Ralph Carlson Blog

I have never used my stats as a measurement and encouragement in my blogging. This is just one more activity that wasn’t on my radar. There are several reasons. Probably the first and most important is that my readership was not growing. Who wants to measure something stable.  A second reason is that I didn’t have any goals because I didn’t want the frustration of failing to achieve them. Well, one of the things I have learned recently is how to get readers to come at least once.  A bigger trick is to have contents that make them come back again but it seems that I have some ability there as well.  So, bottom line, my readership has been growing.

I have to credit James for this improvement but following James is not for the weak and flabby. He continually raises the bar.

So what are those stats?

I have been following my stats with StatCounter so lets see what the story was for yesterday, Saturday January 30. I had 94 visitors up from 82 the week before. 79 were fist time visitors and 15 were returning visitors. The stats for the week before were 68 and 14. I am not so sure where these visitors are coming from. I added StatPress to my blog to get the same stats that James is using but I can’t seem to find them. I am pleased with this growth, however, from whence it might be coming. I am even willing to set a goal for February to double those stats to 200 visitors and 30 returning.

But what about posts?

Now to go a step further and look at what readers like on RCB, the stats tell me that my most popular posts are these:

70 views for my reminiscences about our 1959 Chevrolet convertible

23 views for the top 10 reasons to post daily

22 views for my reminiscences about our 1950Chrvrolet pickup truck

Now I need some help.

I know that search engines are responsible for the visit to the car posts and I suspect that those are readers who don’t return regularly but I don’t honestly know. I don’t have comments from those posts so there is no reason to think that after arriving from Google, they stick around to sample the other posts but I don’t know. I need some help here. If anybody came to RCB through searches that led to my car posts and stuck around for some of the other items, let me know.

Otherwise, has anybody got any ideas about how to use those hits to entice readers to other posts and finally do my periodic nostalgia posts (cars mostly so far) add value to anyone?

I’ve taking up James challenge and revealing my stats so far. Now I need help from readers to know how to channel my efforts going forward.