Web Traffic Demographics: Delusions, Mistakes & Improvements

I’ve been busy the last 10 days – no sorries. This pause helped me realize a lot of previous blogging mistakes and delusions. The base of the most of those delusions and mistakes was the misunderstanding of my blog’s traffic.

You see.. one thing is to treat your web traffic as clicks.. or a number of reads or pageviews, but treating it as people is completely another. And this is where begins web traffic demographics and the next level of your online success.

Now let’s get to the details.

4 Most Common Reasons of Delusions and Mistakes

Find yourself here. You still can fix your blogging mistakes. Just avoid the following delusions.

1. Comments: Lately I have faced one interesting fact. After I publish a new post.. I wait for comments. I look for people’ opinions. I want to be praised for my work.

   Isn’t that funny and stupid at the same time?

   In most cases we get comments from other bloggers, who simply visit your blog to get another backlink. They have to praise you (or to thank you), because otherwise you won’t accept that comment.

   Sometimes blog owners even mention, that they won’t accept negative or offensive comments.

   You see.. this whole system of commenting on blogs is built wrongly. So, why do we think, that these are our readers’ sincere opinions?

   Even when we get some beautiful, nice and big comment.. don’t rush to treat it seriously.

   Why?

   Because it might be some bloated comment in attempt to get more attention. Just check that author’s other comments and decide whether you’re right or wrong.

   Be careful. Sometimes people improve their comments with good motives.

2. Negative Feedback: I used to treat negative comments or e-mails too seriously. It distracts.. I know that.

   But one little thing I have learned so far is that you will keep getting negative feedback as long as you become more popular. People now even do not regret their time to judge you or to humiliate you. And this is a good sign.

   Again.. in most cases those people simply are losers. But.. sometimes it’s not that easy.

   Sometimes you get negative feedback, because you, actually, deserve it. But, you know, it’s about your experience, when it comes to treating the feedback seriously or not.

   Anyways, your blog development shouldn’t depend on single feedbacks… even if you’re about to lose your mind.

3. Reading Irrelevant Blogs: Of course we are not automatic machines nor robots. Sometimes we let ourselves read blogs we like even if those particular blogs do not relate to our blog’s niche.

   And there comes one problem.

   As we all are humans, we have to share our thoughts – we just need to, because they stick in our heads. And what do we do? We begin to write a post on our blog on that topic sharing our thoughts and opinions. But this is not what your readers are looking for! At least not most of them.

   If you blog about «blogging mistakes», then follow the plan. You have it done, right? If you haven’t, then your chances to get new subscribers decrease.

   The solution of this case is to try to belong to the targeted social media sphere of your blog’s niche.

4. Temptation to Be Like…: This is in our blood. We, bloggers, all were tought by A-list bloggers.. like.. whatever :)

   Today most of them are our idols and good examples.

   The biggest problem here is that we intuitively copy some part of their design or writing style or topic or else, which decreases the amount of signs of your own unique style… and that makes you look like an average blogger.

   How to avoid being like others?

   There is no certain solution, because this is about fixing your intuition and sticking to the plan of your business. This is why you need a plan or the list of the rules, which should help you not to lose your own unique way of your online journey.

How to Treat Web Traffic?

The answer is very simple.

Just treat your traffic as people, visitors, readers, commenters, students, pupils, children, pals, freinds. Treat it like that despite the traffic demographics.

Be aware of thinking that your web traffic is simply traffic or customers. They all have their families, friends and pets. They fall in love, they eat and sleep and they are just like you.

This simple method just looks so easy. But following it demands a lot of inner qualities, which can help you remember – it’s about Internet, that separates you and your site visitors.

Find out even more about Web Traffic Demographics. This article is written in 2008, but it is still actual.

Analysis of Web Traffic Demographics: 2 Web Tools

There are only 2 basic web tools to help you analyze your site traffic demographics.

• Quantcast.com – This tool gives you a lot of details about your traffic demographics, but it also needs a lot of time to analyze your site: 5-6 days to display basic info about your traffic and at least 1000 US visitors. Plus – Business and Geographic data will populate after 30 days of being quantified.

  But the data is great, so you better wait until it’s ready.

• Alexa.com – I, personally, like this one because of the simplicity. The more traffic you get, the more accurate data will be available.

Who Are My Visitors?

In the very beginning I thought, that my potential visitors are young webmasters and bloggers. I mostly imagined them as young men (male, 20-25 years old). But I was so wrong…

Here’s what Alexa says about my traffic demographics:

This means, that my readers are mostly 35+ years old.

Can you now imagine my shock? I’m only 22 years old and I’m, actually, teaching those, who are twice older, than me. This information has crucially changed my blogging way and standpoints.

This is why I have been thinking of my blog improvements for so long! This is why I have done the following changes…

5 Blog Improvements After Reading the Information About My Traffic Demographics

Blog Structure

1. I have replaced «10 Facts about iWoodpecker» with «Featured Post», because most of the bloggers are mostly used to «About» pages, rather than creativity like that :)

   Besides, «Featured Post» on the home page can give some general sense of the blog’s niche for newcomers and can help to promote that particular post.

2. I have changed the general look of the home page and the blog itself to make it look like a blog. Because I’m, actually, speaking in my posts with other bloggers. And they are used to sites that look like blogs. Otherwise, I can lose those potential visitors.

Sidebar

1. The phrase «Subscribe» changed to «Free Updates». There is one certain reason – it sounds more friendly.

2. Now I run a poll, which should give me a sense of my audience’s likes and dislikes. It’s not working now as good as I wish, but I believe this is a matter of time and the amount of traffic.

3. I have uninstalled several widgets from my sidebar, which were taking too much room. I have left only those ones, that relate to the content. Well.. it’s not 100% like that, but the general view of the sidebar is now much more better. Cleaner and more useful.

4. I’m still thinking of adding a list of my blog’s categories… But there are still some doubts whether it’s needed or not.

Post Page

1. I have removed a lot of social media buttons from my posts. And I still can’t get enough. I think it’s some kind of a rocket-science… I mean the playing with the number of social media buttons. At least.. the less the best.

2. Completely changed the design of «related posts», «categories» and «tags» parts, that come after the main content on the post pages. There is only one purpose – to make it look cleaner and more attractive.

3. I have moved «trackbacks» to the right side of the comments section. The reason is to encourage bloggers to link to my posts, which gives them in return some decent amount of web traffic and the guarantee, that their trackbacks will be visible enough.

4. I have also added gravatars and improved the comment form to encourage bloggers to leave comments. Not sure if it’s working, but I like the way it looks now :)

5. I have also changed some instructional phrases for commenters. Deleted the phrase: comments are moderated.

   Who, actually, thinks today, that comments on blogs are not moderated? So on and so forth.

Page Load Time

1. Removed SexyBookmarks.

2. Removed a lot of Ads by Google. Though I’m still playing with them. The only thing I have figured out for sure is that I don’t get clicks on image ads at all.

3. Removed a lot of tracking scripts including «MyBlogLog».

4. I have made my main CSS file cleaner. Though I should also think about plugins’ CSS files, which also should be improved.

5. I have also removed ~14 plugins (9 were inactive). I have deleted even my «contact form» plugin, because it was not needed at all, though its CSS and Script files loaded on each page.

Video Desserts

There are several reasons.

I know only one blogger, that also includes video desserts, though this is a great idea to improve visitors’ time one site and bounce rate.

And according to my traffic demographics I choose which videos to add.

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Video Dessert: «Chat Roulette: Funny Piano Improv #1»

This site was a real discovery for me yesterday. And here’s Ben – the pianist freestyling in real-time with random strangers.