I follow the writing of many of the staff at Compendium Blogware, a local company here in Indianapolis offering an extremely trackable and orangic seo based blog software. I was reading through a post by Megan Glover called Is Blogging In Your 2009 Marketing Budget?, and happened across a powerpoint presentation about measuring, tracking, and adjusting your corporate blog. You can view the ppt by clicking here: measure-track-and-adjust-webinar.
In the webinar they had a graphic from Google Analytics that show where the traffic to their blog was originating from (image below). Of course being a search and keyword driven blogging platform you would
imagine that the majority of the sites traffic would be from search engines. I decided to check out my analytics to see if I was completely opposite, in the middle, or the same.
Below you will see my traffic sources from Google Analytics. Not surprisingly most of my traffic is driven through referring sites. It got me to thinking about the value of blogging and the underlying reason of why I am writing this blog. Without hesitation I can say that the main reason for blogging is my love for social media both here and in Indianapolis. I love the concept of building community on the web. I have met some wonderful people through my dealings i
n Friendfeed, Twitter, and Smaller Indiana.
The other reasons can be contributed to my social media marketing and design company and becoming a trusted adviser in the city of Indianapolis. A blog is a great way to build credibility among your peers and collaborate with many individuals on a global scale.
Of course, another big reason for blogging is the organic search engine optimization I gain through posting and linking. I don’t know if I should be worried that my lowest referring center is search engines. I have been contemplating a way to switch that tables and even out my traffic sources. Any ideas on how to do that?
It is interesting to see the sources of traffic of certain blogs both on a personal and professional level. I would gather that the majority of corporate blogs have a higher search engine traffic rate than most independent blogs out there.
Do you find referring sites more valuable or search engine traffic? Maybe you find direct traffic the most valuable of them all? I guess it is all based on the goals and aspirations of the blog strategy itself. Any tips on blog strategy can more than likely be found at Chris Brogan, Chris Baggot, Hutch Carpenter or Louis Gray’s blogs.
Here’s the traffic for SquaredPeg.com. A tad more balanced, but still a lot of link love. And I like that. If I’m coming up with good content, and people are linking to it, that’s way more valuable to me than someone coming in on a search. Think of how many times you search something and then click 3-4 pages.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bradjward/2930801535/sizes/o/
Good point. Thanks for the pic!
Thanks for the mention!I think your spot on about defining your purpose for blogging. When that purpose revolves around business, you have to measure just like any other marketing initiative… how much new business did I generate? What’s my ROI.
You asked what’s better referral or organic? That get’s back to purpose… for us we love referrals and referral traffic but organic traffic is truly what generates leads for us. And,for that reason, I would have to say organic search wins.
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