Ok, we have all heard how important it is to update our blogs regularly. We’ve all been told you will loose readers very quickly if you don’t. Well, for the month of August we really did not update anything. Both Aimee and I got really busy and I got a little burnt out because of so many things I was working on at once. Bite off a lot more than I could chew if you will. Plus, I wanted a lot of quality time with friends and family which I was not getting because of so much work.
Anyway, so what really happened to the site as far as visitors go? I wasn’t gone that long right?
I am just going to give you one stat from the site and you can see what happened.
Hits for July 2007 = 299481
Hits for August 2007 = 71345
Difference between = 228136
Yikes, that is huge. But are we done? No sir, we are not. Now say we take into account that we were more than doubleing our number every month. For this example we kept up with the trend and we doubled up.
Hits for August should have been = 598962
Difference between = 527617
Now that is huge! Half a million hits gone. So if you ever need some proof, or motivation to update and you care about your stats at all, now you have it. Not updated your blog regularly really will kill it fast.
Popularity: 8% [?]
While I agree that no posting will kill the growth of a blog, there is a level-off point for every site’s traffic and it also depends on what type of blog it is as to how far it will fall when starved (no new posts).
Blogs that are more based on news or keeping readers updated about topics and interests need updates more often than how-to blogs, for example.
See these third party stats for a blog of mine that hasn’t had a new post since April 4:
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=sm8phpblog&r=33
(should have a new post added soon)