Reflecting on 2022: A Review of the Blog's Statistics
Tags: 2022, writing, yearinreview, motivation
Published: 2023-01-03 18:53:26

2022 has come to an end. This is the perfect time to reflect on 2022 for the blog. In this blog post, I will share the numbers. What pages were the most popular? What drove the most traffic, and some unexpected learnings along the way.

## Pageviews

The most exciting metric for me is page views. What content did my readers like? In 2022 the blog managed to get a whopping **3470** pageviews. A 118.51% increase over last year's 1588 views.

The top 5 pages of 2022 where:

<table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Page</strong></td><td><strong>2021</strong></td><td><strong>2022</strong></td><td><strong>Difference</strong></td></tr><tr><td><a href="https://blog.jellesmeets.nl/retrospective/movie-retrospective/">Movie Retrospective</a></td><td>253</td><td>649</td><td><strong>+156.52%</strong></td></tr><tr><td><a href="https://blog.jellesmeets.nl/">/</a></td><td>362</td><td>532</td><td><strong>+46.96%</strong></td></tr><tr><td><a href="https://blog.jellesmeets.nl/articles/do-engineering-managers-make-more-than-engineers/">Do engineering managers make more than engineers?</a></td><td>-</td><td>282</td><td><strong>+100%</strong></td></tr><tr><td><a href="https://blog.jellesmeets.nl/lists/4-lessons-i-learned-as-a-starting-scrum-master/">4 Lessons I learned as a starting Scrum Master</a></td><td>221</td><td>139</td><td><strong>-37.0%</strong></td></tr><tr><td><a href="https://blog.jellesmeets.nl/personal/why-i-stepped-out-of-my-first-startup/">Why I stepped out of my first startup</a></td><td>-</td><td>115</td><td><strong>+100%</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>

The top 5 pages of 2022

The movie retrospective is still going strong as number 1. But I suspect the page about engineering managers' salaries will surpass it soon. Two posts in the top 5 are posts that were written in 2022! That makes me hopeful for the future.

The absolute worst page? [The monthly digest of April 2021](https://blog.jellesmeets.nl/monthly-digest/monthly-digest-april-2021/) got **0** views. I still feel the monthly digest was a good idea. But I think the execution would be more beneficial as a newsletter. Something to think about.

## Traffic sources

What drove the most traffic to the blog?

![Top traffic sources](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/a58iiyu0ayw7b0jwrbw0.png)
Top Traffic sources

My efforts in learning SEO-related skills are starting to pay off. Organic traffic grew from 35.5% to **50.9%**! A special thanks to Maddy from [Tech with Maddy](https://techwithmaddy.com/). Who gave me some great tips on how to do SEO research without breaking the bank on expensive tools. Thanks, Maddy!

Breaking down the traffic from Socials tells me that Twitter & Linkedin are the main drivers. This is where I usually share my blog posts in relevant niches/groups.

The traffic on referrals is primarily from [dev.to](https://dev.to/dashboard) where I share my blogs. And when people click on links to my blog there. A nice **163** visitors came through there.

## Learnings

While traffic grew, I also got traffic from unexpected sources. I learned that [Google Lens](https://lens.google/) is a thing, and I apparently get a small amount of traffic from it. Some competitors (I assume), visit the blog through Ahrefs, Engagementbuilder, or other Seo tools.

I tried different approaches to SEO. And found one that works for me. I don't see any of the mega returns niche sites or SEO guru's promise. But it is all about tiny gains for me.

The number of pages visited per user is currently **1.3**. During the year several things were added to make it easier for users to read more. The sidebar now has 2 blocks of posts, and each post has a slider of posts from the same category. I'm curious to see if that metric will improve in the next year.

## 2023

I don't like new years resolutions. You can start to change any day. You don't have to wait for the new year (or a Monday). So I'm not going to make any resolutions here. But what I do like to improve is my writing habit. I'd like to create a real habit. I currently write in bursts of writing 3 blog posts in a week, and then nothing for a month. I'd like that to change to a more steady pace.

On the topic of writing. I would like to experiment more with the form of my writing. My blog posts are most often essay styled. While I would like to share spontaneous ideas, or things that I notice. Which might be less informative, and more thought-provoking.

I also would like to share more content on Linkedin. I notice I do not nearly share all my posts there, and only the ones I think will do well. And when I share on Linkedin this usually brings a spike in traffic. I feel the contrast with sharing on Twitter is the anonymity. And to be honest I'm sometimes a bit scared of negative comments.

## Before you go

First of all, thank you for reading my review of the blogs 2022. As always it has been a pleasure to write, and it warms my heart to see the blog grow and people like the content I create. I hope that 2023 will be as successful as 2022, and I will aim for **10.000** page views in the next review.

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