This blog is now just over two years old and time to see what’s going on in the blogging world, what people are reading here and how they’re finding me. The photo, by the way, is a bit random!
Popular posts
Seems plenty of people out there are still seeking information about keeping fit while they have a catheter inside them. This brings back memories for me, now two years ago, when I wrote this post – Exercising with a catheter. At the time I was constrained by this extra bit of plumbing for a few months and as I speculated at the time, there was so little around on the web from a patient’s perspective. My post seems to be nicely ranked by Google and everyday people land on that page. While that is always nice, it is people getting in touch that brings some depth to blogging.
There’s also a few surprises of late….
Firstly my post on Is this a good time to buy a stocks and shares ISA gets plenty of hits. Again every day people search and get this post and it’s interesting to see the search terms match my blog post title. Just as well my advice was “take proper advice” as otherwise people could be investing in various stocks on the strength of my blog. That’s a bit daunting!
Second surprise is my post about Becoming a FRSA and again, I somehow got the SEO right on this one with regular hits following people searching on Google.
Page view patterns
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised with a couple of things which influence the traffic, or page views.
Firstly there’s the times when I get lots of hit, a few hundred each day. There’s always a little spike when I publish a new post – there’s a growing number of subscribers who get an email notification and a snippet. This includes a link straight through to the new post.
I also get a fair amount of traffic from Twitter. Sometimes I’ll tweet and nothing happens. Other times I get it right and lots of people come through via Twitter. One of my friends, Dave, has a large following on Twitter and often re-tweets for me and this really helps. Although I use Facebook, I keep this for personal chat and news amongst my friends, not mixing it with my blog.
Secondly, the bad days. These tend to be public holidays, even more so if the weather is nice. So things went seriously downhill on VE75 Day, Easter Sunday etc.
Search Engine Optimisation
I use the Yoast plug-in which came pre-loaded on WordPress. It’s just the basic free version, not the more costly premium version (which is probably worth it if I were a business).
Nowadays I only make a real effort to get it right if it’s a post I want to be seen in Google. I know I could do more as I don’t rank very highly in general but this is fine, this is only a personal blog and I don’t yearn to be an influencer with millions of followers.
Monetising
Now my blog is getting a decent number of page views, I think I might monetise it: this means having a few adverts here and there. Naturally I will keep this under control so it’s not too distracting. I did earn a little money from a previous blog with commissions through Awin every time a reader bought something sporty through Wiggle.
Let’s see where this goes!
But the real joy of blogging is
Keeping a journal, online, and knowing other people can read it too. I love reading old posts on previous blogs and some of these are 10 years old now – a lot has happened in that time!
Also it’s nice when it becomes interactive. You can see in the side bar there’s a list of recent comments but the real value comes through the personal contacts via the contact page. It is very gratifying when people write saying how encouraging my blog has been to them – sometimes they’re from the other side of the world – I still marvel at how I can type something here in Bedfordshire, England and someone is reading it in Australia within seconds.
In the past a couple of friends have asked about blogging but not knowing how to go about it. The easiest route is through Google’s Blogspot and that’s where I started back in 2010. Other routes, like I’ve used here, involve buying the domain name and having it hosted – a little more involved – but even I can do it, so it’s not too difficult!