When Does Traffic Analysis Improve Lead Flow And New Business? – Ask California Olive Ranch!

By Chris Frerecks • April 8th, 2010

top olive oil blogOne of things we strongly advocate to clients is that they make the analysis of their traffic a priority. Simply put, if you’re going to put any time, effort or money into advertorial blogging, then you’ve really got to look at what is and what is not working. The obvious benefit being, better traffic and more new business!

We review California Olive Ranch’s {COR} data month over month not only to identify growth, but what might actually cause more growth. The service can’t really be automated; it needs to be based upon a sincere interest in identifying trends, solving problems and making a difference. Let’s ask VP Sales & Marketing Claude Weiller how traffic analysis has worked for COR: 

Frerecks: California Olive Ranch {COR} keeps a close eye on its’ traffic analytics data. We asked Claude if he could share a little bit about why?

Weiller: The analytics are a gold mine. The information – page views, unique visitors, etc. – tells us how we’re doing each month in attracting people to our Olive Oil for Chefs and Olive Oil for Consumers Blogs}. It’s also valuable to see the sources of the traffic: Google, Yahoo, other web sites or blogs, etc. And it really pays to see what topics we’re writing about are generating visits – like baking or deep frying with extra virgin olive oil, for example. That way, we can highlight these topics in future blogs or do related posts. Finally, we can see the geographic distribution of our readership – from countries such as Australia or India down to individual cities around the globe.

Frerecks: Are any traffic data points particularly important to COR?

Weiller: Page views and unique and return visitors are the most important yardsticks. Those are the basic numbers that tell us how we’re doing when it comes to attracting and retaining readers. When those numbers are compiled on a monthly basis we can see whether the overall trends are favorable or unfavorable – and adjust our blogging practices accordingly.

Frerecks: Has COR been able to identify new opportunities or direction from the data?

Weiller: Absolutely. We’ve expanded from olive oil culinary topics into olive health topics. Baking with extra virgin olive oil instead of butter has been a huge hit for us. We’ve been collecting additional baking recipes to write about and feature, underscoring how more and more professional bakers are making the switch to EVOO from butter. The change is not only for health reasons. But professional bakers tell us they like the flavor component that EVOO adds to baked goods. We’ve also seen strong interest in sautéing and frying with EVOO, telling us people want more information on these topics.

Frerecks: Does looking at your most popular pages, referral back links and key phrase searches help to determine what you’ll write going forward? 

Weiller: Yes. I’ll give you an example. We recently featured a menu that included almonds fried in extra virgin olive oil. That dish, popular in Spain, has been a good generator of traffic to the blog. In particular, a Spanish food blog in the U.K. picked up and featured our post, driving a notable amount of traffic to our site. That tells us that Spanish tapas dishes have a real following out there. Our posts about the different olive varietals that we use in our EVOO also have been a good traffic generator. That tells us we want to hit that topic down the road. Another thing we’ve learned from keyword data is that Olio Nuovo is a very hot topic. It refers to our limited-release EVOO that we crush and bottle right after harvesting the olives. The keyword data has spurred us to mention or feature Olio Nuovo in several posts. And, as I’ve said, the data we’ve seen about baking with EVOO has inspired us to pursue that topic more aggressively.

Frerecks: In summary has tailoring your blogging, based upon the traffic analysis you’re seeing, been a productive marketing exercise for COR?

Weiller: For sure. We’ve adjusted our marketing strategies in response to the data we get from our blogs, putting a greater emphasis on health matters in addition to culinary topics. We just devoted our entire monthly electronic newsletter to baking with EVOO. We interviewed professional bakers and featured several new baking recipes. We’ll be blogging about each individual recipe in the coming days and weeks.

Claude and his team certainly exhibit how to maximize the value of their blogs with month over month analysis. It’s one thing to get out there and share every day practical knowledge as an advertising strategy – to be a trusted brand these days you really must! It’s another thing to focus on what’s actually happening as a result of that strategy so that you’re always tuning for improved traffic, lead flow and new business.

Interested in blog traffic analysis services, please do not hesitate to get in touch. We can easily tailor a program for you.

 Related Posts:
•  “Lowest Cost Per Impression of Anything We Do… By a Huge Margin! It’s Been Somewhat Amazing.” – California Olive Ranch On Business Blogging
• Get Over How Much: Get Into Attracting High Quality Traffic!
• Bounce Rate: Are Site Visitors Translating to Leads?
• Hits aren’t necessarily traffic

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