Today is Day 12 for “Retirement Made Simple.” Today set a new personal best for the blog, logging 18 visitors and 35 views. Previously, I’d gone over 10 views twice, but not yet hit 20. Today we soared past 20 views AND 30 views to 35, with an hour left.
Also today, the blog got its first referral from a search engine! Throw a party! Seven search engine hits, in fact. Five from Bing and two from Yahoo. What’s up with Google? Google still missing after 12 days?
I believe it’s much harder for a new blog to attract attention through a search engine than it was a few years back. I hope the search engines are aware of my posts by now, but most hits for a new blog will be buried under thousands of other hits. Who’s going to see it? I’ve been getting one or two visits, now and then via the WordPress Reader.
Since no readers have come from search engines before today, how were a few people discovering the blog? Most of them were other bloggers whose posts I’d commented on, and some were readers clicking over from a comment. Interacting with other bloggers is time-intensive, but it’s also fun, informative, and so important.
I’m also using the WordPress publicize feature to send notice of new posts to my Facebook page and Twitter feed. I have about 125 friends on Facebook, and every post draws two or three visits via Facebook. Haven’t received a visit via Twitter yet on this blog. On my other blogs, I’ve regularly received a few hits from Facebook, but rarely any from Twitter.
Discipline and focus in posting
My blog is about Retirement, Simplicity, and Aging Gracefully on a fixed income. My target audience is retired folks and workers who are nearing retirement or thinking about it. But surprisingly, many of my readers so far have been younger adults. No age discrimination here.
You’re probably wondering, what was the post that sparked the surge from 5 visitors and 12 views on Thursday and 4 visitors and 7 views on Friday, to 18 visitors and 35 views on Saturday? It’s a breaking news story: “Social Security Cost-Of-Living Increase For 2016 In Danger.” The source is rock solid, AARP. The story also mentioned an expected increase in the Medicare premium for 2016, as well as the bad news about the Social Security COLA.
The story is spot on for my target audience. Retired folks care dearly about Social Security and Medicare. Most of us depend on Social Security for the bulk of our retirement income, and on Medicare to cover the high cost of health care. This is the way it’s supposed to work folks. You focus as tightly as possible on one or a few related subjects that interest your target audience. If you provide the right information, they will come.
Hey, just had one more visit and one view at 11:25 p.m. New total 19 visitors and 36 views.
One thing more. I notice that nearly every day, the number of views is about double the number of visitors. This is gratifying. It means that visitors aren’t just making a quick hit and then surfing on to the next big thing. They’re lingering for at least a minute or two and exploring other posts on the blog.
Here’s the take-away: Inside blogging information is as dull as grass growing on a cloudy day to most of my target audience. The spot-on Social Security story was the right kind of post. This blog statistics stuff is the wrong kind of post. (But since many of my readers early on are other bloggers, I can probably get away with it.) You and I want to build readership for our blogs, and also credibility according to the algorithms of the soulless search engines.
You won’t see many more posts that stray from the core topics that interest my target audience.
Retirement Made Simple 