Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 3:31 pm by
J David 
I have been running my website since January of last year. It has been almost one year since I started using my domain to blog. And while things have improved (namely, the crap I put out here and the people reading my crap), I am not quite where I thought I would be after this much time and effort. For this reason, I am calling on you, my 12 faithful readers (kinda like the apostles… spooky…). I need some help to boost traffic and readership, and maybe even get dugg!
The Situation
Here is basically where I stand. All of those interesting metrics and website tools tell me that I am doing a good job. I have a pagerank of 6 and a Technorati rank at 10,215. I feel like those are pretty good ranks. I have also used those tools that I have suggested for you, and they generally give me excellent feedback. My Alexa rank is not that great (180,588), but it has been improving:
My Evaluation
As I see it, all of my rankings are inflated, except for the Alexa one. The real problem with my site is that I do not get enough traffic. On the other hand, I have plenty of links to me, thanks to my website templates. In fact, those are the only reason that I have such strong metrics. I also have done a great deal of SEO, so my site does come up fairly strong for certain keywords. The point, is that the metrics are misleading, and I need to get more visitors to actually visit and return; not just use my template, check out the site once, and forget that I ever existed. 
How To Improve
Well, this is where you all come in. I have read tons of articles about these things, have accounts on God knows how many social networks, participate in the many blogs that I read, and I have even attached my address to my email signature. I know that there isn’t any sort of quick fix, but I do need some kind of help. I would invite you to leave a comment, or even write a whole post about how a relatively old and established blog can increase its readership. Thanks!
Just out of interest, what are your reader stats like - i.e. how many people are reading your blog via RSS? Bear in mind that RSS readers don’t show on your Alexa web stats!
It sounds to me like you’re doing really well with the blog (I know I’d like PR6 and 180k on Alexa!) - so where do you want to be instead?
I think you’ve got a problem with your RSS feed actually. When I click on the link at the bottom of the page, it’s like you don’t have any published content.
Ha! I knew there was a problem with the feed! I had posted the issue in the feedburner forum, and they said it was fine and showing up, but it isn’t! Revenge shall be mine!… Or I will at least fix the feed…
And you are right, I am fairly happy, but it seems like I could do better. As for the number of readers, I hover around 60-70 readers generally. The problem is getting new subscribers.
Hey, J.
I guess I’m one of the twelve. An invisible RSS subscriber. You’ve got the gears turning, though. Have you tried the What Would Seth Godin Do? Plugin? I think it’s worked for me. I also explicitly ask people, once in a while, if they like to subscribe, and provide a text link right there. Of course, you have twice the subscribers I do, so what do I know?
Well, the feed’s working properly now at least!
I think I should be the one asking advice from you since you’re the one who has the higher pagerank and technorati ranking. Plus you have very good and interesting posts. Hehe
The only thing I have more than you is the RSS readers. I guess in due time you’ll have more readers as more people know about your blog.
Yeah, the feed is working now.
I have a great idea for more visitors JD; you could partner up with me!
Will write a post and make sure my 11 readers will visit your site today
Yes 11… you still have more readers than me 
[…] That was my first idea when I read this apostles post. Even in his last paragraph, he mentions God in a way normal church visitors wouldn’t even dare to think about. […]
Actually J David, I took several examples from you by adding your “If you like, then subscribe to my feed” link to the bottom of each individual post & installing the top commentator plugin. Something else that I believe has helped in getting subscribers is adding feed “chicklets” to my sidebar for even easier subscribing.
Have you ever thought about who your audience is, who you write for, and what benefit you hope to provide to readers? I just subscribed to your blog about a month ago, so you may have already answered these questions before. Yet from what I’ve seen so far, I really enjoy your tutorials and WordPress themes advice. I would highly recommend continually expanding on these things since there are a lot of individuals like myself that are always on the look out for WordPress and web design goodies.
Perhaps you could try the “no follow” approach. I see your source code and it does not seem to have it here. I personally would promote leaving a comment on this site for a PR6 link back that you are providing in the comment link. In return I would ask my commentators to be kind enough to leave a link back from their blog/site etc, Digg or StumbleUpon (this is the one I chose).
We all know your PR6 can get a new site indexed within days on all the SE’s. You have some serious power here on your blog and simply asking US to link back can only do your traffic stats good. Maybe you could elaborate on this post asking for this with a few rules of course to keep out of bad neighborhoods.
[…] J. David Macor has a problem. His website traffic is increasing on his well established blog, but he is just not seeing the numbers of readers, subscribers and commenters that he’d like. […]
Hi! I blogged about your problem - and some possible solutions. How to: Increase an established blog’s readership
Let me know what you think!
Thanks so much for the tips, Ellie! Oh, and you actually forgot to put the link to your post, so I fixed it!
[…] I have had my own fare share of problems trying to increase my traffic. And my Alexa rank was one area that was an especially glaring problem. When I first found out that Alexa even existed, my rank was in the 300,000’s. Now my rank is near 170,000. It is still nothing to brag about, but it definitely is a marked improvement. I have scoured the web looking for tips on how to further increase my rank and I thought I might share some of these tips with you. I will also show you my results in a later post. […]
[…] have had my own fare share of problems trying to increase my traffic. And my Alexa rank was one area that was an especially glaring problem. When I first found out that […]
[…] months to shape up this blog. A while back, I wrote a post outlining how I felt that this blog was severely under performing. In fact, being a finance student, I would have recognized this blog as having strong potential but […]