General

Thanks for the Hits: March 2008 Traffic and Referral Numbers

Although Google Analytics, Sitemeter and Statcounter are all reporting different numbers, one thing is for sure: March 2008 was my biggest traffic month in a full year! The only month higher than this March was March 2007 when I hit the front page of Digg as well as Lifehacker in the same week.

Traffic Totals

Sitemeter: 30,048 visitors, 54,263 pageviews

Statcounter: 32,348 visitors, 52,838 pageviews

Google Analytics: 29,417 visitors, 52,528 pageviews

Top Search Keywords

My top keywords, according to Google Analytics, fall into the following categories. I’m also linking to the articles that those keywords most likely went to:

1. Free Laptop Nation
2. Free Laptop
3. CarFax
4. Technical Service Bulletins (or TSBs)
5. Clothing Donation Values (for tax purposes)
6. Clever Dude

Many of the top 20-30 keywords were slight variations on those listed above, so I must be doing something right with Google. About 35% of my traffic in March came through search engines. And now let’s see what fellow personal finance blogs made the top 10 list of traffic referrers.

Top Referrers

First up, let’s see what personal finance blogs sent the most traffic my way. As usual, you’ll see last month’s rank after the new rank in (). If they weren’t ranked last month, you’ll see a (-). I won’t be showing the total percent of traffic though:

1. (-) The Simple Dollar – Trent made it back up to #1 after missing the top 10 last month
2. (4) Single Ma’s Fabulous Financials
3. (3) Five Cent Nickel
4. (6) My Money Blog
5. (2) No Credit Needed
6. (5) Cheap Healthy Good
7. (9) I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…
8. (7) Single Guy Money
9. (-) Mrs. Micah: Finance for a Freelance Life
10. (-) Blogging Away Debt

And now let’s see the top 5 non-personal finance blog sites who sent me traffic. These stats are also from Google Analytics:

1. Google Search (30% of all traffic)
2. StumbleUpon (16%)
3. Direct Traffic (15%)
4. Google Reader and Homepage (4%)
5. Yahoo Search (2%)

Again, thanks to all my fellow bloggers and non-bloggers for sending traffic my way. Every little bit counts, so keep it coming!