2012 Blog Traffic Report: Analyzing Stats & What I Learned

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” – Lawrence J. Peter… This quote is so true, and is part of what is helping guide my blogging and business goals for the new year. Last year, I felt like I was often just “trying to keep up” – instead of really taking steps towards my goals. {Although as I reviewed my post, 10 Blogging Goals for 2012: Starting with Be More Awesome – I realized I was lucky to accomplish most of what I set out to. This year, I’m working on setting big goals, and really getting things organized and planned out. And since you really can’t know where you’re going, until you can see where you’re been, I decided to analyze last year’s traffic to get a better idea of what worked, and what didn’t.

Sharing blogging stats: I’ve joined a group of bloggers who are all taking some time today to take a look back at 2012, and share their own traffic stats too – you can find the linky down at the bottom of this post, if you’d like to take a look and get a big picture on what’s working for other bloggers too. And – first things first, here’s my total traffic for all of last year, January to Decemeber of 2012:

Traffic was lower than expected: Last year when my blog got hacked, I lost almost two weeks of access to my account, and then another full week of mess once I could get back in. That was a big set back. Then, over the last few months, my little one started having seizures. It started with what we hoped at the time was a febrile seizure, but was then followed my months of more of them. Since October I really lost a lot of my blogging focus, due to traveling to Seattle Children’s Hospital for her appointments, testing and procedures, and dealing with each new episode when it happened. So what should have been my busiest time of the year – wasn’t. But that’s ok. I did my best, I made my family my priority, and she’s doing much better now. So it’s time to ROCK in 2013! Very excited to start fresh.

This list shows you where my traffic came from – my top 10 blog traffic sources: StumbleUpon doesn’t bring me as much as it used to earlier in 2012 – no more BIG traffic explosions. But it does bring steady visitors, and hopefully they’ll like what they see once stumbling onto my site, and come back again. The Weekend.tend is one of Glam Media’s sites – they picked up a few posts of mine during the year, which is always really appreciated. Towards the end of the year, Facebook has moved down to my #8 or #9 referrer, and Google and Pinterest have both moved up quite a bit. I’m working on SEO in the new year, so hopefully that will continue to increase.

Top 10 Blogs that Sent Traffic

• 1. Tailor Made Momma
• 2. Biannual Blogathon Bash
• 3. A Bowl Full of Lemons
• 4. Saving Dollars and Sense
• 5. East 9th Street
• 6. Simply Stacie
• 7. J-Man and Miller Bug
• 8. Skip to My Lou
• 9. Crystal & Co.
• 10. The Creativity Exchange

What I learned here – One, that linking up some great posts on some good linkys can be a really effective way to bring in traffic. That’s where most of this traffic came from – from linking up to photo challenges, recipe linkys, or my personal favorite to find fun new stuff – the Mommy Club linky on Crystal & Co, where everyone links up their best “mom solution” posts each week.

 Top 10 Blog Posts of the Year

• 1. Bloggers have messy homes, and other thoughts on housework
• 2. The Swagger Wagon
• 3. Smart & Stylish Kitchen Storage Solutions
• 4. Football Party Food: Build a Snackadium
• 5. Did this Major Brand Steal a Mom Inventors Idea? You Decide…
• 6. 10 Ways to Earn Money from Home
• 7. My Time Management Crisis in Poorly Drawn Graphics
• 8. 15 Awesome Ways to Shop for Free
• 9. Frugal DIY Fun: Toddler Sensory & Expoloring Bottles
• 10. My Toddler Had a Seizure: What I Learned Might Help You Too

What I learned here – It’s very obvious here that while sponsored posts and reviews pay the bills, it’s the real content that I write that is what brings people to my site. Whether it’s just something funny I think will entertain people, a personal experience I think can help educate people, or a fun recipe or craft idea – those are the things that people like to read. Which is awesome, since that’s my goal in the new year, to write more real content again. Another thing I noticed is that many of these are posts that I link to within posts often, encouraging readers to discover more of my favorite older posts.

 Want to see more?

Check out the other bloggers who have put together their own stats posts – See how you compare, what you can learn, what best practices you can adopt. And if you’d like to share your post – leave me a comment below, so I can learn from you, too!