The Wardman Wire

One of the interesting ways that Google seems to work is that new websites (or new articles for that matter) have a “period in the sun” to see if they will become heavily linked; they then vanish and may come back to prominence later.

One corollary of that, and of the way the internet works, is that most traffic to blogs usually comes through two routes:

a) Brand new articles.
b) Old archived articles.

In the case of the Wardman Wire, perhaps 75-80% of our traffic comes via the archives, rather than via either the Magazine Front Page or the Traditional Blog version.

Study of Top Articles on the Wardman Wire

I did a study of traffic from a 30 day period in Jan-Feb this year, eight out the top ten most visited articles were more than 4 months old, and none were between one and three months old. I thought it worth reposting a part of the study, before I repeat the exercise in the autumn.

Here’s the summary:

These are the ages of the top 12 posts in months, from top to bottom:

* 5 months
* 10 months
* 4 months
* Two weeks
* 5 months
* 5 months
* 10 months
* 10 months
* 4 months
* 8 months
* Two weeks
* 6 months

i.e., posts take time to mature, and archives are very, very important. It can be worth spensing some time thinking about ways to make archives as easily accessible as possible for users and search engines - it matters to the gradual growth of your blog. Have a look at how many ways in to the archives there are on www.mattwardman.com.

The Top Ten Pages in Jan-Feb 2008

These were the Top Twelve pages on the site in the last 30 days. Go and have a look at the links, and write down your conclusions - then read my notes below.

Page Views - Date - Title and Link

1. 3942 Page Views - 20070912 - In memory of free speech - Jesus and Mo - serious
2. 3825 Page Views - 20070501 - Double Trouble - Posh Spice and Ananova - humour, morning funny
3. 2130 Page Views - 20071010 - Wordpress Plugin - Category Images - tech tip
4. 1616 Page Views - 20080213 - ABC Rowan Firestorm was started by the BBC - serious analysis
5. 1422 Page Views - 20070904 - New Scottish Government launches official website - satirical
6. 1280 Page Views - 20070905 - This posting may contain nuts - serious but funny - health and safety series
7. 998 Page Views - 20070404 - Double Trouble - Guido Fawkes and Zorro - humour
8. 995 Page Views - 20070411 - Double Trouble - Morgan Lifecar and Thomas the Tank Engines - humour, morning funny
9. 849 Page Views - 20071016 - Lib Dem leadership contest to replace Ming Campbell - humour, Lib Dems = box of ferrets
10. 817 Page Views - 20070609 - Video Game Battle between Sony and Church of England - serious analysis
11. 812 Page Views - 20080211 - Britblog Roundup - Ideas for Avoiding the Archbishop - serious
12. 709 Page Views - 20070815 - Do Health and Safety Professionals Get too Much of a Kicking - serious - health and safety series

Take Away Points

I try to draw attention to articles that enter the “dead zone” on the blog For many of these features you can obtain Plugins from the Wordpress site. Here are six ideas:

1 - Put a “recent posts” feature in your sidebar, so that readers can see something what you have been writing about over the last few days.

2 - Use the permalink for a relevant article not a general blog hyperlink (or a Blogger profile link) when making a comment on other blogs.

3 - Have a “favourite articles” section somewhere - can this justify spending more time writing more careful articles by keeping them on the front page for longer?

4 - Put a “popular articles” section somewhere - i.e., those most visited - (it is NOT the same as “favourite articles”, which are the author’s recommendations).

5 - Make your archives easy to find.

and my favourite:

6 - Use “Series of Posts” in your blogging. Here we use these very - and I mean very - heavily; there have been well over than a hundred of series on the Wardman Wire since the blog started in spring 2007. I really don’t understand why more people don’t do it - it seems to be a good way to compete in search engines, but also a way of drawing readers in more deeply.

In depth coverage over a period of time is also a very weak point for the Main Stream Media, where blogs can compete - why not compete from our strengths?