Website Traffic

It's time for the requite "how did my website do" post at the start of a new year. Considering I finally got around to posting on regular basis, my site received far more traffic than it ever had before. According to Google Analytics, 174 unique visitors visited my website in 2013. In 2014 that number climbed to 1,011, a 532% increase.

Here are the top visited pages:

• #1 (611 visitors, 29.19% of the total): Home Page. Since I put this link on all my resumes and social media profiles, it's no surprise more people visit it than anything else.
• #2 (131, 6.26%): Blog. the blog portal for Distractions of Grandeur got a lot of traffic, probably because it's the next most linked two area of the website.
• #3 (126, 6.02%): Heartbleed For Dummies. This post was the one time I hit social goal, posting the right thing at the right time. I'm a little embarrassed since it's more light commentary than a true explanation. Had I known I'd get that much traffic I'd have written more.
• #4 (110, 5.26%): Portfolio. I think this bump in traffic is due to my many submissions to freelancer websites, providing potential clients with examples of my work.
• #5 (70, 3.34%): Film. Again, this traffic's due to submissions to casting calls for film projects.
• #6 (63, 3.01%): Theatre. Once again, casting call submissions. Good to see people are actually viewing my work.
• #7 (39, 1.86%): Organization for Transformative Works Defends Fan Fiction. This one got traffic due to retweet from the OTW itself; hopefully it encouraged others to explore fandom.
• #8 (36, 1.72%): Contact Form. I wish this one were a little higher, hopefully due to clients and casting directors contacting me. Then again, most of the people I do work for use my email address from my resume.
• #9 (25, 1.19%): A Bare But Worthy Cymbline. Chalk this one up to Bare Theatre linking to it on their Facebook page. I'm glad my highest read review was from a local theatre production.
• #10 (25, 1.19%): Reviews. I wrote 37 reviews this past year, for books, movies, television, theatre productions, and even a music album. It's the subject I've been able to make myself write about more than anything else on the blog, sometimes posting more than one a week.

What's the takeaway? If you want traffic, you have to write, then share that information. I tend to use Twitter, but any sharing scenario will do. But most importantly: write, write, and write some more. I created a schedule in March of last year to keep me focused on what I needed to post each week, which helped a lot. Sometimes I posted more, sometimes less, but I seldom stared at the screen thinking "What am I going to write?"

While my web traffic went up, my retention rate remained lackluster, as the following chart shows.

"Bounce rate" is a web term for visitors who left the site (or "bounced") without interacting the the page itself, usually by leaving within a few seconds of coming. As can be seen, I suffered a fairly high bounce rate most of the year, hovered at or higher than 50%. That behavior may not be bad for all pages; after all, looking at my resume doesn't take much time. Visitors spent the most time on pages with a lot of content that required extensive reading, like my reviews and stories, which is to be expected. Many of those same pages had a 0% bounce rate.

Also, my worst bounce rate occurred during December (a whopping 90.48%), and that was the month when I posted the least. As always, fresh regular content is key to keeping a blog relevant.

In the new year my goal is to keep at a similar pace but up the quality, both the writing and the traffic. I've already got several reviews posted and in the works, an ongoing serial fiction story, and several entertainment posts prepped. If you want to keep pace with everything happening here on the blog, be sure to subscribe for email updates (see the right hand column) or follow me on Twitter (@Woodzette).