Well folks, I don’t know about you but it’s certainly has snuck up on me. I’m talking about the one year anniversary of this website. Officially April 3rd is the date of my first post but the first match I covered, including video, was the Kickapoo vs Catholic match April 1st which I’ll be doing again this evening. It was a physical game, it meant a lot to both teams based upon the reactions of the players and it took a goal in the 76th minute by Rachel Lavoy to seal it for the Chiefs. A lot has changed since then, including the weather that looks to be nicer this evening. How about this site though?
If you check out the “About SGFsoccer.com” page, I think it’s easy to agree that the site has become the place to recognize the players, coaches, referees and supporters of the game that help make it what it is. There is an active community providing feedback via the comments (add that address to your Yahoo, Google, AOL or MSN homepage and get updates whenever they occur via RSS) and their emails. I still haven’t heard the magic words “one reason I chose MSU/Drury is so that my parents can follow my efforts via your website” or “I found a player because of your website” but there is still time for that!
Speaking of which, there are 349 feed readers collecting this sites feed on a daily basis at this point, none of which counts in the statistics I’m about to share with you. So add those numbers to this analysis. If don’t know what I’m talking about, read this page “About SGFsoccer.com” and if you use Google, this page while Yahoo users want to read this page. Or call me and I’ll fill you in on how to become much more effective in your internet reading, including this site 🙂
What about some statistics? I used to spend an hour a day pouring over the statistics for my website, I was really addicted to seeing traffic changes and patterns in the early months. Now I find that I’ll check them out a few times a month. Let’s see what they tell us.
Here’s a list of refering sites in March, meaning visitors to my site came from their site:
946 http://www.google.com/
403 http://images.google.com/
246 http://search.msn.com/
278 http://search.yahoo.com/
131 http://www.glendalesoccer.com/
104 http://www.whssoccer.com/
87 http://blo.gs/
71 http://mp3.baidu.com/
62 http://www.lebanon.k12.mo.us/
60 http://www.springfieldsportsclub.com/
49 http://www.bluejaysoccer.com/
43 http://bitacle.org/
45 http://www.soccerblogs.net/
47 http://www.soccermo.com/
31 http://www.mosoccercoach.com/
34 http://www.kickapoosoccer.com/
8 http://www.hillcrestsoccer.net
6 http://springhighsoccer.com/
9 http://bulldogsfutbol.com/
4 http://www.wecallitsoccer.com/
It’s not a complete list, there are many more Google, Yahoo and other search links but I didn’t take the time to consolidate them. Many, many more…
How did they find me? How about these search terms
84 springfield soccer
37 springfield soccer club
18 springfield soccer tournament
18 springfield missouri soccer
16 springfield missouri soccer club
15 springfield mo soccer
14 ozark youth soccer
13 springfield mo soccer club
11 ymca springfield mo
9 spike lee arsenal
9 springfield mo ymca
9 springfield mo
8 camdenton soccer
7 sgfsoccer
7 lindsay paulsell
7 sgfsoccer.com
7 springfield soccer.com
7 sgf soccer
6 springfield missouri soccer tournament
6 springfield soccer club missouri
6 rolla waynesville soccer team
5 springfield mo soccer tournament
5 youth soccer springfield mo
5 soccer
4 jan stahle
4 nike contact lenses
There are over 25 pages (on my screen) of search terms for this month alone, here are some of the names folks searched for and came to my site.
jan stahle, chris paulsell, julia brandenburg, megan garrad, chris hanlon soccer, paige puryear, sarah mcclellan, katie pritchard waynesville, joe stange, ashleigh dallas, autumn mceachern, timson springfield mo, ryan hennessey, amy bolton and bolivar, katie brooks, chelsea schuster springfield, lindsay dorland, kim peabody soccer, adam klega, laken neal joplin, jack jewsbury, lucas merino, chrissy frkovic, nick bettlach springfield mo, chealsey russell, kyle windmueller northwest, caitlin germeroth, karissa nedoma, tessa banta, joe burger soccer, nikolaj roell, graham basecke, erin valenta nerinx, mike howard soccer coach of the year, nick schlichtman, dylan montileone, drew humphreys, brianna ragains, terry jamieson coach, lincoln roblee, kyle bishop, chris hernandez, josh keisker, eric wimberly, luke kreamalmeyer 2006, karen lassman eul, staci lewis, jessie yach, ben hamilton soccer, buddy coulter, jenna steiner, steve olson springfield missouri blog, paige blotter, rebecca robinson glendale soccer, denny vaninger, will ziegahn, steve wilczewski, laken neal near joplin, marcus kelcher, henry lawrence, steve pecher, allie nothum, justin walters mcauley soccer, bill rowe springfield mo, heath melugin, maddie senkosky, alli rolla missouri, chris baker soccer coach, henry lawrence soccer, ross frierson springfield mo, sarah mcclellan soccer, nick dryden, chelsey timson, chealsey russell, jason bromley, emily dusek
Did you find your name? You can always use the Search Box at the top right of the site to find anything I have written about you or your favorite player.
Are you an advertiser? Are you interested in marketing to the soccer community in Southwest Missouri? You want to know what type of traffic I have which can be measure in oh so many ways. Here’s what April 2005 looked like:
Successful requests: 4,461 (1,652)
Average successful requests per day: 162 (235)
Successful requests for pages: 3,295 (1,130)
Average successful requests for pages per day: 120 (161)
Distinct hosts served: 351 (30)
Average data transferred per day: 1.01 megabytes (1.79 megabytes)
The first number reflects the months numbers, the number in parentheses reflects the last week of the month. Now compare that to March 2006:
Successful requests: 90,766 (20,918)
Average successful requests per day: 3,027 (2,988)
Successful requests for pages: 56,265 (12,103)
Average successful requests for pages per day: 1,876 (1,728)
Distinct hosts served: 4,710 (403)
Average data transferred per day: 28.67 megabytes (28.15 megabytes)
It looks like I’m getting as much traffic in a day now as I got that first month. The specific numbers I watch include:
“Average successful requests for pages per day” which went from 120 to 1,876
“Distinct hosts served” went from 351 to 4710 (SWbell is a host so imagine how many visitors from that host!)
Another way to look at it is graphically which shows:
month #reqs #pages
Apr 2005 4458 3292 ++
May 2005 23474 13211 +++++++
Jun 2005 22901 14079 ++++++++
Jul 2005 27534 16098 +++++++++
Aug 2005 78846 59346 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sep 2005 77068 38006 ++++++++++++++++++++
Oct 2005 101229 48821 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
Nov 2005 94936 45033 +++++++++++++++++++++++
Dec 2005 80422 47714 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jan 2006 83053 47551 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
Feb 2006 81604 48984 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mar 2006 90791 56290 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The bar graph reflects the page view number and it looks like traffic is beginning to build again now, with the start of the girls season as well as increased club coverage on my part. By comparison, STLsoccer.net was averaging 18,000 pages per day in December which is 10x greater then my numbers. St. Louis is also 10x larger then Springfield and it took them 3 years to get to that point so it appears we are doing a pretty good job down here of supporting soccer.
Finally, I tried to look at what have been the more popular stories. The analytics software provided by my host doesn’t offer a long term look, only monthly so I looked at December through March. Early in this cycle, the first real boost I got was when Chealsey Russell was kind enough to write her series of articles on her experience as part of the National Champion U15 squad she is part of at St. Louis SC. Once STLSC put a link on their site to Chealsey’s articles I would receive visits from STL on a daily basis and it really opened up the readership. It was a significant factor in my August numbers.
Looking at the Top 5 articles for each of the past four months, similar trends appear. Chealsey’s article was #2 in January (again!) along with Kyler Temple’s article about his visit to London and opportunity to see ManU at Arsenal which was #4. In December #2 was Tyler William’s Bradenton Journal. Other most read articles during that period were my Recruiting articles on Karissa Nedoma (#1 in Feb), Paige Puryear (#3 in Feb), Cox & McEachern (#1 in Jan), Hilary Dorland (#3 in Jan) and Nick Dryden (#4 in Dec). Other well read articles included Decembers stories about the All Ozarks squad (#1), Class 3 District 10 (#3, I need to expand my coverage :)) and how to create gifts from my Flickr photos (#5). January included my Jack Jewsbury interview (he’s in town April 12th folks – be at the MSU vs KC Wiz exhibition!) . February articles of interest included Drury’s Recruiting clinic (#2), Larry Moore’s Google maps for the Ozarks & Great Lakes Valley Conference sites (#4) and March brought controversial topics of interest – “Let’s Get It Started” and the joke about soccer parents was #1, Socer District changes was #2, calling out Tottenham Hotspur fans was #5 while stories on Catholic’s early season start and the article from last May on Kickapoo’s Sectional loss popped up again after I referenced it in a story on the start of Girls practice.
There are a couple of final items to address. If you weren’t already aware of it, all of my photos are hosted on a Flickr site which can be found at www.Flickr.com/photos/SGFsoccer/ and they are all available for free download. There are 2178 as of this morning and the ‘photostream’ as Flickr calls it has been viewed over 30,000 times since it went live. Anytime you see a photo on this site, clicking on it will take you to the site where you will always find more photos of your favorite team and players. There are over 80 ‘sets’ now, or albums, that I have set up to make it even easier for you to find the photos you are interested in.
If you have a soccer website, you can download these photos and add them to your site or you can post a ‘badge’ like I have on the top right of my site. Glendale, Hillcrest, Central, SpringHigh Select and Springfield SC all take advantage of that opportunity and I would invite you and your team to do the same. Have you downloaded a photo? What else have you done with them? Let me and the community know what you like about this aspect of the site.
The final item is to remind you that if you don’t have a website but would like to, I would like to help you. Your only out of pocket expense is the cost of purchasing a website address which is approximately $10 and needs to be renewed annually. I will provide the hosting and software, for free, for your soccer group website. A 30 minute phone call is all that has been needed to get a parent or player up-to-speed on how to add content to the site and make it yours. I’m currently hosting the Hillcrest Hornets, Central Bulldogs and the Spring High SC sites and would love to help any other club, school program or other soccer-oriented organization with a site of their own. Contact me at 849-2508 for more information.
OK, time to wrap up this journal. I’d appreciate hearing from all of you about what you’ve most enjoyed about this site for the past year and your thoughts on how I could improve it. No sitting still, there is still plenty to be done. I think I can exceed STLsoccer.net for example 🙂 Use the “Comments” link underneath this article!
