The "Merci Website Production" site you're viewing right now was renewed around January 2017, and the staff blog started a little later, in late February.
About two months on… including static pages, we've managed to grow it to more than roughly 100 pages. Incidentally, the number of pages recognized by Google (indexed pages) stood at 440 as of April 27, 2017.
The number gets large because Google recognizes not only actual pages but also images, PDFs and the like as pages.
If you're going to attract customers with your website, increasing your update frequency—that is, increasing your page count—is an essential measure. To increase traffic you have to rank highly for a wide variety of search phrases, and to rank highly you have to create many pages.
So, in order to get results, I initially set a goal of reaching 500 Google-indexed pages by the end of April. Unfortunately it looks like we won't hit that target, but among the performance indicators we set, there are some we have achieved.
Rather than getting elated or discouraged over this, we have to keep working away at it steadily.
I've strayed from the main topic, so let me get back to it.
At the two-month mark, I used access analytics (Google Analytics) to analyze which pages are being viewed and which aren't.
Besides the fact that two months had passed, another reason I wanted to analyze it was that I wanted to share the results with the staff who write articles between their regular work.
Our production staff divide up the workflow, so not everyone is good at writing.
If anything, they're all the type to say "A blog? No way!"—in other words, no different from any other typical company.
I wanted to evaluate them using objective indicators in order to keep up the motivation of staff who do their best to write even though they feel writing isn't their strong point.
On top of that, I had them share what they'd noticed.
I thought they'd improve faster by coming to their own realizations rather than having me tell them to "do this, do that."
In any case, based on the analysis results, I ranked things by several indicators.
Ranked by page views and time on page
Access analysis tools let you look at all sorts of metrics. This time we focused mainly on page views and time on page.
Since page views are a cumulative figure, articles that have simply been published longer naturally have an advantage. So some might ask whether it's fair to evaluate them this way — please take the results as a rough guide only (^^;).
Time on page, meanwhile, is a metric that measures "how long an article was actually read." In that sense, you could also call it a "ranking of the articles that grabbed people's interest."
Top 10 Articles by Page Views
1.You can build a website using a program that subsidizes two-thirds of the cost!
2.The IT Introduction Subsidy: do you qualify or not?
3.How to migrate WordPress
4.What's happened to search engine market share?
5.How to set up conversions in Google Analytics
6.So, how good is WordPress?
7.Why you, the expert, should register with "Hamamatsu SpeciaLIST"
8.Let's use Photoshop smart objects ①
9.I tried out InstantWordPress!
10.I ran the Nihondaira Cherry Blossom Marathon.
11.Three keys to writing a blog that brings in customers
12.Why do you need to write a blog?
Those are the results. Why does the list go up to number 12? Because 1st place and 2nd place both drew traffic through paid advertising, so we treated them as unofficial records and excluded them, then listed the top 10 from the rest.
Top 10 Articles by Time on Page
1.How to embed a video you uploaded to YouTube on your website or mobile site
2.Three keys to writing a blog that brings in customers
3.The Google Analytics reverse-lookup dictionary: search keywords edition
4.What to do when you can't think of a blog topic
5.[Fonts] The difference between OpenType and TrueType
6.How to migrate WordPress
7.The impressions created by text color
8.Three social networks you should master: Facebook edition
9.Grid design
10.The golden ratio
Those are the results.
Sakura is strong! Her title of Daily Portal Z writer is no empty boast (haha). Not only did she sweep the top three, she landed five articles in the top ten. And to flatter her a little more add one more point of praise, every one of them had a time on page of close to five minutes.
What did the page view and time-on-page results tell us?
So now let me write about the insights we gained from these two metrics.
How-to articles like "How to do XX" are a sure bet
On this staff blog, our team members usually write about the knowledge and know-how they've gained through their day-to-day work, so there are plenty of how-to articles to begin with — but what stands out is that the beginner-oriented articles in particular get read thoroughly.
The top three by time on page were all viewed for over seven minutes. Picturing the readers, you can easily imagine the sequence: "searching for information on how to do something" → "trying it out while reading the article."
Articles aimed at beginners are especially likely to be read
Among how-to articles, the more beginner-oriented the information, the more likely it is to be read. This is extremely important.
Bloggers tend to worry, "Is it really okay to write about something this simple?" So they end up writing about difficult, specialized topics — but in most cases users can't keep up. That's because prospects who might become customers usually have almost no knowledge of the field.
If your target users are experts in the field, then of course you need to go into specialist content. But if they aren't, you must make the content — and the terminology you use — as easy to understand as possible.
Titles tied to current topics tend to attract traffic
The latest news in your industry and local events attract traffic.
What's happened to search engine market share? and I ran the Nihondaira Cherry Blossom Marathon. are good examples. Search engine market share is a staple topic that anyone involved in online business wants to check periodically, and the Nihondaira Cherry Blossom Marathon is something participating runners want to look back on afterward. In a sense, you could say these titles were "calculated" (haha).
So that's what we found — what do you think?
For this article, we gathered the insights our staff shared and summarized the traits of the articles that attract traffic and actually get read.
Thanks, everyone!
I'm sure everyone's articles will keep getting better (haha). That said, for now I'll be happy if they just find writing a little bit fun (^^)
We'll review the numbers again in a few months.
