2007: My Year in Blogging

I've got some time to spare before football really gets going, so I thought I'd look through my Google Analytics reports for the blog. And what kind of blogger would I be if I didn't then share what I found?

How People Found Me

• About 45% came to me via a search engine.
• About 40% via a link on some web site or other.
• About 15% came directly — probably from typing in my address or clicking on a saved bookmark.

On the search engine front, there were a couple prevailing themes (in no particular order):

• filler text
• fonts (especially the Stephanie Marie Font)
• worries about a child being gay
• sermons on prayer
• poems about grandpas
• the consultant joke

And though it didn't rank very high, about 20 of you came here looking for information about "mormon wedding night". I'm not entirely sure what to think of this, and I'm not sure I want to.

Who These Folks Are

Over the last year, I had visitors from 108 countries (inasmuch as it's possible to discern):

• United States, 76.66%
• United Kingdom, 4.90%
• Canada, 4.41%
• Australia, 1.79%
• China, 1.14%
• Germany, 0.95%
• India, 0.85%
• Ireland, 0.80%
• France, 0.65%
• Netherlands, 0.65%

Put another way:

• Americas, 81.95%
• Europe, 11.51%
• Asia, 4.16%
• Oceania, 1.98%
• Africa, 0.31%
• Unknown, 0.08%

And, finally, language:

• English, 94.19%
• Mandarin, 1.12%
• German, 1.07%
• French, 0.69%
• Spanish, 0.61%

Link Love

It shouldn't surprise you that most of the incoming links I get are from other blogs or blog aggregators. Here are my top 10:

• Blogger (Not Including Individual Blogs)
• Ardent Mormon
• Northern Lights
• Adam & Andi
• Mormon Enigma
• Web Graphics
• Nine Moons
• LDSelect
• Steve & Callie
• Gary & Bridgette

This blog wouldn't be the same without the incoming links and the traffic they bring… so thank you, everyone, for linking!

What They Found When They Got Here

So let's first look at a few trends…

A full 42% of the traffic on my site is to my home page. Which makes sense — it's the home page. It's what people bookmark. And for regular readers who don't subscribe to my feed, it's the easiest way to see what's new.

Once here, a lot of you click on the topics links. In fact 17% of my site traffic is concentrated among the topics pages. The most popular topics, by far, were "gay", "mormon", "friends", "fonts", "steampunk", and "food".

A whole 1% of you use the built-in search at the top of the page to look around the site.

One surprising trend was how popular all of my content is — not just my newer posts. So (not counting posts which showed-up as part of a topics search or the posts which are read when they're on the home page) 46% of the individual posts viewed were from this year, 22% from 2006, and 32% were from 2005.

What were my most popular posts this year?

• Web Tools: Filler Text
• Meme: Desert Island Fonts
• Poem: Grandpa's Garden
• I Think My Son May Be Gay

A couple others come in near the top:

• The Joy of Sudoku
  
• A Joke about Consultants
  
• Sermon | On Prayer

What I Wish They Had Found

Of all the content on my site, there are a few that I consider special — either because I thought it was a particularly good piece of writing, or because I thought the subject was somehow noteworthy.

Here are my favorites from this year:

• I Think My Son May Be Gay
• Lost in Milk Wood
• An Affirmation of Faith
• The Frail Light of Life

And my favorites from years past:

• Meme: My Last Day
• Mormon Rhythms Series (I, II, III)

So there you go… a little bit about my year in blogging.

Happy New Year!