Last month I posted an article with some pointers for new blogs that are trying to generate traffic from search engines. In that post I covered some of the methods that have helped me to quickly increase the traffic that comes from search engines, specifically Google. Since another month has passed, I wanted to give a quick update.
Here’s a quick recap:
In July I received
- 587 visitors from search engines
- 563 visitors from Google (#4 traffic source)
In August I received
- 2,217 visitors from search engines
- 2,173 visitors from Google (#2 traffic source)
And now, the new stats from September
- 3,073 visitors from search engines
- 2,974 visitors from Google (#4 traffic source)
Although the growth wasn’t as drastic as it was in the previous month, it still is steady growth. The most commonly found posts received about the same number of visitors as they did in August, but the growth came from newer pages that didn’t exist in August.
In the original post I explained my strategy for growing search engine traffic, and I think my experience still indicates that creating more content and getting links are two of the most important things you can do as a new blogger.
If you have other experiences with search engines please share them in the comments.
26 comments from readers
1 matt Oct 4, 2007 at 8:21 pm
the link doesn’t work
2 Vandelay Design Oct 4, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Thanks,
that post got set to “private” somehow. It should work now.
3 Sofna Oct 5, 2007 at 9:53 am
Impressive….and these stats are just to this blog? I am waiting to start my blog. We only have asp.net and sql server on the server right now, so we have to put mysql on and convert to php….too bad wordpress doesnt have something compatible to what I have. Regardless, nice job.
4 Sofna Oct 5, 2007 at 9:54 am
O ya, I forgot to ask you, are most of the searches from something you have targeted or just long tail keywords coming from keyword rich content?
5 Felix Ker Oct 5, 2007 at 9:58 am
I’m receiving 30% traffic from Search Engines. Is that onsidered alot?
6 Karthik Oct 5, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Have you been able to figure out why there was an increase of 286% from July to August while there was only 37% for August to September?
Honestly, there’s not a lot I wouldn’t do get a 37% increase in traffic
but I was just trying to put it into a perspective.
7 Portland Web Design Oct 5, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Nicely done. It’s funny how those jumps happen in Google, even at times when they don’t change the algorithm, even after your entire site has been spidered.
Felix, that’s a good amount. In my experience it’s great to have 15% direct, 25% from referring sites, and 60% from search engines. That’s an extremely visible site to Google, Yahoo, et. al.
8 Madhur Kapoor Oct 5, 2007 at 1:15 pm
I get around 60% traffic from Google . There are certain posts which get around 400 visitors daily from Google .
9 david Oct 5, 2007 at 1:30 pm
That’s a huge increase in traffic in such a short amount of time. Did PR played a role before you start posting more?
10 Matt W Oct 5, 2007 at 2:23 pm
I get majority of the traffic from Google. Keywords of the title that you have made to your site is very important for visitor to search.
David: in my opinion PR played an important role to do everything smoothly especially making money
11 Mason from SmallFuel Oct 5, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Those are some impressive numbers.
I too am curious, have you done keyword research for each one of your articles, or is most of the traffic long-tail?
Keep up the great work,
- Mason
12 Vandelay Design Oct 5, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Sofna,
Yes, those numbers are just for this blog. The searches in a way are for phrases that have been targeted. The vast majority of them are coming in through blog posts, so each post has it’s own topic and related keywords. There is no 1 or 2 words or phrases that send a lot of traffic, it’s just small traffic from hundreds of different search phrases.
Felix,
My search traffic accounts for less than 30%. I don’t think it’s possible to say what percentage is good or bad, it kind of depends on what you are targeting. I have been getting a good bit of traffic from social media sites, so that pushes the % of search traffic down.
Karthik,
The reason the jump was so much higher from July to August than it was from August to September is that July was the 1st month I posted consistently. Before that I only had a handful of posts on here and search traffic was minimal. When I started all of a sudden adding a lot of content and getting links the search traffic took a big jump. Now that the site is established it keeps growing, but not at the same rate.
Madhur,
That’s crazy that you get that much search traffic to individual posts. How long ago did you start your blog? Did you intentionally target search traffic for specific phrases?
David,
I haven’t really paid much attention to PR.
13 Karen Zara Oct 5, 2007 at 10:07 pm
This may sound strange, but I don’t do anything to get traffic from search engines. I mean, I only write my posts the way I normally would, and then for obscure reasons Google kindly sends me some traffic. Of course it isn’t nearly as much traffic as you get. But considering that I’m not trying any special methods nor have I optimised my blog for SEs, I really have no reasons to complain.
14 Cole Haan Oct 5, 2007 at 10:22 pm
very Impressive. In just August you received 4 times the traffic than July. That’s a big increase, you must have gotten backlinks from higher PR sites.
15 Tibi Puiu Oct 6, 2007 at 4:48 am
Impressive stats, quite a explosive growth i might add. I experienced a growth from 6000 to 10.000 uniques from google this month on one of my blogs, so I’m pretty ecstatic too
16 Vandelay Design Oct 6, 2007 at 7:58 am
Karen,
I don’t really write for search engines either, although I did spend time setting up the blog to be as search-engine friendly as I know how. I should spend more time on keyword research for posts, but I just don’t.
Cole,
I did start getting some links in July and August, to a few posts especially.
Tibi,
Congratulations, that’s very nice growth!
17 Shantanu Oct 6, 2007 at 11:11 pm
I literally get no traffic from search engines. My SEO is terrible, but I’m improving it. All my traffic comes from email and forum signatures as well as other methods spread by word of mouth.
18 Niagara Guy Oct 7, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Do you mean that 2,974 of the total 3,073 visitors came from Google? Or did you mean that you had 2,974 from Google and 3,073 from all other search engines?
19 Vandelay Design Oct 7, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Niagara Guy,
I had 3,073 total visitors from searches. Google sent 2,974 of the 3,073. So almost no traffic from other search engines.
20 John Lampard Oct 8, 2007 at 8:25 am
Fantastic figures
About 30% of my traffic is from search engines (most of it Google), though the number of actual visitors are a little lower than your figures 
21 Vandelay Design Oct 8, 2007 at 8:43 am
Hi John.
Thanks for reading and commenting. 30% is a higher % than I have from search engines.
22 John Hunter Oct 8, 2007 at 2:09 pm
I think that the real key is creating content people find valuable. Other smart actions can also make a difference (using a URL that is human and SEO friendly versus ?id=645 etc) but good content is the key. With good content links will follow. Speeding up that process is about the only thing that makes sense for most people to spend time on in my opinion - possibly commenting on others blogs, participating in carnivals, offering to guest post…
In, Web Pages Must Live Forever, Jakob Neilsen shows what happens with good content - ever increasing page views for your existing pages, year after year. You might notice that his link is bad - …981129.html still the page content makes up for that bad decision.
Keep up the good work.
23 Mike C Oct 13, 2007 at 8:11 pm
Do you have any pointers on getting more pages indexed on a website. I have had pages indexed but then they disappear form the index. I guess I am referring to older posts. any suggestions?
24 Vandelay Design Oct 13, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Mike,
The first thing I would suggest is to link to those old posts from other places in your blog. Include internal links in your new posts when possible. Also, try to get some links from other sites to these posts.
25 Alexander Feb 6, 2008 at 7:46 am
Tell please hardly more in detail about sources except for search systems, what particularly you did?
26 Ruslan Jul 17, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Interesting to see at it