What’s Your Traffic Looking Like Lately?

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 14, 2012

Most of us track our traffic in one way or another. I’m not necessarily always checking mine, but I have a plugin on Firefox that tells me the Alexa rank for every website I visit, including my own.

Jes via Compfight

Lately I’m not happy with what I’m seeing. Except for one of my sites, my traffic is dropping across the board. And I don’t mean by a little bit either. In just a few weeks traffic has nosedived, and I’m at kind of a loss to explain it. All my blogs and websites are showing decreases. The one site that’s not showing a decrease is one where I’ve added new content when it hadn’t had anything new in almost 9 months, so it’s being paid attention to again.

The only connection I have to lower traffic, and it makes no sense, is the addition of CommentLuv Premium to the site. I decided to finally go ahead and bite the bullet because in the back of my mind I see the day when the free one won’t be supported anymore, along with the Growmap Antispybot plugin and some others, and as the reduced rate it seemed like the smart way to go.

CommentLuv usually helps promote traffic, especially if you have the dofollow attribute set, but for whatever reason my traffic has dropped on all my blogs, and it coincided with my adding it. Maybe my settings aren’t correct; maybe I’m blocking something that shouldn’t be blocked; I’m not sure.

On the flip side, comments have remained steady. If those had dropped as well I’d be worrying more than I am. And my Feedburner subscriptions haven’t fallen, so that’s a good deal as well.

I will continue monitoring traffic to see if it starts to improve any, but it’s possible that it’s the season that’s making it fall some. As it gets close to this particular holiday season, traffic often drops. When I looked at last year I saw that traffic dropped almost 20% in December when compared to November, and in 2010 it dropped 25% in the same time period.

So maybe the coincidence with CommentLuv is just that. Maybe it’s just historical precedence taking over. The same thing happens with people being admitted to the hospital by the way; more people get admitted during winter than they do in the summer. Just a little bit of trivia to make your day go well.

Tags: Analytics, blog traffic, CommentLuv Premium, web traffic

18 Comments »

Jacko:

Great timing on this post.

I’m actually in the middle of a case study looking into this right now.

I just purchased Comluv premium this month and I have noticed an increase in Twitter followers and referral traffic.

What I’m noticing is the 3 main types of traffic referral, search, and direct have very different drivers.

What works to get referral traffic doesn’t necessarily help direct or search traffic.

The study is still ongoing too early to conclude…

Have you noticed Darren over at copyblogger has been publishing much more frequently maybe he saw the same type of dip you spoke about?
Jacko recently posted…You are invited – RSVP Only

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
December 14th, 2012 at 1:37 PM

I hadn’t noticed Jacko, but it’s possible. Truthfully, if I were writing every day I think that would battle traffic woes, but I’m not sure I’m in the mood to give that much of a try right now, as I have other things going on. But my traffic’s falling fast across the board.

December 14th, 2012 | 10:29 AM

Michael Belk:

Mitch my traffic is looking up because I made a few changes on my blog.

I put my articles into categories/groups on the front page, I put my most recent post up front to stop people from having to look for them.

My best idea was to have a logo made with my whole domain name in it. I know ground-braking.

My bounce rate has gone down from 80% to 19%. Is that amazing or what.

People are staying on my pages for average 3:30 seconds.

My Alexa rank has gone down from 9,0000,000 to under 160,000.

So I always want more but I can not complain.
Michael Belk recently posted…Tennis star Caroline Wozaniacki mocks Serena Williams

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
December 15th, 2012 at 10:23 AM

Michael, I hope you meant “minutes” rather than seconds. lol You’re doing nice stuff with your blog so I’m glad that’s working out. Mine’s just suffering seasonal issues thank goodness; at least I’m hoping long term that’s all it is. Course, I have to keep removing part of your name to get you out of the spam filter, thus the only editing I’m doing. lol

December 14th, 2012 | 3:41 PM

Carl:

Actually I am quite happy with the traffic, for a couple of days 2 weeks ago, I’ve pulled few strings and ripples were promising. Steady growth, even I haven’t done nearly anything on marketing side in the last week, preparing main project for major update and currently I am developing another 3 pretty big projects. I personally don’t think that CommentLuv is such a major factor, more likely a backdoor for spammers, for sure it creates some engagement as side effect, but almost certain that doesn’t offer any benefits for SEO as side effect.

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
December 15th, 2012 at 10:27 AM

Yeah Carl, I agree on the CommentLuv thing. It helps more than it could ever hurt. Just one of those “coincidences” things.

December 15th, 2012 | 7:33 AM

Rusty@Rustenburg:

Well, actually you are not alone in this situation. Two of my keywords are dropping this month of December and I don’t know how to cope with this. I am also writing content for my blog but am still getting few visitors. I am a little bit of desperate about this so I am looking for some alternative solution by engaging more time on social media sites like facebook, twitter, google plus and pinterest. I am trying to build more followers on this platform. I’ll let you know what would be the outcome?

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
December 15th, 2012 at 10:30 AM

You’re fighting a couple of issues I’m afraid. One, your site has some kind of strange redirect thing that’s probably hurting you as far as visitors go; my protections are warning me about your site. Two, when I was able to see your site a couple of weeks ago, it shows Rusty as being male (everyone on the site is shown as being male), yet your avatar is definitely not male; that could be offputting to some people if you’re commenting on a lot of blogs. And of course you’re not posting a link back to a blog, so you’re not taking any advantage of what CommentLuv could be doing for you.

December 15th, 2012 | 7:42 AM

Rummuser:

My day has gone very well thank you!
Rummuser recently posted…Misogyny.

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
December 15th, 2012 at 10:30 AM

Glad to help.

December 15th, 2012 | 9:22 AM

Lisa:

Hi Mitch, I had to look at mine to see where they have been. Earlier in December they were down but came up nice this past week. I just looked at October and they are up quite a bit since then. (I have the premium too for about 6 mos now) Maybe you have a setting off on the CommentLuv, I bet if you asked Andy he may be able to help you. I’m not sure if all of mine are set right either. I did fix the snag with the shares – it was showing titles or title twice. We’ll have to research more – I bet there is an informative post out there on it. Now – we just need the time, right?
Lisa recently posted…13 Fun Blogs to Make You Smile, Laugh and Sometimes Cry

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
December 18th, 2012 at 12:24 AM

That’s true Lisa. I’m not going to start worrying about my traffic until after the new year. I’m going to continue putting out content and seeing where it takes me.

December 16th, 2012 | 7:28 AM

Tim Bonner:

Hey Mitch

It does sound like your traffic drop is seasonal, at least I hope it is! CommentLuv Premium should increase traffic so I’d be surprised if it were anything to do with that.

My traffic is holding steady during December. No significant increases or decreases.
Tim Bonner recently posted…Invigorated By The Trials Of Life

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
December 18th, 2012 at 12:25 AM

Thanks Tim. Stuff seems to pick on me from time to time; I’ve learned not to take it personally. lol

December 17th, 2012 | 7:23 AM

Karlon:

Hey Mitch, I think my traffic has increased incredibly than last month since I made certain essential changes in my blog. I have started accepting valuable and keyword rich guest post and also my social media efforts are working well which has lead to substantial growth of traffic. I would like to thank you for sharing great tips about “Creativity and Blogging”, “7 Ways To Increase your Visibility on Facebook” and building account on G+ helped me a lot more. Those really helped me out. Thanks a ton!

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:34 AM

Glad you enjoyed those Karlon. I went and looked at some of my posts from last year and it seems last November I wrote a post about dwindling traffic. For me, seems to definitely be a seasonal thing, and obviously I forget it every year. lol

December 19th, 2012 | 8:37 AM

Frank Martz:

Hey, Mitch, don’t take everything in stride! You still have your blogs and sites up. I had three blogs about cars and quite frankly – did NOT make much money nor garnered enough traffic to keep them going. I dreaded the fact that i had to update every so often, and for this reason and a few others, I started to lose traffic. As well they took toooo much of my time away from my first passion – cars!
Now, I spend my time posting on blogs instead of writing on blogs. Kudos to those who can keep and generate new traffic – AND make some good ole “Ben Franklins” as well!

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:36 AM

LOL; Thanks Frank. As I wrote, I’m not overly worried about it since it does seem to be seasonal.

December 19th, 2012 | 11:25 AM

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