One Year of Analytics

I started using Google Analytics not long after I started this blog. Here is how things look for the past year:

Google Analytics for March 10, 2010, through March 10, 2011

These are numbers that I feel I can be proud of. I know there are many many other blogs that have started and gotten much higher numbers than I have, and in a shorter amount of time. But for just doing this as a hobby, I have no complaints. I like that the site has gradually started gathering more traffic. I’m not so proud of my 75 percent bounce rate, though.

A couple of notes:

1. The first spike in traffic was when I posted photos of people crashing at the 2010 Joe Martin Stage Race. I plan on attending every day of the race this year, so hopefully I’ll get some more good photos for you to look at.

2. The second spike is from my post with photos of the record snowfall Fayetteville had in February. So looking at those two spikes, I reckon that current events is one thing that brings in traffic.

3. The post that gets the most views is about Layer Masks in Gimp. I guess that’s a subject people want to learn about.

Goals for the second year:

1. Lower my bounce rate. I think getting it under 50 percent would be a good goal. I should be able to accomplish this by raising the quality of my content, and to post more frequently.

2. Continue growing. I’m getting about 50 visits a day now. I’d like to see that number climb to an average of at least 100 a day, maybe even 200 a day.

3. Completely design my own theme from scratch. I’ve been reading up on this and I’ve been following tutorials and I’m learning. I still have a ways to go, but I have some ideas in my head now and I’m excited about the possibility of making a WordPress site that looks like no other.

Thanks:

Thanks to Christopher Spencer of Ozarks Unbound for turning me on to WordPress, and for organizing WordCamp Fayetteville. Christopher has, on many occasions, taken time from his busy schedule to answer my questions and offer a wealth of information to me.

Thanks to wpbeginner.com and Syed Balkhi. Syed runs wpbeginner, and there is a ton of free information there that I try to put to use every day. I met Syed at WordCamp Fayetteville last year and he was really awesome and helpful.

And thank all of you for looking at my blog. I love it when you leave comments and write to me and whatnot. I also REALLY REALLY love it when you click that Facebook Like Button.

Now here is an open call to all the WordPress and SEO gurus out there: What advice would you offer me? What actions should I take to reach my goals listed above? Please be kind and leave a comment below.

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