How do you evaluate your blogs’ progress?
Posted 1 August 2007, by Aaron
Tomorrow miLienzo.com reaches the grand old age of six months. This week will be one of reflection and realisation for me, and with your help I will make decisions for the future direction of this site.
Three months ago I set myself a series of blogging goals and targets for this six month birthday. So how have I fared?
Reach the Technorati top 100,000
Achieved!
This was easily achieved within a couple of weeks of setting the target. Since I broke the top 100,000 the rate of climbing has slowed and today I sit at about the 80,000 mark. Now after six months, older links begin to get ignored by Technorati’s ranking system so further growth will be more challenging.
Establish 100 RSS subscribers
Failed!
Since the birth of miLienzo.com my Feedburner stats have shown a steady increase. Unfortunately it has been a slow and steady increase. I need to work harder to increase the rate of growth.
Average 100 visits per day during July
Failed!
This is disappointing. In fact I was closer to hitting this target in June than I was in July which suggests the last 31 days have suffered a slight slow down. A lot more work is needed.
Total 85 blog posts
Failed!
Oh dear, we’re not doing well are we? However, I’m only a few posts off the target and as June was a very busy month for me with little time for blogging, I am still happy that my rate of blog posting has been satisfactory on the whole.
Reach the front page of Google for keywords ‘Aaron Russell’
Achieved!
This was also fairly easy to achieve. However, absolutely nobody searches for my name so looking to the future I need to consider the SEO lessons I have learnt and apply them to some more strategic keywords.
Conclusions
The fact that in June I posted 35 per cent less articles than I did in July but still saw 25 per cent more traffic than I did in July, tells its own story.
Regular readers will know that June was a busy month for me. Consequently my rate of blog activity (both posting articles and interacting on other blogs) suffered. Also, many of the articles I did post were personal in nature as a result of my rapidly changing personal life.
I strongly feel that a combination of low blogging activity combined with the rather personal content had a dramatic effect on this site’s growth. However, it’s important to keep things in perspective: graduating is probably one of the most significant and important things I’ll ever experience - I’m comfortable that blogging took a back seat during this time.
That said, I also think my targets were quite modest and achievable, especially when you compare with how other six-month old blogs have developed. I can do better so tomorrow I will be asking you to help me identify how I can make miLienzo.com better for you. Please come back tomorrow and help me improve this site. 
How do you measure the success of your blog?
Do you set yourself blogging goals? Or do you have other ways of measuring your success?
Many thanks for the previous posts’ comments: Randa, Jake, Tara, Emalyse, Justin and David.
Related articles:
Jake
1 August 2007, 10:18 pm