My Blogging Milestone! A Bit of a Case Study

Ok, now this is not going to sound like much of a milestone to many of you out there but for me, this is important and a kind of big deal It’s also a bit of a case study in how one ‘breaking’ post or story can really skyrocket traffic.

In the past, I’ve told you that I really got seriously into blogging only about six months ago, sure I’ve blogged on and off for a couple of years, but this blog is the one that is most important to me. I started it because it is my passion. It was never meant to be a ‘money’ site although it does more than pay for itself.

A little about the site

• I started the site in mid-April but backdated some posts to start getting indexed with some content.
• I have never advertised this site except for writing a couple of articles and I didn’t even do that until recently.
• The niche is what I would consider to be a heavily populated one, dogs, but my angle is one that is much more targeted, canine advocacy. Now you can see why this was never created to be a ‘money site’
• By the end of April, with only search engine traffic, a two week span of time, I had 500 unique visitors.
• By the end of May, again, no advertising, only search engine, I had over 2500 unique visitors.
• By the end of July, again, no advertising, only search engine, I had over 5000 unique visitors.
• In August I had a major spike due to one story that got picked up by ebaumsworld.com and was heavily promoted and hit over 18,000 unique visitors.
• This month, I broke a story in the US which was heavily picked up by blogs all over the county as well as forums, Facebook, Livejournals, Craigslist, websites and many other places and I will easily top over 20,000 visitors.

Like I said, this doesn’t sound like a big deal but remember, no advertising and this is a very small and targeted niche. With just one ‘breaking’ story, I have had a major increase in traffic.

I posted the story on the 16th. My usual average daily page views is around 700 pages. On the 16th I had almost 900 and it slowly picked up as the story stated getting pick up until on the 19th, over 6000 page views! That was the spike and since them is has been slowly dropping and normalizing although I am still getting a lot of hits on that story.

You can see my stats below from the 10th of this month up until the 24th.

So aside from the fact that this is a milestone for me, this also shows how with just one ‘breaking’ or popular post or story, you can get an incredible traffic surge. And while things may die down, many of those people who are interested in your topic will continue to return again and again.

Another thing that I do with this site is a great deal of interlinking. I link to outside sources as well as connect many of my posts together. This is a great tip for increased SEO. Not only do search engines find my original post, they also follow the links to all the other posts so that everything is indexed quickly and easily.

Now, while I said that this site was not created as a ‘money’ site, that doesn’t mean that I don’t monetize it. There’s Adsense ads and well as affiliate products and articles and my own products. People who stop by to read the canine advocacy news tend to be pet owners and pet lovers so I make sure there are resources available in the form of sidebar ads and articles pointing to affiliate products.

I also have another blog that is pet related which I crosspost with this one, back and forth and this increases traffic on both sites. This is beneficial as the second site is more of a ‘money’ site.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my ‘little milestone’ with you as well as what it shows. There is definitely a lesson to be learned.

And if you’re interested in seeing the site I am talking about, it’s For the Love of the Dog. But do be warned, it is an advocacy site so some of the info is not for the weak of heart. And if you want to see the story that hit big - A Dead Dog as Art? Petition. This is a tough story if you are an animal lover so I don’t advise you reading it but if you’re interested….

UPDATE - Just took a peek at my referrers and looks like Topix.com picked up the story and people are seeing it so I guess things will be hopping again today! LOL I’m averaging over 200 visits and hour and almost 300 page views an hour. And at this point the story was posted more than a week ago and it is still get major traffic surges!

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