Traffic on CML has been up for about a week.
Naturally I knew it probably had nothing to do with how well I had been writing because I’m not that good of a writer. So on a hunch I went to Google Insights and checked the trends for the general term “Country Music”. The results kind of surprised me.
Tracking Blog Traffic Trends
An important aspect of blogging is tracking your traffic results. Along with revenue it’s a good idea to set traffic goals based on competitor blogs and your own needs for driving qualified leads for your business.
Along with simply setting goals and tracking traffic it’s important to understand what can cause variations in your traffic.
As I mentioned I recently saw a little uptick in traffic on Country Music Life. Over the last week there was a pretty good spike in traffic. Even before that I saw a bit of an increase in March from the previous month. I knew things couldn’t have been caused by the writing I was doing. Usually when a spike happens it’s the result of something extra happening.
Google Insights for Blog Tracking
I went to Google Insights and checked out the search traffic trend for the term “Country Music”.
As you can see the traffic for the term spikes in April. I’m not entirely sure why this happens each year for country music. One hunch is the spring and summer months get people excited about new music being released. I think there is a bit more fresh music released in anticipation of summer. This spring country artist Brad Paisley has a new album release coming up. There is also a big award show in the industry – the ACM Awards. This occurs the first week of April each year. I’m sure a little traffic spike is caused by people searching for award related terms.
I assumed in general if there was a spike in country music there would be a spike in all terms country music related. This is likely the cause of at least some of the extra traffic heading CML’s way over the last week and even the last month. Hopefully it continues through April.
Summary
Understanding the trends in search traffic can help you prepare for variations in your traffic and even revenue statistics. It can help you plan when you may get more or fewer leads throughout the year. Understanding when spikes occur or even low periods can help ease the cycle of excitement and disappointment as you blog.
Tracking daily visits can drive you nuts when things are up and down over time. It’s much easier on your mind to understand what is causing variations in traffic besides assuming it’s how well or how poorly your individual posts are doing.