Where Has All Of My Blog Traffic Gone?

A client shared his concerns with me over a sharp downturn in traffic to one of his sites and was thinking about launching an expensive advertising campaign to bring people back. This particular site consists of standard HTML pages which means it isn’t based on a blog platform, rather on a nicely designed CSS theme, and is updated fairly regularly.

Although I’m not directly involved with this site, I reviewed his pages and then assured him that the drop in traffic was probably seasonally related. After all, we’re in the middle of the summer months and when your site is seasonally themed, then there are times in the year when an even steeper drop will be noticed.

When Your Blog Loses Traffic

My client’s concern brought up an issue that many bloggers contend with too – a sharp drop to their blog’s traffic. Blogging can be immensely frustrating especially if you pour your heart and soul into it and the returns are just not there. After all of that work you notice that your Alexa number continues to rise, your PageRank sinks and your traffic numbers plummet. But on closer inspection and after an honest assessment of your site, you may discover a number of reasons why traffic is down. Let’s take a look at five of the more notable ones here:

Seasonal Traffic – If you have a Christmas season site, you’re probably going through one of the biggest drops since December 26th. Very few people are thinking about Christmas shopping, but I would venture to say that once Labor Day has passed your traffic will begin to tick upward, increasing noticeably in October and surging by early November. For everyone else (in the northern hemisphere), the months of June, July and August are generally slower as even web addicts like to take a break, head to the beach, visit their families, etc. They haven’t logged off completely, but they’re making good use of their warm weather time. Surf’s up!

Blogging Frequency – Have you been blogging less frequently lately? Check back to when you first launched your blog and compare how often you blogged then with how often you blog now. Over time, you may have gradually slipped to where you’re posting less frequently. Perhaps when you got started you wrote 15-20 articles per month but have since slipped to around 12. Fresh articles bring in the traffic, so consider ramping up your production to match or even exceed previous levels. Don’t let your quality slip!

Article Appeal – Maybe your subject matter simply isn’t of interest to your readers. I always tell bloggers to write about their passion as their enthusiasm will shine forth. Enthusiasm is contagious and people are drawn to blogs where the blogger knows his stuff, is excited about the topic and offers a unique and helpful perspective to his readers. If you’ve gotten in the habit of producing boring articles, then your uninspired audience will flee. Time to ratchet up your blog’s appeal!

Check Analytics – I use Google Analytics to review my traffic on a regular basis. Analytics and similar free or low cost tools give me clues on where people are coming from, what search terms brought them to my blog, which articles were most read and a host of other nifty features. You don’t have to be a statistical geek, but it is certainly helpful if you have a general understanding of these types of programs. You’ll also want to make sure that your sitemap is up to date, that Google webmaster tools is indexing all of your pages and you’ll want to check the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to see how high your pages are appearing for certain traffic generating keywords. Make adjustments as needed and your traffic numbers should increase.

Promote Wisely – I’ve noticed that some bloggers aren’t very active in promoting their articles. I arrived on the blogging scene late, launching the forerunner to this blog in December 2005. For the first full year, my site wasn’t set up to encourage commenting (people had to register which means few left comments) and my articles were stilted, not conversational in nature. By Spring 2007, my traffic numbers began to increase sharply as I understood that making my blog user friendly would be a big help. I also joined StumbleUpon, which soon began to bring more traffic to my site and carefully chose several other social media sites where I began to establish a presence and a following (Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn, to name just a few). Needless to say, when I stoke the social media flame these days, my traffic numbers increase; if I neglect adding fuel to that fire, then my traffic gradually slides.

Thoughts For Your Day

Technorati tracks blogs and regularly issues a “State of the Blogosphere” report which offers excellent insight into the world of blogs. This report gives a fascinating and comprehensive look at blogging and what all of this means to you. The top blogs out there have been around for three years or longer but as you might guess, the vast number of bloggers eventually give up.

If you plan on being around for the long haul, then develop a strategy to increase your visibility in order to bring in more traffic. Quite a few of my blogging friends are committed to blogging until their fingers fall off, creating interesting and engaging posts on a regular basis. These people know where their blogs have been and they know where they’re going, setting themselves up for long term success.

Oh, what about my client who was worried about his traffic? He decided that a marketing campaign wouldn’t be worthwhile and is the process of making some changes to his web pages. The coming weeks should reveal whether these changes bring in more traffic, but if not I may have another gig to take on.

See Also — Is Your Work To Marketing Ratio 2-1?

Entrecard Notes, Update 2

It has already been two weeks since I joined Entrecard and I’m still finding my way around this unique, online traffic trading system. I have Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly score going through my mind at the moment (insanity, here we come) therefore I’ll use these three categories to explain my current observations of Entrecard:

The Good — There are some very helpful people who are involved with Entrecard. There isn’t room for me to name everyone plus some people are still anonymous to me, managing blogs where I cannot find their names. Personally, I prefer disclosure when it comes to blogging, but the consistency of drop exchanges, regularly updated and interesting blogs, and camaraderie on the forums is appreciated.

The Bad — I’ve been trying some of the power dropping methods out there including the bookmarking tagging found on Ty’s blog and have had mixed results with this method. First of all, some of the blogs have been removed, so all you get is an error message. Second of all, some other blogs haven’t been updated in months. Finally, there are a handful of blogs included which are splogs, have adult content, or are just plain bad neighborhoods. Anyway, I’ve modified Ty’s information by removing some blogs while replacing them with a few others.

The Ugly — It is a nice thought to think that fellow bloggers would treat site visitors with respect, but that just isn’t the case. I’ve come across a number of blogs which offer some form of trickery whereby you’ll click on what looks like an Entrecard, but be brought to a separate advertising page. I’ve also found blogs which are poorly written or contain design flaws making them impossible to read. I know it isn’t Entrecard’s job to police their members, but some sites are just plain crappy.

I’m still running Entrecard on five blogs with no plans to add or subtract sites for the short term. The benefits to me have been additional traffic, especially to my newer blogs, plus connecting with some decent people. Long term, I can see me reducing my Entrecard involvement to three blogs with less daily dropping as time goes on.