01 August 2012 ~ 15 Comments

Month In Review: July 2012

Random

July was a busy month for me. I just got back from an awesome mission trip to Virginia. I will be publishing a post on we did soon. I am still getting the videos/pictures together.

In July, the blog experienced a little bit of growth. The new visitors and subscribers have been flowing in from twitter. I am excited to see how twitter has been driving traffic to the site. Although I am still working on getting clicks from individual links on tweets, the site has had quite a bit of organic traffic from twitter. That’s enough reason to keep marketing it!

The discussion was great this month. The comments, tweets, and emails keep getting better each month…I think that it is awesome! Keep it coming!

Top Commenters

TC Avey                   20 comments

Ngina Otiende       17 comments

Joe Lalonde          11 comments

I am giving each of my July top commenters a special advertising space on my site! Because these top contributors helped my site so much this past month, you will be able to see their website ads on the website soon!

Even though I was extremely busy this month, I was able to publish a good amount of posts.

Top Posts

A White Flag Surrender

When God Steps In and Interrupts The Rhythm of Our Lives

I’m Not Home Yet

Building Your Character

Book Review: Every Man’s Battle

I was excited to find that every guest post this month made it into the top. In fact, that has been a trend on my site for awhile. I always love when the guest posts do so well because it helps build community. When a lot of people are involved, things are better.

What would you like to see from the site this next month?

Feel free to posts links to your top posts!

PS- Top commenters…contact me for advertising details!

 

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  • http://www.jmlalonde.com Joe Lalonde

    You had a great month Brandon. So glad to see your site expanding and you growing your faith through the missions trip. Thanks also for letting me guest post on your site. It was a pleasure.

    July was another rough month. The site saw a major drop in visits but I’ve narrowed it down to being delisted from Google. Trying to get that corrected. My top post was http://www.jmlalonde.com/10-bad-leadership-traits-you-need-to-avoid/ 

    • http://www.brandongilliland.com/ Brandon Gilliland

      Thanks! You are always welcome to guest post here!

      What do you mean it was delisted from Google? I haven’t heard of that before…

      • http://www.jmlalonde.com Joe Lalonde

        None of my pages are showing in Google searches. It can happen from abuse, 404 errors (basically errors that tell Google that specific page no longer exists), etc. 

        Give it a try. Search for your domain and then mine on Google. You’ll see tons of results for yours but none for mine.

        • http://www.brandongilliland.com/ Brandon Gilliland

           That’s weird. Do you have the tentblogger 404 repair plugin? I use it, and it seems to work great. When I first switched over, it had to do a lot of repairs on my site.

          If you don’t have that plugin, I would check it out!

          • http://www.jmlalonde.com Joe Lalonde

            I don’t but looks like something I’ll be looking into. 

          • http://www.brandongilliland.com/ Brandon Gilliland

            I highly recommend it! It might fix everything right away?

            That’s the crazy thing with websites. Something always needs to be fixed. Just a few weeks ago, my RSS feed was all messed up. I had to nuke it and then synch it back up!

          • http://www.jmlalonde.com Joe Lalonde

            Installed it and says it found no errors that needed to be fixed. Looking at Google Webmasters Tools it also shows no more errors. Here’s hoping things are straightened out.

  • http://intentionaltoday.com/ Ngina Otiende

    That was a awesome month Brandon. You got a good stretch in all areas – blog and personally.

    Your  conversation with @jmlalonde:disqus is insightful, I too have experienced a drop in traffic since I moved to wordpress from blogger. I attributed it to the move but since Google was not necessarily re-indexing the pages again (or does it?), i need to check that plugin.

    Thanks for having me over as a guest blogger. It was a pleasure.

    My top post for July was  “Intentional marriage – 4 ways to work through early marriage kinks’ http://intentionaltoday.com/the-intentional-marriage-4-ways-to-work-through-early-marriage-kinks/

    • http://www.jmlalonde.com Joe Lalonde

      I noticed the problems with my site when I checked Google Webmast Tools. Give that a check and see if everything looks good.

      • http://intentionaltoday.com/ Ngina Otiende

        Thanks Joe. I checked and looks like I need to add the new site – intentionaltoday to webmaster. I stopped the older site from being being indexed/crawled by google to avoid double sites. 

        I have actually added the site now – but i need to “verify”. Am checking out the easiest option to do this – though none look that easy :)

        ps – the site is actually indexed on google but i cannot get information on webmaster until i add it.

    • http://www.brandongilliland.com/ Brandon Gilliland

      Thanks for the encouragement! I would give your site a few months to adjust. It takes awhile for the search engines to catch on.
      I was a Page Rank of 2 for my old site, and this site is still 0. It just takes awhile.

      • http://intentionaltoday.com/ Ngina Otiende

         thanks for that insight Brandon! I’ll be patient :) .

  • http://tcavey.blogspot.com/ TCAvey

    You’re doing great!
    Thanks so much for having me as a guest. It was an honor to help you as you served Christ.
    My top posts this month were surprising. One was an old post I had written. The other was the interview I had with Erica McNeal on Self Publishing a Christian Book.

    I’m most enjoying my series on The Cost of Discipleship that I do each Monday.

    I have stalled on my Newsletter. No knew subscribers. I’m hoping/believing that once summer is over it will pick up. 

    • http://www.brandongilliland.com/ Brandon Gilliland

      Thanks again for guest posting! I have hit a wall in my subscribers as well. Hoping that I can get through it. I am marketing more for twitter right now. I believe that this could get a lot more traffic and eventually more subscribers.

      • http://tcavey.blogspot.com/ TCAvey

        Good luck. I can’t tell that Twitter is adding to my blog, but that doesn’t mean it’s not. I do know that my Klout score started at 40 and is down to 34 last I checked. Seems the more I use Twitter the lower my score goes. Oh well.
        I’m just going to focus on building the relationships I have and trust God to water the seeds. I trust that if I’m faithful with what He’s given He will provide the increase. He knows me better than I know myself. But sometimes it can get a bit frustrating :)
        Good luck!