Another month has come and gone, and we are now into January. Christmas and New Years have come and gone. We’ve had our first real snowfall, though nothing too bad yet. The holidays were quite enjoyable.
December Stats & Information
I saw a another steady decline in most traffic statistics in December. The biggest culprit again was search engine traffic, which seriously plummeted. Another factor probably had to do with the holidays. I know I didn’t do as much as on the internet in December that I typically do, so I’m assuming a lot of other people scaled things back online as well. Just this week I’ve started to see things move back up a bit, so hopefully things have turned a corner and will get back to a more manageable level.
- Visits: 1,799 (vs. 3,835 in November)
- Unique Visitors: 1,557 (vs. 3,289 in November)
- Total Pageviews: 2,739 (vs. 13,624 in November)
- Pages per visit: 1.52 (vs.3.55 in November)
- Visit Duration: 1:43 (vs. 1:42 in November)
- Bounce Rate: 68.65% (vs. 66.00% in November)
Like I said, almost every statistic was significantly worse in December compared to November. I’m not sure what I can do to bring things back to where they were a couple months ago, but I’ll do some more digging and see. In the meantime all I can do is continue to do what I do, write posts that are interesting and that people can use, and keep networking with my fellow bloggers out there. I think December is the bottoming out month, and there’s no place to go but up from here.
- Alexa Ranking: 187,391 (vs. 176,996 in November)
- Google Pagerank: 2 (same as November)
- MozRank: 4.66 (vs. 4.57 in November)
- E-mail Subscriptions: 25 (vs. 21 in November)
- Facebook Likes: 195 (vs. 205 in November)
- Twitter Followers: 452 (vs. 165 in November)
My blog rankings are doing ok. My Alexa ranking went up a little (kind of disappointing), my Google Pagerank is at 2, and my MozRank went up (yay). I’m still working on social media, and made significant progress on Twitter (though some people must have un-liked me on Facebook. I took part in a couple giveaways that really boosted my Twitter followers.
How My Goals Went
I met some of them, came close to others, and totally missed some other goals.
I wanted to see my Alexa ranking drop to 160,000 by the end of December but didn’t make it. I’ll keep the same goal for January.
I set the following social media goals for December:
- Email Subscriptions: 25 (Actual was 25). Met my goal, so the January goal will be 30.
- Facebook Likes: 225 (Actual was 195). Didn’t meet it, so the January goal will be the same 225.
- Twitter Followers: 250 (Actual was 452). I did pretty good here and met my goal, so the goal for January will be 600.
I also had a few other blog-related goals:
- Make 15 comments on other blogs each week (I’m pretty sure I didn’t do this, though I came close). For January I’m going to keep it at 15 comments a week.
- Comment on 1 new (to me) blog each week (I know I didn’t do this).
- Tweet out 7 links each week as I encounter really good posts at other blogs (I think I actually did this)
3 comments
Canadian Budget Binder
January 10, 2013 at 1:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think December is such a busy month for most people that reading blogs is not the top priority. Drop in on my Facebook to say hi once in a while so the fans see you!! Interaction is a great way to let your fans you are not a dead page owner. I know many people who start a page but don’t interact and the fans just drop off like flies. Most times it makes sense to have fans that actually want to be at your blog or FB or Twitter rather than ones that just hooked up for a contest. I participate in contests as well but most times they just unlike if they didn’t really want to be there in the first place. They aren’t really benefiting if they aren’t participating in sharing,liking, re-tweeting or commenting. They just become a number. Chin up, you’ll have one heck of a year!
Daisy @ Add Vodka
January 10, 2013 at 10:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s great to have blog goals. I used to have so many goals for my site, but they have kind of fizzled out. Now it just keeps doing it’s thing and takes way less of my attention.
John S @ Frugal Rules
January 10, 2013 at 11:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ll echo Mr. CBB, I think December was so busy for many people that it did impact numbers. I’ve seen a few things turn myself and think it’ll continue this quarter. I have a few blog goals myself, but not too much as I want to be focused on a few things that I think are vital to the blog.