Follow-up Observations and Top Posts for August 2012

To recap the last month, below are my five top posts for August 2012 and some observations based on the data from WordPress Site Stats and Google Analytics.

The up-swing continues in both pageviews and unique visitors after a brief time of intentional, minimized posting in May and June following the birth of our daughter on April 21st. My goal has been and continues to be 2 posts per week with a “lighter” post (quote, picture, or video) most weekends. I was just shy of that goal this month.

Graphic courtesy of Wordle.net

Once again, I am very thankful to you who read my blog. I do what I do with it for your personal growth and mine. My hope and prayer is that you find my content beneficial and encouraging.

Here are my 5 top posts for August 2012: 

1. To All My Friends That Were Given Facebook Timeline This Week…
2. 6 Not-So-Difficult Ways To Get Out of That Funk
3. 5 Keys To Making Molehills Out of Mountains
4. Don’t Read This If You Don’t Need to Save Time as a Team
5. Does 30 Feel Any Different Than 29?

Observations from my top posts for August 2012 to help you with your own blog traffic:

• Once again this month, one of the five top posts were written in a previous month (March 2012). This underscores the importance of optimizing your blog posts for search engines as the traffic for this post was almost completely referred by Google searches related to its topic.
• The number one post this month is honestly a little bit of a mystery for me, not in the sense of why it was the top post (graphics/videos often get the highest engagement/traffic) but more because it highlighted the humourous side of living deliberately. I mentioned something like this to my Facebook followers: “I find it genuinely interesting that a couple hours (or more) can go into a blog post twice a week and that it takes work (a lot, sometimes) to get people to read it, share it, and, hopefully, apply it. However, earlier today when I posted a somewhat humourous graphic, it receive the third highest (Ed. it ended up being the highest, by far) one-day views of any day in more than 4 months.Those of you who are regular readers of my blog, I’d love to hear what your thoughts are… Do my posts fill a perceived need? What am I doing wrong? What can I do better? I want it to be the best it can be. Thanks!” I’d love to hear your thoughts… you can comment below.
• Lastly, for the first time to date, 4 out of the 5 top posts were actually published in the previous month. I believe that’s due at least in part to the fact that I adjusted how I view my post titles or headlines. Taking Michael Hyatt’s advice from his book Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, I will continue to place a higher emphasis on post titles. In a world of RSS readers and email subjects, if the title doesn’t draw you in, the rest doesn’t matter.

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.”

Do you have a blog? If so, what were your top posts for August 2012? Why do you think they are your top posts? You can leave your comments below.