Fog of Eternity | Website design and discussion

Slightly later update on traffic growth as I’m travelling in the US at the moment. Overall figures have been high over the past week, heavily impacted by StumbleUpon. The commenting strategy I outlined last week has also had impact.

It’s been far and away the busiest week in pure numbers. That’s largely due to consistent and continuing traffic from the ‘Lost On The Internet‘ article that was stumbled at the end of last week. That’s brought in over 6,000 visitors this week, albeit with the same flaws that I highlighted in the last update - high bounce rates and low average time per visit.

Wider pool of incoming traffic

The majority of traffic has come from StumbleUpon. But more importantly for the long term is that traffic is coming to the site from a wider variety of portals. Google Analytics notes that there are 46 traffic sources linking into Fog of Eternity this week. That’s a significant increase.

The visitor numbers from each of those links may not be high at the moment, but it demonstrates a widening of the audience. It’s also clear that visitors linking to the site from other blogs, as opposed to social media, have much lower bounce rates (ranging from 40-60% instead of 80-95%).

Not linking just from comments

The commenting strategy needs to be looked at more widely than merely examining the figures of traffic from the targetted blogs. I think there are three significant advantages to the blog commenting strategy:

Direct linking from the blogs themselves

It’s very clear that the blog writers themselves appreciate comments and will visit the site of someone who comments on their blog. I do exactly the same if someone comments here. It adds value to both blogs because it extends the debate and discussion of our articles.

There’s also traffic that comes from visitors to those blogs who’ve (hopefully) found my comments worthwhile. They’ve been motivated to take a few minutes to visit Fog of Eternity to check out my wider discussion.

Developing a wider profile

Once the wider traffic starts coming from blogs elsewhere, your profile develops. Articles on Fog of Eternity have been cited in blog articles elsewhere. That sees people linking back to me from blogs where I’ve never even commented - but it’s a direct result of my comments elsewhere.

The discussion itself is important

Probably an overlooked one. The blogs I listed in last week’s article were blogs that I was interested in myself. I wasn’t looking merely at adding pointless comments. I felt they were blogs where I could make pertinent contributions to their debates.

So regardless of actual traffic numbers coming back to Fog of Eternity, there’s value in remaining motivated to comment on the discussion at various blogs.

Guest posting’s instant impact was limited

I also guest posted on sarahintampa.com this week, and thought the ‘Why Facebook Is Useless’ post was likely to provoke debate. On Sarah’s blog itself that was certainly the case, there was a reasonably lively discussion on the article. I was surprised, however, given the significant readership of that blog, how little direct traffic came back to Fog of Eternity as a result.

Not that it’s a particular issue. It again falls into the development of a wider profile, and was an enjoyable exercise to have a discussion with a wider audience of readers.

A quiet week upcoming

I’m in the United States for the rest of the week. As a bit of personal background - I’m British, my wife is American, and until we go through the drawn out US immigration process we live on opposite sides of the Atlantic. It means a lot of travel back and forth.

I still expect to be posting this week, if not every day, but the overall social networking activity is likely to be limited. This in itself is probably worth analysing. We’re in the sixth week of the traffic growth strategy, and have shown worthwhile benefits of social media strategies. So we’ll be stepping back and seeing how much of that profile can retain impact even if I’m not being strongly active on social media during this week.

Filed under: Traffic Growth by Robin Cannon

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