November Round Up – Traffic and Income

A slightly different month for DoSEOyourself and myself! As I stated last month, I was going to try and publish 1 epic post and then concentrate on that to see if I could increase my traffic that way!!

As usual, I will publish all of my traffic and income stats and reveal everything I have got up to in November. The blog is over 12 months old now so time to start pushing forward

 

 

What have I got up to in November

No holidays or trips this month, just work work work for me!!

A lot of my time was taken up by my other online businesses that required my attention. I am looking to grow them which in tern will require me to employ staff! which is a little scary.

My remaining time was spent writing a new epic post, which I managed to get released just on time. I did plan on spending 2 weeks writing it and 2 weeks promoting it, but it ended up being 3 weeks writing and 1 week promoting.

Luckily my efforts paid off as the article ‘The Ultimate Guide To On Page SEO‘ really took off and went viral. Being shared across Twitter, G+ and Inbound.

This 1 post brought in a ton more traffic for the blog, which you will see below.

I admit that it was hard work writ in such a big and detailed post, but it’s obviously worth it in the end. I will now be looking to writing more epic posts like this.

 

Featured in Matts Income round up

It was great to be featured in Matthew Woodwards Income reports, It can only bring in more traffic and it also gives me the motivation to move up the table and carry on increasing my income!!

 

 

I also made it in a couple of other round up posts too which was great to see!!

 

 

Realised my conversion rate was piss poor!! 

After releasing my latest post that brought in a ton of traffic, I realised that I still wasn’t getting many email optins. My conversion rate was ridiculous. We are talking below 1%

So I decided to make a few changes to the blog to see if I could improve it.

For starters, stupid me put the wrong re-direct link into my option forms, so when somebody submitted their email address, they were forwarded to a 404 page!…… IDIOT

So the first thing I did was to create a nice new ‘thank-you’ page using Leadpages which tells the subscriber that they have to click the confirmation link in the email we just sent them.

Next I changed the sidebar opt-in box to that ugly black one you can see on the right, it definitely stands out more and so far has proven to convert better!!

I also change my call to action, previously it was very boring and only asked visitors to subscribe to receive my updates. Now I have changed it to an attractive call to action and I also give away a short PDF that explains how to boost your rankings with a simple trick

 

 

 

Last but not least, I wanted to convert users that were leaving the site, so again I used leadpages to make an attractive pop up that appears when a user tries to leave the site.

I then split tested them to see which converted better, so far I have 2 different variations. Here are the results….

 

 

 

As you can see, it is converting at 4.25% and variation 1 is clearly winning so far. I will carry on testing different variations to see which performs the best!!

 

New posts published this month

Just the 2 this month due to my massive post:

http://doseoyourself.com/ultimate-guide-to-on-page-seo/ – This epic guide is over 5200+ words and expains everything about on-page SEO

http://doseoyourself.com/november14-top-10-posts/ – As usual I published the Top 10 SEO and Internet marketing articles

 

Traffic

One of my targets this month was to break the 5000 mark! I smashed it with 5785 visitors!!!!

 

 

Another record breaking month in terms of traffic thanks to my On-Page SEO post.

 

Where did that traffic come from

 

 

 

Google organic traffic is up slightly on last month. Would be good t break the 2k mark.  I also got a good chunk of traffic from Inbound.org thanks to my post being shared on there. I also received more traffic from Matt Woodward due to me featuring in his income round ups and I also made his monthly round up of top posts!!

 

Most popular pages

Of course, it’s going to be my new post!!

 

Email sign ups and social media

More visitors this month, did that result in more followers….

Email subscribers = 330 (+40)

Twitter = 590 (+20)

Google+ = 292 (+29)

Positive all round with a steady increase again.

Had I improved my opt-in conversion earlier in the month I would have had a lot more email subscribers!

 

Earnings

Your favourite section of the report 🙂 surprisingly my affiliate income is down somewhat even with the increase in traffic, however my income for services is up quite a bit…

HMA = $11

Services = $995

Total Income for DSY is $1006

 

Profit from purchased websites

Niche Site 1 = + $1424

 

Expenses

WPEngine = $29

VA’s = $280

 

Total Overal Profit = +$2,121.00

 

Nice to see my income jump over $2k this month, hopefully I can continue to grow it!!

 

Metrics

Not much change here then!!

 

 

Summary

A decent month all around. A record breaking month interns of traffic and income was up too. Most of my time was spent on 1 big post, and that really paid off!

I also brushed up on my Opt-in conversion rate, and although there is more work to be done, I have definitely seen an increase in subscribers.

Im now featured as part of Matthew Woodwards monthly income round up, so this will motivate even more to produce the results!

 

Plans for next month

For once I don’t have any real plan for the following month. I know a chunk of it will be taken up by my other businesses but I will get at least 1 post out again. I wanted to do a post on my first 12 months of blogging, so maybe this is something I will do.

More promotion is required and I will aim to keep the traffic levels up, although I do anticipate a drop as I won’t be releasing another epic post next month!

I do plan on increasing my conversion rate and I’ll be adding more opt-ins throughout the site