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Aug
04
2008
1 Great Post Beats 100 Mediocre Posts
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Written by Steve Burge   
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Backing Up My Laziness With Statistics

I really believe that you need a different strategy when you are launching a blog and after you're established. Quantity counts when you're starting, but once you have traction, its quality that makes the difference.

Three blog posts get nearly 12% of all the traffic to this site. So, despite posting around 300 times, three of the posts are more popular than the blog itself! Judging by these stats, 1 great post beats 100 mediocre posts. These are the three top performers with their percentage of all unique visits:

Over to you ... do you have an outstanding article that brings in a high percentage of your site's visitors?

 

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Comments  

 
#1 Richard Cussons 2008-08-05 03:41
Ahhh....

The old 80/20 rule is alive and well and working here too. Or in your case the 97/3 rule! 8)

The hard part is working out the 20% that gets 80% of the traffic, sales or whatever you are trying to achieve.

R
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#2 Eddie Truman 2008-08-05 06:48
The answer is "it depends" I would guess.
If that one post hits the sweet spot of your regular readers and in addition is something that others pick up on and link to and if it's a subject that people are searching for and you are doing your SEO right then it'll become a hot topic.
I think the reason your Joomla v Drupal post was big is because there is a dearth of unbiased opinion out there about the relative merits of each system. Plenty of advocates for both but little dispassionate and balanced opinion.
Just so you don't get the idea you can sit around drinking beer and soaking up the sun though Steve, the reason I subscribe and hand over my loot is that I value your opinions and thoughts on Joomla, SEO and other matters ;-)
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#3 Steve Burge 2008-08-05 07:04
Hi Richard - you're right ... like that old advertising adage: "I'm wasting half the money I spend on advertising, I just don't know which half". I don't think these three posts are the best, but they've ended up ranking #1 for terms like "Joomla Drupal" and "Joomla Wordpress".

Hi Eddie - back to work full steam very shortly ... I do have four or five major posts almost ready (including a Drupal vs Joomla) update but I'm not completely happy with them yet.

For those that haven't read him yet, bluehatseo.com is a good example of the "one good post" philosophy. He posts about four times a year, but each post is a mammoth undertaking that took a good part of the previous few months to write.
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#4 Cory Webb 2008-08-05 09:11
I've got one... "How to change your favicon" at HowToJoomla.net... It comes up number 1 for "joomla favicon" on Google, and it is one of my top 3 most read articles. Honestly, I didn't give much thought to that article, but apparently it was a topic that a lot of people were interested in.

I agree that quality is always better than quantity, but it's difficult to know what will really take off, and what will fall flat. I guess for that reason, it's probably best to go for quantity and see what sticks.
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#5 Eddie Monge 2008-08-07 16:37
I agree with this that 1 post beats 100. However, not the best or greatest post is always the one that gets all the traffic. I have 2 articles on my site that get the most traffic: one is a review of Google's Android and the other is a review of the new Batman movie. The Batman review I promoted and it got a lot of initial reads but after I stopped promoting, traffic died down. The Android review I posted on 3 forums and 1 site and it continually gets traffic. I didn't work that hard on the article and it is more popular than my home page.

Don't write a post and expect it to get the traffic you think it might. While a few posts will usually get most of the traffic, keep writing as you never know which post will blow up in terms of traffic.
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#6 Mark S 2008-08-14 09:40
SmashingMagazin e are known for meaty, insightful posts that often appear to have taken weeks to concoct and have more then once been absolutely mind-blowing.

Over the last week however, they have had a guest-blogger competition and been publishing 2 to 3 relatively short posts per day.

Unfortunately this has not gone down well with some readers who made their displeasure known in the comments, prompting Vitaly Friedman to re-assure his readers that posting regularity would get back to normal next week once the competition is over.

Something to think about.
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