We started blogging here about a year ago. The idea was simple, we wanted more traffic coming in to the site, and we assumed that even though most of the traffic to a blog wouldn’t actually be customers, there’d be some. So now, a year later, we can look back and make some broad assertions, with data that actually backs it up.

First off, over the past 30 days, we’ve had 1,283 unique users. The same 30 day period last year, just before we started blogging, we had 52, and that number had been an increase over the previous month. Yes, the site was optimized to generate traffic via organic search engine results. The truth was, there weren’t a lot of those to be had.

The time on the site has increased greatly, from 1.24 minutes to 5.38 minutes. Both bounce rate and depth of visit have decreased, and that’s primarily my own fault. You see, we don’t do jumps on our blog index, so our readers do tend to come in and read a single page, our index, then leave. So most Vario Creative Blog readers only end up seeing one page. Not a problem in my book, but it’d give anyone relying on advertising revenue from banners, Adsense, etc. fits.

The traffic sources are interesting. We’re now up from 33.9% coming from search engines, to 45.9% – with Google generating the lions share of that traffic, 529 visits to MSN (the next nearest) at 34.

The carry over affect from blog readers to actual site readers is about where I’d expect it. We get about 50 people a month checking out our portfolio who have come from the blog. Would I like to see more? Sure, but that’s about right. After all, not everyone has a web project in the works at any given point. I’m just happy to think that when they do, they’ll think of me. And the human results, the discussions I have on the phone and in person definitely tell me it’s working.

So to wrap it all up neatly for you, I believe business blogging definitely offers a benefit to my business. We are getting customers who never would have found us otherwise, and I’m getting involved in more interesting projects. Is it for everyone? Nope…but it can help to bring in traffic to your site, will force you to produce new content on a regular basis, and will not only give readers a reason to constantly return to your site, but will also provide a bounce for you in Google.