My new site has been live for one month, so I do what all Bloggers do…obsess over website stats.

I know, you don’t have to tell me, keep checking your website Stats is counter productive. Speak to most A-List Bloggers and they probably check their stats once a month (so they say), but it’s hard to resist as a new guy.

This Post is an overview of my first month and what young entrepreneurs can take from it. In my opinion the following website stats are the most important to focus on:

• Unique Visitors
• Page Views
• Ave. Page Visits
• Ave. Duration
• Bounce Rate
• New/Returning Ratio
• Top Referrers
• Top Pages/Posts

June In Numbers

Before I tell you the stats, let me first say what I hoped to achieve. As this isn’t my first month Blogging, I set my sights fairly high:

• 1,000 Unique Visitors
• 5,000 Page Views
• 50% Bounce Rate

I’m delighted to say I exceeded my expectations:

As you can see, my stats are better than I hoped. I now have some things to maintain. Backwards isn’t in my thinking.

Although the overall stats are great, the thing I found really interesting is the week by week growth. Let’s take a look:

Week-1

Week-2

Week-3

Week-4

The first things that stands out are the unique visitors and page views. There was a significant jump in the second half of the month, which I attribute to a couple of Guest Posts on some larger sites. Frankly, Guest Blogging is ‘Boss’.

The big thing that catches my eye, though, is the Bounce Rate. I’m not sure why, but I went from around 50% to next to nothing. In the long run I hope to achieve a Bounce Rate of <15% every month, but it seems I may have achieved this already (although time will tell).

What About The Referrers

One thing I find important is knowing which sites are sending the most traffic. However, it’s not all about the numbers, it’s about the quality, too. The top 5 referrers in June were:

• Stumbleupon – 173 visits
• JeffBullas – 129 visits
• Twitter – 96 visits
• Facebook – 75 visits
• The Book Designer – 69 visits

First of all, it’s unsurprising that two of my Guest Posts appear in this list. As I say, Guest Blogging is ‘Boss‘. The quality of this traffic was good too. Jeff’s readers spent, on average, over 2 minutes with me. Whereas Joel’s readers (The Book Designer) spent more than 6 minutes.

The ultimate goal is to average around the 5-minute mark, but anything over 2 minutes shows the reader is at least interested in what I say.

The site that sent me the most traffic is also the site with the lowest average time. Stumbleupon sends a lot of traffic, but the quality isn’t great (just 22 seconds).

Quality over Quantity

What About The Posts

Do you know what’s interesting? My highest rated Blog Post comes in at number 9. The top 5 is:

• Homepage
• Blog Homepage
• For Writers Page
• About Me
• What Is Strategic Marketing

This shows how important generic pages are.

As important as Content is, people still come to my site via the homepage and visit generic pages like my About Me. This has me thinking…

These pages have to be great. Not good, not ok, but GREAT!

People are only spending 52 seconds on my About Me Page, and 23% are leaving my site via it. This is disappointing. At least I know what to aim for in July.

An Overview

To summarise, my observations from month 1 are:

• Bounce Rate is a mysterious thing
• Content is King, but generic pages are important too
• Stumbleupon is good for exposure but little else
• Guest Blogging is ‘Boss’

Overall, I’m delighted with my first month and can’t wait for July. I have many things to aim for, but the next millstones I want to see in a single month are:

• 2,500 unique visitors
• 10,000 Page Views
• 5 minute Average Duration
• <10% Bounce Rate

How long do you think it will take me to achieve this?

What was your first month’s website stats like?

What website stats do you hold dear?

Turndog Millionaire – @turndog_million

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