| Back to Home > Bulletin Board > Media Issues > Topic: The evolution of a (former) freelance mag writer |
Topic: The evolution of a (former) freelance mag writer
| Author | Message |
| tj2240 | Posted – 4/14/2008 10:36:43 AM | show profile Yes, targeting niche content areas is the way to go I'm targeting a niche content area with my site, and I think that's the best way to reach an interested and engaged audience, and to build a readership for a site. Staying focused on a subject area or topic with your site is really helpful to generating regular traffic (in my opinion), though there are certainly lots of exceptions to that. Better to focus your site in the beginning, and then broaden your subject matter as you grow, if you want a wider field to play on. Most of my visitors (probably 80 to 90 percent) come from search engines, another 5 to 10 percent from referrals (people clicking on links to my site from other sites) while the remaining 5 to 10 percent comes from direct traffic, when users type the URL for my site directly into their browsers. Good question on how often people return -- according to the Analytics software I've installed and use (Google Analytics, which is free), my site receives about 75 to 80 percent new visitors. That's better from the standpoint of people clicking on advertisements, because repeat users tend to develop "banner blindness," and ignore your ads. But, a repeat user is also someone who visited your site and returned within a certain time period -- say, 30 minutes to an hour or so. So if someone visits your site one day and then again five days later, the analytics software counts them as a new visitor -- but they're really a repeat visitor, in my opinion. Optimizing your site for search engines is also an important aspect of attracting visitors, and software packages like Wordpress (a content management system that's easy to use) can help you do that. |
