This post will go over all of my blog’s most popular posts of 2014 and why they were popular or got more traffic, and where they got their traffic from.
1. Excellent Modern Fonts: 8 Modern Script fonts – 1823 Views.
This post was very popular because it was bringing in people from Google throughout the year. The main reason is that it had images that caught people’s attention. I named the images with this-format-to-allow-google-to-read-them.jpg, I used keywords in the file name and in the alt tags for the images. My blog is not crazy popular on Google, but this and a couple other font posts brought in people because of Google image search, according to the analytics.
Read the article here.
2. Designer/Developers will rule the iPhone 6+ World. – 607 Views
This post had a great featured image that I tweeted and spread on social media, a compelling news-worthy title for my tribe of people. The main reason it really took off is because an influencer in my industry, John Maeda tweeted a quote and a link from it and his tweet really brought people in. It was also great to really have some conversations in the comments about how people feel about the often shrinking separation between visual design and development.
Read the article here.
John Maeda is a Japanese-American graphic designer, computer scientist, academic, and author. You can watch his Ted talks here.
3. Excellent Modern Fonts: Script Fonts 2015 – 496 Views
This post also did very well on Google, on the heels of the first script fonts post. I am no SEO expert, but I work with alot of them, and I know that you want to use what’s working. So I created this 2nd script fonts post and used images with alt tags and detailed file names to bring more people in from Google image search. I serve my tribe by bringing great fonts to their attention, show Google content on my site is useful because people are clicking through and staying on the page, and associate my personal brand with usefulness. Occasionally a client could be looking for fonts and decide they need my services as well. My clients still seem to usually have some personal connection to me, or find me on Twitter, but I foresee a day when I could be bringing in more freelance clients from Google.
Read that article here.
4. Design/Dev Manifesto – 496 Views.
I think this post received more traction because of hefty social media promotion. I posted quite a few quotes from the article as tweets because it’s something that got me going! Manifesto’s are fun, and this topic is something that I’m involved with every day, so I can speak to it with some amount of authority and expertise.
Read that article here.
5. Excellent Modern Fonts Series: 8 Modern Sans-serif fonts – 351 Views.
I mean who can’t get stoked about the font ‘Bebas?’ Part of the traffic hike for these font posts I believe was from linking to each other from the other ones at the end of each article. So when someone finishes a blog article I gave the option to check out other articles that I specifically linked to because of their relevance to the one they just finished. Read the article here.
I’m somewhat new to the whole realm of writing blog articles for the sake of my audience. I did some blogging in 2013 but they were somewhat self-promotional and fell flat for that reason. My rule of thumb is try to be useful to you audience and your customers and clients will find you when the time is right.
What worked for you in blogging this year? Feel free to share in the comments or tweet at me @timbdesignmpls.
