traffic levels now
An inspiring article, giving us all hope that we won’t always be writing just for ourselves.
Thanks for sharing.
John
@Marko,
Yes despite their prejudice it doesn’t stop me from participation but the amount of traffic that digg or reddit can send is insane when the community really gets behind the content.
Congratulations, Marko
Now I just need to read these articles to see what all the fuss is about!
Good for you. Congrats.
That’s awesome that it all came together at the same time like that. Thanks for sharing how you made this happen!
~ Kristi
Marko,
I see that your Perez Hilton post is in almost every single social networking sites out there. Also, they all have same title and same summary from your 1st paragraph. Doesn’t Google see that as “duplicate” contents and penalize your site? I think it happened to me when a friend submitted one of my post to Digg. He put the same title and same first paragraph in it. I was very happy to be placed #1 on Google for phrase “google slap”. Now, after the site was submitted to Digg, I am no where to be found even if I type in the full title of my article on Google. Did I slap myself?
Thanks for all the nice words!
@Kai Lo – I do not think Google will penalize sites because of listings in social media sites. Most only list an excerpt and they also link back to the original source. And that is basically what those sites are about and Google definitely knows that. In your case I would recommend going through Google Webmaster tools they have links for you to contact them to see what is happening with your site.
@Damilik – Yeah, that is usually the case with social media site traffic. If you can get Google to send you regular traffic, that is probably the best new traffic you will get. I still thought my article did pretty well this time, people usually complain of very high bounce rates of 90%+ from social media traffic.
I am looking at your analytics graph. Diggs traffic has high bounce rate compared to your google search traffic. Go the google traffic is more targeted than the diggs traffic.
Congrats Marko. The contents of your blog are very interesting to read and advice you give is fantastic.
Thanks for the info… it really help…
@Marko – I know what the problem is now. Sometimes Google will give your brand new post some importance for a day or two (I was beating sites with PR 6+ on same keywords) without really getting “indexed”. Normally, it takes my posts a week or two to be indexed. From all the things I’ve read about this problem, my article did not get indexed yet. Hope I didn’t confuse you!
@Kai Lo – There is this thing called “sandbox effect” in Google. You can find your blog in search engine results right after you create it and then it dissapears for some weeks until Google gives you “authority” enough and then you slowly start getting traffic.
@Kai Lo
@Marko,
The Sandbox is for new domains and is 90 days.
Marko,
Love reading a story like yours. Our blog has recently enjoyed a jump in popularity and I hope it continues…I just need to be sure to provide good content! Has your unique daily visitor count continued to rise over the last couple of days, or has it started to level off? You’ve certainly got my interest piqued now…I’d like to keep up as your journey unfolds!
@Mariano – Thanks for the nice words! Digg effect has gone away the day after. But in total these links have helped my push my blog traffic from some 700 uniques a day, to some 1000 uniques daily in last few days.
Congrats! I love your blog. It is *so* helpful. I am passing you over to my hubby today who wants to start a blog soon. I think you will be invaluable to him. Thanks so much for the best How To Make A Blog articles out there!
You’re right. Having a good community and maintaining good relations with others is very important as they’ll naturally retweet or digg your popular posts.Just found your blog through Kristi. Great stuff on your blog. I’ll be coming back for sure.
found this site through common cents mom on twitter. I am new to the blosphere and networking in general so still have alot to learn, this site helps. Noticed that you discuss wordpress and not blogger (or perhaps I didn’t notice), why?
@sarah – I concentrate mostly on WordPress.org (self-hosted WordPress). It is the best, most flexible, most customizable, most professional blogging software out there. I would highly recommend everyone to switch over to optimize your blog’s potential.
Good traffic! I know how you feel, as I also experienced a similiar moment as you, and I worked around the same tools to get that traffic inwards. Your site is great. I admire you, and your ability to share information, knowledge and experiences with others. It is a wonderful way of connecting. Keep up the good work.
You now officially have another person set to you from searching “what words have two consecutive i’s in them” this post and the one you just made about odd search terms, are the top two results on google for that search!