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30 Day Challenge, All, Blog, Internet Marketing

30DC – Update – 200 Visitors

October 28, 2009 by Scott Costello · View Comments 

30DCMUOver this past weekend I passed the 200 visitor mark for my 30 Day Challenge blog, NewJerseyProbate.org.  Since the end of the challenge, about a month ago, I’ve continued to write an article a week and am at about 20 total so far. 12 of them on my blog and the other 8 spread out over different sites like EzineArticles, Scribd.com, hubpages.com and blogspot.com.  I’ve also taken those articles and submitted them to Traffic-Bug.com in order to increase the backlinks.  I’ve had mixed reviews so far with that, as I’ve seen minimal backlinks show up in Market Samurai.

Over the past 4 weeks there has been a very steady increase in traffic.  I contribute half of that traffic to my adwords campaign.

Overall Visit Information

Total Visits: 232
Unique Visitors: 218
Total Pageviews: 500
Unique Views: 379
Pages/Visit: 1.94
Bounce Rate: 71.12%
Average Time on Site: 1:42
Most Visits in one day: 19 (Oct 22nd)
Visits in September: 48
Visits in October: 183

A bounce rate of 71.12% means that about 30% of the visitors are interested in reading more articles and have clicked through to other pages.   Not bad, but the lower that number the better.

Adwords

Ad Impressions 3,912
Clicks: 113
CTR: 2.89%
Avg CPC: $0.33
Cost: $37.19
Avg Ad Position: 3.7

At this point I think I have had a long enough testing period with adwords.  It’s been over a month since I started using it and it definitely does produce, but at this point I’m going to discontinue it and work on getting non-paid organic traffic from search engines.

As for my Google Page Rank, for my main keyword (New Jersey Probate), I’m currently sitting at 63 for the Broad Match (Search term without quotes) and 44 for Phrase match (with quotes).  I’ve fallen back quite a bit because I’ve not worked on getting back links by posting on other related blogs and forums.   Plus google bounces new sites around in the beginning.  In the future I will also be publishing more articles to the article sites like ezines and goarticles.

Other Keywords I rank in the Top 15 for are..

  • Sell House in NJ Probate (B: 8)
  • Sell inherited house (P: 12)
  • New Jersey Probate Court (P: 14)
  • New Jersey Capital Gains Tax (P:8)
  • Sell Vacant House (P: 7)
  • New Jersey Probate Estate (P:2)

Other Traffic Stats

Search Engines: 185
- Google: 180
- Yahoo: 4
- Ask: 1

Top 10 Keywords
- New Jersey Probate (6)
- probate will (6)
- new jersey probate court (4)
- nj probate law (4)
- nj probate court (3)
- avoid nj probate (2)
- avoid probate in nj (2)
- new jersey probate law (2)
- new jersey probate process (2)
- probate a will in new jersey (2)

160 Total unique keywords used to find my page

Direct Traffic: 49

Referring Sites: 8
- Hubpages: 4
- EzineArticles: 2
- Scribed: 1
- NewJerseyProbate.blogspot.com: 1

10 Top Pages Viewed
- Selling a house before it gets through probate in new jersey (74)
- New Jersey Probate Process (36)
- New Jersey Probate Tips (34)
- New Jersey Probate: Surrogate Information (33)
- How to Avoid probate in New Jersey (27)
- New Jersey Probate (25)
- New Jersey Probate Court (15)
- Testate Vs Intestate (9)
- About (8)
- New Jersey Probate: Can’t Find the Will (8)

6 Total Click Throughs To My Squeeze Page (ScottyBuys.com)

1 Lead

Conclusion

I need to get more people to click through to my ad.  As of now I only have a 2.5% click through rate which needs to improve a bit, I’d like to get it up to around 5%.  I can accomplish that by testing different types of ads and changing the locations.   Overall I believe the 30DC strategies is going to work very well in the long run.  If I’ve made this much progress in just around 2 months just think how much traffic I’ll be getting by this time next year.   The key is to keep working on it and being consistent.

Popularity: 10% [?]

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  • Scott,

    Very impressive use for the 30dc. I also like your articles. May I ask where you got your information from? The articles look like they were written by someone with years of experience in probate.

    Jason
  • strugglinginvestor
    Thanks Jason, I thought they were terrible..haha. What I do to write the articles is first think of a topic and then search for articles based on that topic. I also read through parts of the NJ Probate Code. Once I have all the info I summarize what I've read into my own article. I've learned a boat load from the process.
  • Good stuff Scott! I've been doing the 30DC with a non-real estate related website for another business and its interesting to see your results here. I'm at 53 visitors...no leads yet. Getting some traffic love from Google PPC but no actual leads yet. I figured I'd take my best learnings from this process and then use them with my squeeze page for buyers.
  • Hey, this is good stuff! This marketing-internet-techno-web-geek loves it!

    Have you converted any worthwhile leads yet from the traffic you've attracted?

    ...jp
  • strugglinginvestor
    1 Lead total from the 230 or so visitors. Not to good, but I've got to tweak my ads and their placements and try and get more people to click through to my squeeze page. Then once I get more click throughs I'll tweak my squeeze page to try and convert them into leads.
  • I'm betting you could up your leads conversion greatly if you make your offer/squeeze a little more in your face. Like maybe an opt-in bribe of some sort, followed by a logical, sequential autoresponder series that's informative and also sells them on the benefits of you as an option. In other words, write some kind of special report your target would find helpful, and also pre-sells them on you. Put an optin for it in your sidebar, top-right...and maybe also as a one-time fade-in ad.

    Just some random thoughts...probably stuff you're already aware of.

    ...jp
  • strugglinginvestor
    JP,

    Thanks for the great advice. I never thought about putting the opt-in option in the side bar of my probate blog and doing a fade in ad. Very nice! I agree I have to write my squeeze page to sell the benefits more and be a little more in their face. I'm usually the exact opposite so I'm going to have to work out writing that sort of copy. Can you recommend any resources to help me write like that?

    Thanks Bud!
  • My three favorite copywriting resources are:

    http://MichelFortin.com
    http://RayEdwards.com
    http://Copywriting.com

    ...jp
  • strugglinginvestor
    Thanks JP, I'll be adding them to my daily reading
  • I like your 30 day challenge to yourself. My problem is always focus. I think I should take the 30 day challenge too but what do I focus on? I have several websites and blogs....ya know? That's my problem.

    Why did you decide to do the 30DC with your probate site instead of this one?
  • strugglinginvestor
    I decided to use the 30DC on my probate site because I wanted to create something from scratch as the 30DC had done. I also figured since I wanted to attract probate leads to a specific site it just made sense.

    As for picking a site to do the 30DC with, you can do all of them, some of them or just one if you like. It really doesn't take that much time once you get the swing of it.
  • So where did you get the whole 30DC idea from? I imagine you got it from somewhere since you said you wanted to do it from scratch "as the 30DC had done."

    Btw, great job with your progress.
  • strugglinginvestor
    http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/training

    I didn't make it up, it's a popular free training given by Ed Dale. Take a look at it.
  • Ahhh I like it. I think it's an outstanding idea....I think I should utilize his 30DC too since I already told you privately how I get un-focused by having more than 1 web site going at a time....perhaps I take the 30DC and use it for each one all at once or maybe 1 per month?

    That's what I need to stay focused and committed to my sites. Thanks for the website.
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