Observations on November’s record traffic on my blog

For the third straight month, my blog has set a record for page views. I topped 20,000 views for the first time in November, getting more than 20,606 views, 13 percent more than the 18,245 views I had in October.

Since I blogged some self-indulgent observations about the September and October records, I will do the same for November:

• Romenesko still delivers traffic. When Poynter and Jim Romenesko parted ways Nov. 9, I blogged that I thought Poynter had unfairly suggest that he had plagiarized. Romenesko steered traffic my way several times when he was blogging for Poynter and linked to my blog. But I set a single-day record for views on my blog with the 2,020 hits on Nov. 10 (I filed my blog post late the evening of Nov. 9, because I had been on the road). While the Romenesko post, with 2,055 views, was the only post with over 1,000 views for the month, I still would have set a monthly record even without it.
• Writing tips, which were my online staple back in my No Train, No Gain days, still draw interest. My second most popular post of the month, with nearly 900 views, was on writing leads. Posts on grammar and writing tight also got more than 200 views each.
• Journalists are interested in reading about ethics. My posts on plagiarism and attribution (both posted Oct. 31, before the Romenesko fuss) combined for more than 1,000 November views.
• This blog gets better traffic than my Hated Yankees baseball blog. I blogged about the continuing bias by baseball writers against Roger Maris. The traffic, 522 views, was modest for this blog, but more than any of my Hated Yankees posts has ever attracted.
• People are interested in blogging advice. I led a daylong workshop for bloggers of CBC’s music staff, and posted general blogging advice and search-engine optimization tips. In response to a friend, I blogged some tips about making money from a blog. The three posts combined for more than 1,100 views.
• As I’ve noted the past two months, people search surprisingly often for content relating to the 5 W’s. My April post on the 5 W’s of business is now my third most-viewed post ever, topping 800 views in November, all of it driven by search (it’s in the top four results if you search for “5 W’s” “5 Ws” or “the 5 Ws”). In hopes of providing something that’s more relevant to what people are searching for, I blogged in November about the 5 W’s of writing for the web. It did OK (400+ views), better than the original post did in April. But most days the April post still gets more traffic. Will be interesting to see if it eventually rises as high in search results (it’s on the fourth page of results now) and gets the kind of sustained traffic that the original post is getting.
• Frequent posts boost traffic. I posted 26 times in November. Regular posts keep regular visitors coming back to your blog.
• Archived tips remain a significant source of traffic. My twitter tips for journalists, updated in August, were my third most-viewed post in November and my tips for engaging through newsroom Twitter accounts, also from August, were 10th. And my ideas for new revenue streams, originally posted in April, got over 200 views in November.

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