Analyizing my blog traffic

I’m taking a page out of @fredwilson’s book (avc.com) and analyzing my blog traffic (via Google Analytics) to see what’s changed from last year to this year.  It’s a great exercise that I think anyone with a blog should look at.

In 2009, the traffic stats break down like this:

— Direct traffic / RSS: 39%

— Twitter: 27%

— Facebook: 5%

— LinkedIn: 5%

— Search: 4%

— Other: 20%

So far in 2010, the traffic stats break down like this:

— Direct traffic / RSS: 30%

— Twitter: 27%

— Search: 13%

— Facebook: 7%

— StumbleUpon: 4%

— LinkedIn: 3%

— Other: 15%

Some interesting trends.  First, while my direct links has dropped, my search traffic is way up.  This is probably an obvious expectation of having another year’s worth of content.  I’m a little surprised search is so high but I’ve hit on a few topics that drove a lot of search content that probably juiced those numbers are a bit – the Why I’m down on Foursquare post and the Read this before getting an iPad post.

Second, my Twitter traffic is identical.  I’m not sure what that means actually.  Over the last year my Twitter followers has doubled but my blog traffic is more than 5x, so I would think that the traffic from Twitter would drop.  But perhaps that speaks to the power of networks.  Each person that follows me has another network behind them, so the growth is much more exponential than linear.

Third, I need to reassess my use of the smaller social sites, like LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and Digg.  And I’m picky about which blogs I post on Facebook because I don’t want to bombard my Facebook friends with the in’s and out’s of social media.  I only post there when I think its relevant to that audience.  But I think LinkedIn should be driving a higher percentage of my traffic, so I am going to see if I can try that more.