To recap the last month, below are my five top posts for July 2012 and some observations based on the data from WordPress Site Stats and Google Analytics. Last month was definitely up as I returned to my regular posting frequency after a brief time of intentional, minimized posting in May and June following the birth of our daughter on April 21st. Now, with a routine having been established and a somewhat regular rhythm to our days as a family again, I am back into the swing of things with the blog.
Graphic courtesy of Wordle.net
Again, I am so thankful to you who read. I trust what’s posted is beneficial to your personal growth.
Here are my top 5 posts for July 2012: 
- Why Being At Peace With a Decision Isn’t Always A Good Thing
- Change Your Thinking, Change Your World
- The Rebekah Principle: Doing A Little Bit More [Part 1]
- 5 Keys To Making Molehills Out of Mountains
- We Love Our Programs But What About Our People?
A couple observations to help you with your own blog traffic:
- For several months running now, more than one of the top five posts were written in a previous month. This month three of them fit this description and are from March, April, and June. This underscores yet again the importance of optimizing your blog posts for search engines as the traffic for two of these posts was almost completely referred by Google searches related to their topics.
- The number one post this month became so as a result of me sharing its link in the comment section of a post on another blog. This is something I’ve experienced before and, quite frankly, I simply don’t do enough of. Blogging (and really Web 2.0 in general) simply screams “community” and I’ve not been a very good citizen of that community by only “taking traffic” instead of sharing it around. For this reason, I’ve committed to a regular link-share post that will allow you to discover links that will help you to live deliberately.
- Lastly, I once again cannot encourage strongly enough the search optimization of images in your blog posts. Google Image Search was again a very strong referral point in July. I believe this is due mostly to the continued use of the All in One SEO WordPress plugin by Semper Plugins. If you have a WordPress blog and don’t use this plugin, you’re missing out on search engine referral traffic plain and simple.
Thank you again for continuing to read. I count it an honour and privilege to use this medium to… “help people live a pattern of deliberate personal growth and challenge others to do the same.”
