What Blog Traffic Can I Expect?

Are you thinking of starting a business blog in 2012? Are you wondering how much traffic you can expect to get? Are you a little puzzled about what you need to do to ensure that traffic increases to your blog and website?

I started two new blogs on 3rd September 2011 and I’m going to share my findings with you.  Irish Farmerette is a personal blog, I’m not using the keyword analysis tool to drive traffic nor am I publicising it. I’m writing it for fun and it’s mostly being read by friends or those who are looking for brown bread recipes (the post on brown bread has proved to be really popular!)  I post to it sporadically, sometimes twice a week and then it might be ignored for a fortnight. I posted very little during December and it shows in the stats. I’ve written a total of 35 blog posts.

I’m getting an average of 20 visits a day which isn’t great at all but I have to admit I’m putting in no effort at all in promoting it nor am I trying to use highly searched keywords – it’s a personal blog just for fun.

My second blog Wallpaper Review (started on the same day) is an experiment. I want to see what traffic it can get using only the keyword research tool to drive traffic to it.  (for an explanation on how to use this tool, check out our post on using the keyword research tool here) .

It is very much a niche, the target market being those who would like to purchase wallpaper online.

Of 46 blog posts, I was posting three or four times a week until December and then became too busy. This inconsistency showed in the results as visits decreased (plus it is probably due to the subject matter) but once I re-commenced blogging in January, the visits have increased again and currently stand at 60-70 per day. There’s been a total of 4,046 visits in the 4 months.

Update 27th January: Having been on holidays and not posted at all for 2 weeks, I expected traffic to drop.  It dropped significantly on the Irish Farmerette blog (down to 10 per day) as that was the community based blog but on the Wallpaper Review blog, it has increased to 80 – 130 per day, thereby showing that if you are using the keyword analysis tool, a brief hiatus in your blogging shouldn’t affect your traffic.

I intend to carry on with this blog as it is until it is 6 months old. Then I will change tack and I will start commenting on other blogs using this blog as the link. While that link won’t necessarily provide it with a back link, it will be interesting to see what response I get from other bloggers visiting it. In other words, what effect becoming a part of a community for a while can have on the traffic coming to a blog.

Just to mention too, that the number of comments on this blog are very low, a total of 7! This is due to the fact that I’m not commenting on other blogs using this blog nor am I including personal details within the posts – in my opinion, both are required if you want to get a good response in your comment box.

I hope this has helped you to form expectations for your new blog and also persuaded you to use the keyword research tool. If you have any queries, do ask and I’d love to know what you think of this little experiment too.