Top Five: Lessons Learned in First Year of Blogging

I never dreamed I’d learn so much from blogging in one year, and the investment is well worth it. (More stunning to me than anyone is that my blog received more than 4,000 non-spam views over the course of a year, which is approximately 3,999 more than I expected.) Here is a top five countdown of lessons learned in my “freshman year” in a new terrain:

Insight #5: Search Is a Key Referral

My most organically-searched post consisted of less than one hundred words. The driver was search, in which users were looking for a data type that is no longer easily accessible in Facebook. Keeping text succinct and creating a how-to post allowed for the post to show above other more highly trafficked websites, like eHow, and was only outranked by pages from Facebook itself.

The post itself received more than 2,000 impressions in search. Using straight forward wording is critical in driving referrals. After all, the homepage only drew 30% of traffic (reiterating the need for good keywords for search within individual blog posts).

Insight #4: Content First

Recently, I’ve loved seeing how brands take excellent blog content and juxtapose it onto other platforms (such as Modcloth’s Pinterest page). But the fundamentals are that they started with good content on a blog.

Insight #3: Unexpected Successes

People love Top 10 Lists. And Geeks. A Top 10 List of Geeky Wedding Cakes post (of 40) drove more than 25% of the blog’s total traffic and had twice as many views as any other post. Really, geeks? Here’s one of the places we geeked out recently.