Analytics, How-to

How to increase your traffic overnight

Posted by Glenn Reffin on June 15, 2009 at 11:23 pm.
Google Analytics graph

Google Analytics graph

This post is about how to dramatically increase the readership on your blog overnight and is based on my recent experience with Redcentaur Blog. It involves some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), some good timing and, let’s be honest, a huge dollop of luck.

Once upon a time…

To set the scene, I need to tell you a very short story. I recently upgraded my blog installation from WordPress 2.7.1 to WordPress 2.8 and the process did not go very well. Completely baffled, I decided to tweet for help on Twitter, meanwhile re-reading the codec and the upgrade instructions. Eventually, I got the upgrade to take hold. You can read about my experiences by viewing the post I wrote at the time.

When I looked at my twitter replies the following day, I noticed a response from one of my followers suggesting I post an entry about how I resolved the issues I had with WordPress. This is how the post came about. I wrote it quickly to get it out and help others who were experiencing problems with their own installations.

Search Engine Optimisation

When I wrote the post, I didn’t put much thought into the meta tags or except, both of which I always include in my posts. On this occasion, I tweaked the first paragraph of the post to form the excerpt and put together some keywords based on the core of the post. I called the post ‘Upgrading to WordPress 2.8 – Don’t Panic!’

Subconsciously, by going against my usual instinct and not over-thinking the meta tags, I somehow managed to hit the core of the post.

Good timing

By listening to my follower on Twitter and understanding the needs of people to find answers to the problems they were having, I managed to get the post on my site very quickly and it must have had some value for many people.

Result

Later that evening, I checked my analytics for site activity and noticed an incredible spike in the hits my site had received. Further investigation showed that this was mainly a result of Google search results and Twitter referrals.

Keywords

Looking at the search results that brought people to my site I noticed that all but a handful of the top 20 results were related to the WordPress installation post I had published a few hours previously.

Top 20 search phrases in woopraGoogle ranking

I checked with Google search, using the keywords used by people visiting my site and found that I was placed in rank 2, right below the WordPress codec itself.

Google Rank position 2

Google Rank 2

Conclusions

This has been a valuable lesson to me about the power of writing relevant and useful posts that people need. It has also taught me the true value of SEO when it is directly linked to the content of your page. For a post that was rushed, its value has been in helping others to overcome a problem. It was timely as I saw a need and answered that demand; and it involved a huge amount of luck thanks to the follower who suggested I write a post about my experiences.

For you, I recommend being willing to listen to the conversations happening elsewhere (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc), and understanding what the people writing those messages need. And having the flexibility to respond to that need.

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  • What an awesome post Glenn. That's a big time eye-opener and it makes me want to develop a new strategy to mimic what you did. Awesome read man.
  • Ah, classic example of writing content that visitors actually want to see! That's no secret, but it's damn hard to do as you know. As a matter of luck, it appears that you covered the longtails that people were looking for, and that's what led to your spike.

    I try hard to keep the visitors that I get, and I use WP Greet Box. It works fine with WP Super Cache because WP Greet Box uses javascript. WP Greet Box will greet users differently based on their referrer header. You can see an example on my site EnviroGadget:

    Compare your visit:
    http://www.envirogadget.com
    to
    http://tinyurl.com/mg5jlv and click through to Envirogadget.

    You'll see a different icon and greeting for each path into the site.

    Dan
  • Dan

    It is indeed no secret and something all bloggers try hard to do. It has taught me a few things about rankings and getting new visitors. Interestingly, I have found through woopra that those same visitors are coming back time and again to the site too and that my spike is continuing.

    Do you find that you get a lot of conversions to your feed as a result of WP Greet Box and have you tracked any increase? I would be interested in exploring this with you further.

    Glenn
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