With the year drawing to a close I’ve been taking a look at some of our search traffic over this year, as well as how our blog has performed. The two are quite closely linked. Why? Because a blog post, which is written with relevant keywords in mind, as far as titles, excerpts and content goes is a great way of getting traffic into the site. As a business, we may not have found our niche yet as to what we want to blog about, but it’s clear some things work better than others. So what are they?

Sharing knowledge

Ian has written a couple of posts this year on his experiences with both Cufon and BuddyPress. These have attracted a lot of traffic. They help establish a level of authority in an area and they open up an opportunity for dialogue. We should do more of this sort of writing.

Commenting on current events

Two of the most successful posts we’ve written this year are on the back of two pieces of news, neither of which are directly related to our business. The issue of whether businesses need TV licences for their PCs and the effect of Swine Flu on business continuity. When there is interest in a specific area, weighing in with our opinion adds to the overall commentary and again encourages a dialogue.

Establishing our own voice

Blogging for miggle is not really a core activity. Yes, there’s a real value in it, but it’s part of what we do to talk about our work, our business, our opinions and experiences. All stuff which is good to write about, but which needs to find its rightful place alongside getting client work out of the door. So, finding our own voice as part of that takes a while, especially when we have more than one contributor to the blog. However, when we’ve written from the heart, the posts have done well. Like when I wrote about the person who tore down our sign!

Our traffic from search (well, we only looked at Google….)

In terms of what insights our search traffic has given us as to what potential customers are looking for, there are two big things we’ve seen, each of which have been supported by enquires coming directly into our office.

Monetise my website!

Firstly, site owners want to find ways of monetising their web traffic and online audiences. There’s a big ‘moon on a stick’ element to this in that they want ‘A list’ advertisers via a solution where the inventory is sold directly on their behalf in a way that gives them control over copy. Even so, its a legitimate business objective which there is a big demand for.

I think I might plan my next bit of web development!

Secondly, the number of businesses that are showing a desire to understand their audiences and align their product requirements against the market objectives they uncover via a process which plans iterative developments is growing.

And finally….

The best, completely unrelated search term, on which we got a click this year was ‘Where can I find a bedroom in Hove I can rent by the hour.’ It’s reassuring to know, that if miggle were to go belly up, that there is a business opportunity here I can investigate.

Beyond that, our ten most popular blog posts this year have been:-

1. .tel domains: time to get excited (We’re still waiting for that excitement!)

2. Part time Production Assistant (Blogs are a great way to get company news out like this)

3. Building .tel websites

4. Why needing a TV licence for your work PC is a nonsense (a follow up post ot a bit of news that could affect businesses like miggle)

5. Recycling your audience (One of a series of web tips from miggle – althogh it got traffic from people looking for recycling websites)

6. Peopleperhour – the good the bad and the ugly

7. Building social networks in open source CMS

8. Use any font on your website with Cufon

9. Vacancy for a web producer

10. Online advertising space

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

Related posts

• Enabling organisations to project their unique culture to the world – Alick joins up with Culture Bank
• miggle.co.uk celebrates its first three years in business and looks back and what we’ve learnt – Pt 2

Tags: audience analysis, audience building, business blog, Cufón

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 2:02 pm and is filed under audience analysis, blogging services, miggle business strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.