Have you ever one day logged into your blog and found that traffic is abnormally high? That’s a traffic spike – you receive a lot of extra traffic one day from some source, new or old. Chances are, you have experiences a spike in traffic at least once on your blog. And what did you do?
Most bloggers make the critical mistake of doing nothing when a sudden increase in traffic happens. Some don’t know what to do but celebrate and enjoy the abnormal traffic jump. But, there are some things you can do to make the most out of it.
When I say make the most of it, I mean there are certain things you can do besides celebrate ad actually convert most of your visitors into subscribers, or just someone who leaves a comments or even comes back again.
I have been thinking about this recently as with the free release of Blogussion’s From Planning to Earning has really had a large impact on the traffic here.
1. Republish Your Best Content to the Front
If there is a lot of traffic being driven to a certain article on your blog, you have to think that if it can happen to one article, why not others?
If there are hundreds or thousands of extra visitors going to your site, what are the chances that some of them might end up on your homepage? They get pulled in from your viral link on Twitter, or see your article on the frontpage of Digg, go to your site, like the content and decide to scope out your blog even more.
Would you rather have subpar articles listed on the home of your blog? Or, do you want to shoot higher and have the best articles on your blog out there? Even if it’s only for the span of time where you receive such sudden high increases in traffic, republishing your best content to the front of your site can help spread more readers throughout your blog.
This is what I call recycling posts. The post you decide to republish needs to be compelling and extremely interesting to draw in those new readers.
The better the first impression you can make onto those new readers from whatever source they’re coming from, means the more conversions you can make from visitor to subscriber. If putting your best content out on the frontpage of your blog can do it, then I advise you try it out.
2. Maximize the High-Traffic Page for More Conversions
When I released the From Planning to Earning guide, I knew that it would receive plenty of traffic. There are about 15 pages altogether, and through the newsletter, I knew they’d be visited a lot.
I was right, and those pages are drawing in a lot of that extra traffic I was talking about earlier in the article. So, what should I do? Leave things as they are, or try to convert those readers to subscribers?
On any article my email subscribers visit as a part of the free 10 day ecourse, they see a small message that alerts them to how to subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter and get back to the homepage of our blog.
If someone signed up for the course without have reading Blogussion much, they might not have been overly aware of that information. So by showing it to them on a high-traffic page that they most likely enjoy, I can get the following from a lot of them:
- New subscribers to Blogussion’s RSS feed.
- New followers on our Twitter account
- Some visits back to the homepage, where if they see some great content there, they may be more inclined to sign up to the feed and our Twitter account.
So by simply leaving messages on the page that is receiving all of this extra traffic to signup to your feed, signup to your email course or even follow you on Twitter, you can actually convert some of those first time visitors to regular readers. All it takes are simple messages like:
- If you liked this article, you should sign up to our RSS feed for more like it.
- Follow us on Twitter to read more tips like this.
- Our free email ecourse breaks down this topic down into greater detail, signup for instant access.
Simple messages like that can really make a difference, all you need to do is plug them in towards the top of your post and you should see some results.
3. Learn & Make it Happen Again
This is the most important thing you can do when your traffic spikes. This doesn’t sound like the most fun thing to do, but it pays off majorly if you study right.
If you use any analytics program like Google Analytics or WordPress stats, you should get pretty detailed reports of where all your traffic is coming from.
Key Pieces of Information to Find
Just 2 days ago, the article 18 Resources to Help You Write Better Headlines, which I wrote months ago, shot to the top of the “most viewed posts” list in my statistics tracker. It alone brought 567 hits to Blogussion on Friday.
I was ecstatic and overjoyed that this article was still bringing in killer traffic even though it was published a long time ago. I was even happier when I woke up the next day and found that the number of RSS subscribers increased by about 40 overnight.
Now, that could be because FeedBurner is unreliable and provides inaccurate and jumpy feed counts, but I’m telling myself it was all the extra traffic that did it. 
After the little celebrations, I figured it was time to do some research. And I found out the following things about why this post did so well, and now I know one formula to another potential traffic spike:
- Traffic source: These hits came from StumbleUpon, so I now know that if I try to get more people involved with stumbling my posts, I can possibly hit spikes in traffic a little more often.
- A popular topic: I have written a few articles about creating better headlines before, so I know that they did well before. But, this only proves that these type of articles can do abnormally well on my blog.
- Types of posts to focus on: This post was a list post, and by nature, they always do well. But, this makes me think that maybe I should conjure up some more list posts every once in a while.
- Old posts are still worth promoting: Like I said, this post was published months ago. Yet, it suddenly surpassed even the most reent posts on my blog traffic wise. This proves that it is worth putting the time into all of your posts, as months later they can pay of immensely and go a little viral.
Finding out information like that can help you make traffic spikes happen all over again. Usually finding this information out takes less than 5 minutes as long as you use a good program to track your traffic flow.
What do you do?
Everyone gets the sudden traffic bursts every once in a while. So what do you do? And be honest, do you just sit back and watch your traffic double, or do something to ensure you make the most of it?
That’s just one of the pains of blogging: you have to work at everything. Anything that happens on your blog, whether it’s gaining one subscriber or receiving a new comment on you blog, you have to work at it to keep it happening. And spikes in traffic are no different.
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?We do celebrate a bit and then we try to find out what made the post a sudden hit. I agree that using the applications you mentioned can help you take advantage of these spikes.
.-= Julius´s last blog ..Sign Language Used in Technology =-.
It’s only natural, so definitely celebrate a little bit!
Hey Alex,
Awesome Post man. I Think Republishing is the best and easiest way when traffic spikes.
Btw. why stumbleupon traffic not stay for more 1min?
Thanks for sharing this awesome tips.
StumbleUpon traffic isn’t always targeted traffic, meaning the people who come in through it aren’t always completely interested in your content.
Call to action, indeed, that’s exactly what high traffic pages need to get optimized consistently. Anyway, just a question Alex, I’ve noticed that you don’t have any advertisements here, so how do you take advantage of those traffic spikes besides subscription?
.-= Jason @ Affiliate Marketing Blog´s last blog ..Top 6 hurdles for an affiliate marketing newbie =-.
Honestly Jason, I hope that I’ve put enough interesting content on the blog for people to go read it, maybe leave a comment and subscribe. I also hope for people to follow Blogussion on Twitter, and maybe sign up to the From Planning to Earning course.
If not, then I don’t expect them to do anything because I’m totally against banner ads on my blog right now.
Hope that answers your question.
Actually, you have given so much detail to almost all the post that I have read here, which I think should be rewarded. And to be honest, I only have followed 2 blogs “personally” — yours and rob sellen’s. I guess subscribing to your feed and to follow you on twitter (which I will do after posting this) are the least that I can do to show some appreciation for what you have willingly provided here for free
StumbleUpon is an awesome site for spikes of traffic.
Good post, some useful information here.
Thanks Wez, glad you found some useful information.
I do not care about traffic from social media. They are very hard to convert. Not that these people are not valuable, but I feel that they are just lurkers who browse site after site without taking any action. Even if they subscribe to my newsletter they will end up ignoring my emails because most never open the emails to unsubscribe. They might even mark us as spam.
So the best bet is to focus on traffic from search engines and blog comments.
.-= Adarsh´s last blog ..How To Start A Franchise Business? =-.
You do have a point, but honestly, any new reader you can get the better. I think that they have to have some amount of dedication to whatever they subscribed for if they even did it in the first place. But you could be right man, most of them could be valueless.
So, do you ever optimize your blog for social media traffic?
I just experienced a traffic spike yesterday, on Sunday, which is the day that usually has the second least amount of traffic of the week. I actually hit a record yesterday! I’m thinking it might have something to do with the blog contest that I am hosting because most of the traffic was from referrals.
Anyway, these are some great tips for turning temporary spikes into subscription conversions. With WordPress, you can pretty easily sticky a post to the top rather than have to re-publish it.
.-= Chris @ blog contest at my blog begins today´s last blog ..By: Axelpod =-.
I’m always amazed when Sunday traffic is good here too, especially since I don’t publish anything new on Sundays. But that’s great dude, where did they all come from?
Actually Alex, most of it came from websites that were using a WordPress theme I released and placed an attribution link at the bottom of.
.-= Chris @ blog contest at my blog begins today´s last blog ..By: Axelpod =-.
Hi Alex,
You are absolutely right.
I remembered the day I got 2291 visitors to my blog (as a result of one guest post), I tried to get as many as I can to subscribe to my list. Many fail to make effective use of this type of traffic.
Thanks a lot for this great post and also for your observation,
-Onibalusi
Wow, nice! What blog did you guest post at?
I know I’m at fault for this to myself. I check my analytics so much and when I see that I’ve had a good amount of traffic I either do two things. One, I celebrate by doing nothing. Or two, I work harder to get more traffic but this actually is not right because of the methods I do. What usually happens with number two is I become spammy, lose focus on what I actually need to be doing, and just end up hurting my overall community even though I might have got a few more traffic counts.
When listening to Gary V’s audiobook of Crush It I remember him saying to not worry and to not even install any sort of analytics on your site for the first year because you should have the mindset (in order to build a big and strong community) that NO ONE goes to your site so you have to work and work and work.
Trying to force myself not to check my analytics too much now.
.-= Derek Jensen´s last blog ..The iPad is the Next Home Essential =-.
I never check Google analytics, but I do look at the WP.com stats plugin…but I’ve learned to never get too obsessive about it.
I like the way Gary puts it though, it’s actually really smart. But I could never do it, I want to at least have some sort of idea where my traffic stands.
Same here, dude.
Love Gary V’s advice. I think I am a fan now, officially. lol
I had a spike within a week of launching Meditation Rocks!, It was Deepak Chopra retweeting me. And I did… nothign!
Let’s blame Alex, he wrote this late… like super late.
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Naked Meditation (With Photos) =-.
I think i have lost a lot of great chance to gain more subcribers.
Until now, there is only 14 subscribers for my blog. Thanks for your sharing! I have learnt another great way to grab more subscribers.
.-= Kok Siong Chen´s last blog ..Cancer Chemotherapy =-.
Ah man, you need to take advantage of this. :p So the next time you get a big traffic jump, what are you going to do?
I plan to submit some guest posts to other blogs so that i can drive some traffic to my blog. At the same time, i need to attract the readers to subscribe to my blog.
.-= Kok Siong Chen´s last blog ..Minimize Chemotherapy Side Effects (Part 1) =-.
I’ve had one traffic spike from StumbleUpon, but it did not amount to much in the end. One extra click on an AdSense ad – woo hoo for 50 cents! lol
My singing content is not very viral in nature, but it does well in search engines. Getting around 300 PVs a day after only being around for approximately 4 months isn’t too bad I suppose.
However, with the new blog I have created, I am interested to see how I maybe change that nature. Not really sure how I will accomplish that yet, but I am mapping it out on my breaks at work. Working 40 hrs a week doesn’t help the whole blogging thing.
You’ve given some great tips here, though, in the event that I do receive some type of traffic spike. Rehashing valuable posts is an excellent idea that never really crossed my mind. It makes a featured content gallery that much more appealing. In the meantime, I’ll just keep writing awesome stuff and try to get some links to it!
Thanks for the post – it was an excellent read!
.-= Thomas Griffin´s last blog ..HostGator Virtual Private Server (VPS) Review =-.
When traffic spikes, the first thing I’d do is to analyse google analytics to determine where the majority comes from and invest further time and/or money into this/these channels.
#3 is really important because if you can’t figure out how you received so much traffic, you won’t be able to replicate it in the future (less doing it blindly).
Sometimes we all get a lucky break and a post goes viral. Sometimes it’s even the ones we never had expected. Google Analytics is a great tool for tracking where the traffic is coming from – take a special note of who submitted what, what people are saying about it, how long they’re staying, if they’re exploring deeper and what topic made it go crazy.
I really like the idea of setting up (essentially) a landing page for people. Top and Recent posts work fairly well but I think it would also be great to have a hand selection of the “most popular” posts. You could even slip a few in there that have been lacking in traffic to get the attention they most likely deserve.
Thanks for sharing this info Alex – always brining the A-Game
.-= Murlu´s last blog ..Should I Blog On National Holidays? =-.
Recently I have made one post on my blog informing how we can increase our blog traffic by updating old post. We can promote our old post by adding new content and sharing them on social media sites.
.-= chandan´s last blog ..The benefit of number one rank at google =-.
Wow, I was dying to know that.
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Naked Meditation (With Photos) =-.
knowing why you had a spike and trying to repeat is a great thing to do .
“Chances are, you have experiences a spike in traffic at least once on your blog”
Should be “experienced”.
“besides celebrate ad actually convert most of your visitors into subscribers”
Should be “and”.
“Yet, it suddenly surpassed even the most reent posts on my blog traffic wise.”
Should be “recent”.
A couple errors I think could use fixing! A great post though! My blog is’nt up and running yet but I will keep this in mind definitely! Thanks for the valuable posts as always.
Good advice Alex. Traffic spikes happen to us when we have had a radio or tv interview. Because of our prominence in local search, we’ve had a few opportunities to be interviewed. Immediately following the aired interview, we get a spike for about 12 hours. We always have our best foot forward during that time.
.-= Colleen´s last blog ..Homes for Sale in Cottonwood Springs Kennewick Washington =-.
When my traffic spokes, I notice that I start commenting on more blogs, tweeting out more stuff, and generally promoting the hell out of everything. If I already have X amount of traffic, I want X to the second power. I hope that I can do that until I get out some new content either the next day ( I write every day) or that same day.
OK you’ve sucked it outa me, I am H O R R I B L E at checking stats. This is sure to change once my totally revamped blog network goes into effect though; I’ll kinda have to. lol
I do remember once way back when my blog got shut down from a massive SU spike. I was so green at the time, I didn’t know what to do. LOL
.-= Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..The Future of DEDC – Part 2 – This is Part 1 Simplified =-.
Republish Your Best Content to the Front – I’d think you’d have to be pretty quick for this to be effective. Unless you’re a stat checkin’ junkie, don’t most bloggers notice such spikes after, even way after it happens?
.-= Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..WTH? To Say I’m Perplexed Would be an Understatement to Say the Least =-.
This is really really valuable, thanks ever so much! Until I read this I thought that if you had high traffic, you need not worry about anything, but you have obviously proven me wrong!
So when/if I get traffic spike, I need to make users aware of my best content, get more conversions, and make sure it happens again! Right…
Thanks again
.-= Christopher Technology´s last blog ..Nuclear Fusion, the Ultimate Power? =-.
@Alex, apart from your WPstats do you recommend any other real-time stats packages. Have you tried Clicky or Woopra? How good is WPstats?
.-= Leo | NetAccountant´s last blog ..Thesis: how to remove multiple categories from your homepage =-.
Instead of doing something after the traffic spike, I think that it’s important to prepare for them beforehand. Post a related articles box at the bottom of posts that you think will gain a lot of traffic, such as link posts for example. By preparing for a traffic spike you can gain the rewards from the extra traffic even if those visitors don’t necessarily come back to your blog.
But what if the traffic spikes is happening in only a few hours? What should we do?
Thanks for sharing. I learnt a lot from your site
i like this article . many good info … thanks alex
If you are not looking at your site’s stats (I use Statcounter) you are definitely missing out on some great information that can help you with traffic to your blog. In your stats you can easily see where your traffic is coming from such as Google images, and what keywords people are finding you with through organic searches.
Thanks for sharing. Speacially the analytics tips.
You clarified many points, and now, I think that I’m able to look for subscribers.
Thanks for your help!
Rafael from Suporte Linux Team
IMHO, Facebook is very good to spike the traffic
great info thx alex
Wow, I am going to paste my famous articles on my main page. Making facebook like button is second step, Thanks a ton for great tips.
It is very key to always republish the best content to the front. A lot of people dont think of this and it can get lost in the shuffle in your site.
Great tips here! These can definitely help your blog. Why let the best stuff you have go to the back of the line? Sounds good to me!
Great info on the article! Im going to utilize this info and help my blog! Thanks!
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