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The Wordpress Dashboard - Another Potential Traffic Source
By Alister Cameron
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-09-24
Here's a cool "secret source" of blog traffic I discovered some time back…
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post and thought it might have been of interest to the readership of Weblog Tools Collection (a very high-traffic site for Wordpress coders and plugin junkies). So I emailed Mark Ghosh about it, and he soon after linked to the post I mentioned on my blog.
As soon as he was linking to me, my blog experienced quite a nice healthy flow of high-quality traffic from him. Very nice.
But as I was studying my blog traffic stats, and pondering the quantity of traffic I was seeing from WTC, I couldn't help feel pretty jealous of Mark's traffic. I mean, he's right up there for popularity.
I wondered why his site was so popular…
First up, he deserves the popularity for the quality, timeliness and consistency of his content. I mean, if something happens of any consequence in the Wordpress world, he's going to post about it. He's like Lorelle that way. They rock!
But then the penny dropped!
If you're a Wordpress blogger (the software, not hosted at Wordpress.com), I'm sure you're familiar with the pile of links that appear at the bottom of your dashboard. Here is how they appear on my (and probably your) dashboard right now:
Now, these are links I actually click on. I really do notice them and I regularly click through to the full posts. I'm wondering if you do too? And if you and I are typical of Wordpress bloggers who are not averse to clicking those links too… how much traffic does all that clicking add up to?!
To help in the math on all this, does anyone have an accurate figure of the total Wordpress installs out there?!
If You Blog About Wordpress, Get Linked From the Posts that Link Off the Wordpress Dashboard
So here's my point for people like me, blogging once in a while about Wordpress-specific stuff… most obviously plugin and theme creators: the next thing you should do after hitting "Publish" is email the blog authors who feature on the Wordpress dashboard, notifying them of your new post. Be polite, be short, be professional, needless to say.
In the past I have emailed Mark and Lorelle a few times and Matt once. Mark has replied and posted each time (my posts were plugin or theme related, so it was a no-brainer for him, really). Lorelle has linked to me more than once. And Matt did not post or reply (but he's forgiven… he's a busy lad!).
Of course, unless you're a stellar blogger on Wordpress-related matters, you stand no chance at all of getting your content directly syndicated onto the dashboard. That list of bloggers has remained stable for quite a while (I think a few dropped out when they defected to Habari, but I'm not sure). So the next best thing is getting those bloggers to write about you, and if you're writing good stuff about Wordpress, it's not hard.
And the traffic? Trust me… it's niiiiiice!
Who is Syndicated on the Wordpress Dashboard?
Your Wordpress dashboard is actually just syndicating the content of Wordpress Planet, which itself is an aggregator for the following blogs:
* Akismet (feed)
* Alex King (feed)
* Andy Skelton (feed)
* Dev Blog (feed)
* Donncha (feed)
* Dougal Campbell (feed)
* Lorelle on WP (feed)
* Matt (feed)
* Matt on WP (feed)
* Mike Little (feed)
* Ping-O-Matic (feed)
* Ryan (feed)
* Ryan Boren (feed)
* WP Bits (feed)
* Weblog Tools Collection (feed)
* WordPress Podcast (feed)
* Wordlog (feed)
* bbPress (feed)
* mdawaffe (feed)
You will notice that with many of these blogs above, it is only a particular "Wordpress" category or tag which is syndicated across to Wordpress Planet. Bear in mind then, that if one of these authors posts a link to your blog, but without categorising it in this way, you won't be a link away from the "traffic nirvana" you're hoping for!
So How Much Traffic Are We Talking About Here?
Sadly, I had to move my hosting provider recently and I lost some of the details of my hosting stats, including referrer data. But I know I have received hundreds of unique visitors from each mention on WTC, and a little less from Lorelle (she tends to have so many links in her posts that the traffic to any given link is less, as a consequence).
But I have something I'm really really interested to know… and that I think would really interest others as well: how much traffic do these listed bloggers get from Wordpress dashboard links? What volume of incoming traffic do dashboard "clicks" represent as a percentage of overall visits?
If you're one of the bloggers listed above, would you be so kind as to shed some light on this? I'm not expecting "real" numbers but it would be great if we could get a sense of how important the dashboard links are to your overall traffic volume.
(One thing is clear… incoming traffic from the Wordpress dashboard is obviously very valuable to these readers because it is always highly qualified.)
I look forward to hearing from both these particular bloggers, and from you, dear reader, to tell me if you are also in the habit of clicking these links. Or did you not even know they were there?!
Comments
About the Author:
Alister Cameron is an accomplished web designer and internet marketing
consultant who turns established subject-matter experts into expert
bloggers. Alister's clients are using blogging and social media to leverage
their offline expertise in the online world, and engage Alister to build
their blogging platform or social network; to train them in writing and
online marketing strategy; and to help them stay up with the latest
developments in blogging and online marketing. Alister's blog is a rich
tapestry of advice, anecdotes and reflections from the frontline of
professional blogging, social media and search engine marketing, and never
without generous dollops of humor and wit.
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