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Real Estate Blog Traffic, How Many Hits Should I Expect ?

Kool-aid-stats Blog Visitor Statistics - Don't Drink The Kool-Aid

At Bloggers Connect 2007, a woman from the audience during the panel I spoke on (Show Me The Leads) asked a great question. A question that I hear everyday. A question that I know every new and soon to be blogger is asking: “How many hits should I expect to get to my blog?”

I was surprised to hear the answer by one of the panelists:
“After a couple of months, you should be getting a couple of thousand a day.”

As far as I know, based on most statistic metric counters, there are only a handful of blogs in the real estate blogosphere that can boast that they are generating visits in the thousands per day.
Statements like these are reckless and misleading.

There is a need for a common measure of traffic to a website, and that measure should be that of the “unique visitor”. Where the (ahem) confusion lies is in the distinction of the following:

Visits – The instance of someone coming to your site.
Hits – The instance of anything visiting your site.
Page Views – The instance of someone clicking on a page in your site.
Impressions – The instance of your site appearing in a search result.
Unique Visits – The instance of someone coming to your site once, in a limited time frame.

Because all of the above represent some sort of traffic measure to your site, the answer to the question above can be leveraged by using any of them. However, the question that the novice in the audience was hoping to have answered was “How many people can I expect to visit my blog?” We all knew exactly what she was asking.

Let me show you an example:

Head on over to Real Estate Tomato to read the rest of this compelling article:
Real Estate Blog Traffic, How Many Hits Should I Expect ?

Posted by Real Estate Tomato on 08/10/2007 11:45 AM

Comments (59)

blog statistics, real estate blogging

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59 Comments on Real Estate Blog Traffic, How Many Hits Should I Expect ?

AUG

2007

Wow! Hits?! We have been blogging since November and have received alot of reads and many comments but never hits. We're up to 72k points in the Rain but still have not received any real hits from actual customers. This will not deter us though because we find so many more advantages to being here!

Jim, this was incredibly helpful. I loved how you broke down each different type of hit on Gena's site on the Tomato. Thanks.

Expect alot. I just had a guy to say he wanted to refi. 30 properties.

I don't think anyone in the room believed that. Sounded more like a plug to use their services. Not very credible.

I agree hits are important in this business, but I too have found the information and camaraderie I have found here at the AR site to be as valuable. Thanks for the info as a new member I truly value all input and feedback others provide. Thank you, Thank you

I don't think anyone in the room believed that

I did. Of course, I've seen the results with my own eyes.

Statements like these are reckless and misleading.

No, Jim, they aren't. They're inspiring and hopeful. Shouldn't we all aspire for greatness?

When counting unique visitors, do I count as a "visitor" every time I log on to post or edit?

SteamboatHomeSales.com

I've been actively working on my site for several months now, but still haven't had more than 20 visits a day.

Tomato, undressed again...transparency is the name of the game! Aspirations coupled with reality make for sane computation and most importantly understanding. Good explanation and great juice, Jim.

Brian,

That is awesome that you have been able to generate that kind of traffic. Is your site actually generating more visits than Bloodhounds average of ~900* per day? He out-writes us all, has over a dozen contributors and covers very broadly interesting topics.

What I'm saying is: this is a case of massive blog production and savvy, and yet he, after over a year, still finds himself under the 1000 visitor a day watermark.

Setting a novice's expectation that they will be generating a few thousand visits a day after a few months of blogging is unrealistic.

* Statistic pulled from Unique Visitor count on http://topsites.blogflux.com/sitedetails_83281.html
I find their stats count to be very close to the metrics of GoogleAnalytics and Sitemeter and Mint

Jim:

Ahem....

Please clarify something for us all. Isn't a "hit" simply the opening of a file on a web page, and could not a single web page have multiple files, or even hundreds if there are a number of graphics and links?

A hit is measured every time a specific unique file (HTML files, image files, script files, frames, etc.) is downloaded. In other words, many people refer to the total number of HTTP Requests a user makes as the number of hits the site receives. Since a single web page can be made up of any number of unique files (hundreds even), measuring hits is often meaningless in measuring the success of a website

http://www.seologic.com/web-traffic/increase/hits/

Roberta,

You are right, the 'HIT' in its technical term is as you defined.

That said, when someone (less than super savvy) asks, "How many hits should I expect on my blog" we all know that they are asking "How many people should I expect to my blog?" Who cares about all the other stuff? The only measure of traffic that Joe and Jane blogger care about is the instance of a human visitor, and that should always be the answer we give.

Jim... I agree with Adell. I don't think anyone in the room bought that number. And I agree that she was asking, "how many visitors?" As you are saying, hits aren't important anyway... it's unique visits... real people.

We are looking for unique visitors, yes hard to believe many gettingthat many hits a day

There's so much contradictory info in the blogosphere that I honestly don't know who or what to believe anymore.... I was there and heard that panelist assert the same thing and it struck me as a very high number.

I appreciate the discussion. The bottom line no matter how many visitors or "hits" (whatever you want to call it) - the bottom line is sales. You can have a ton of visitors, but isn't (and I'm speaking to real estate agents here) - isn't the goal to meet the needs of people who are interested in buying or selling? Those are the visitors we want. If I get a low number of visits, but some sales, isn't that what makes it worth it? It's not a numbers game. Just my view. Have a nice day, everybody.

Jim, Thanks for the clarification--just goes to show that we can't believe everything we hear.

Now I know that with so many hits and far fewer comments, that I need to be doing something more compelling to encourage all the visits to comment. Thanks for the insight.

Thanks for clarifying this. I have always wondered about the impressions part and may have confused the different terms above.

Cheers,

Cindy

Jim, I think a couple of thousand a day is way too optimistic! But gives something to aspire to achieve. If you blog about Paris Hilton or Angelina Jolie, maybe you'll get that many visitors, but if they are not going to turn into real estate clients who really cares. Anybody can get potential huge traffic by blogging on some off-topic issues, but thousands of people a day searching for real estate in certain areas of the country is definitely not likely.

You are all so naive. That's OK, Don't believe. Go ahead and wallow in your low numbers. Don't ask me how I did it, or how you can too. Don't believe that it can be done. Don't bother trying to find out the truth. Stick your heads in the sand and be comfortable that you are in the majority. The majority never rises to the top anyway.

Gena and Roberta, I feel shame for you right now. I stayed up until 4:30 in the morning and showed it too you. Gena I showed you the Google Page Rank link that said your page was going from a PR5 to a PR4. So go ahead get on the train and slam me.

Don't ever ask me for help again.

Brian and I will take the ride by ourselves, several smart ones have contacted me, a couple are interested in writing on my blog as well.

See ya....................

Hi, Jim- here's what I didn't expect from our blogsite: two prospective buyers inside of two weeks that are legitimate. While it takes much time, it's not unlike any other form of advertising- but nice to have a controlled response. One respondent liked that we blogged about "fiduciary"; the other liked the site. Slow, steady...and growing. Just as I wondered about the effectiveness. Ain't real estate grand!

L. Manny,

Here's a solution. Why don't you go ahead and submit your site to BlogFlux: http://topsites.blogflux.com/real-estate/

Regardless of the numbers you think you are putting up, this will give you a clear understanding of exactly how well your blog traffic compares to those of the peers that you feel "have their head in the sand."

BlogFlux is a very capable measure of your traffic. Actual Visitors.... not to be confused with the misnomer of "hits". We'll all check back in a week and see how it went.

L. Mindich,

I am thrilled to hear of your success. We are in the process of putting together a running list of all the fantastic testimonials of rapid success our clients are experiencing. We plan to break it down by 3 categories:
    1. Exposure in the Search Engines (placement based on relative key terms)
    2. Growth in Traffic (monthly percentage growth)
    3. Leads and Clients.
A great example of that success just came in today, in addition to yours. Mary DeLuca of Arlington VA, bloigging with us for less than 1 month (July 19th start date) just secured her first client. She was so excited, she told me at 2:30AM her time in an email. This is awesome.

My website and website blog get a lot of hits (thousands) but few quite a few less visitors(100s). One thing that helped was ping my blog as widely as possible the website took about three years of content writing and careful linking.

This site is great for increasing the traffic to your blog: RSS Top 55 Blog Submission Sites

Most of us that have websites and measuring methods for unique visits and all the other matrix options including how long a visitor stayed on our site, how many pages were viewed and the list of data goes on can safely say visitors that request and turn from prosper to client is down in the single and double digits per month. Most of the other sites that boast high numbers are not actual prospects. This is individual real estate sites to qualify this statement a bit more. Very nice thought provoking post.

Laurie:

Please feel no shame for me. After a late dinner, Gena and I joined you in your room and had a fun time drinking wine, eating chocolates and going through Widexl.com and iwebtools.com until 2:30 am. You offered helpful advice, for which we thanked you.

The back end of your site is robust and interesting, but it is also a proprietary one. The only reason I have chosen to go with Wordpress for both my blogs and website is that it is open source and portable. As a fellow victim of the Advanced Access debacle, you can certainly understand my compulsion to never have my business locked into proprietary software again. I must have the freedom to control my own work and database. There is far too much at stake.

I do not understand your anger and bear you no ill will. I also do not believe that the respondents to this post are naive or "wallowing in low numbers." Most are here seeking an accurate way to measure the effectiveness and reach of their own sites. In my opinion, the best way to achieve that measurement is through common systems of measurement that are measuring the same things.

I hope your anger passes; it serves no one well. I also hope we can remain friends.

Jim, If I had a thousand hits a day I would not be able to handle the calls from the Homes.com companies of the world. I would like to hear the numbers of how many hits or uniques visitors are

1. Customers

2. Other realtors

3. Salesman trying to sell the RE industry on the latest and greatest widget or blogomotron.

I think that bloggers should be given realistic expectations they may feel as though they are doing something wrong if they don't get a ton of hits or visits in the first few months. Our entire business seems to be focused on marketing the quick buck. I would like to ask the experts here what the relationship is between the number of visits and the number of real estate sales. I for one am not finding one.

Tomato, thank you for all of the info, it was very helpful!

Roberta,

I think I can understand why Laurie's upset. She has openly shared her success with people. She is concerned with Realtors paying thousands of dollars to attain mediocrity. Her reward? Her credibility is questioned. I can share with you that that feels horrible.

A thought for you about open source versus proprietary software (because I agree, in principle). What is so wrong with proprietary software when it helps deliver a supercharged performance? Isn't the idea to leverage technology to our advantage? I gladly pay my $15 to Typepad every month; it's the best money I've ever spent.

Isn't the real ROI question, how much business do I generate from my blog?

Vey good discussion. I rarely check the stats on my sites. The only thing that really matters is how many checks I'm depositing. In less you are selling your site does it really matter how many "hits" you get? I figure if I'm making money then I'm getting enough. Of course my other sites don't come close to the amount of buisness I get from ActiveRain. This place is a money making machine.

Gotta love all the misleading answers that so many people want to give. NOT!

Interesting how these things are all so overrated.

I can tell you that blog ranking systems are bunk. When I put them on my homepage, my ranking was always in the top 10. When About.com asked me to remove "the bling," my ranking, for example, on Blog Flux, dropped to 38. Blog Flux is still listed on my site; it's just not on my homepage.

But I will say it is not unusual to get 2,000 hits a day on a blog. Short sales, anybody? :)

Know what? While I might respect all participants of increasing one's business, in the final analysis, it's "IS IT WORKING FOR ME, within the expectations understood?" While I might respond with, "MUCH BETTER", it's all relative. We have what we can comfortably handle- made possible in a tough area by Jim. AR???? At Jim's recommendation, AR. For blogging. Turns out, also a stellar opportunity for SEO. We're lucky for both. It doesn't make anyone less for not having gotten to us first, regardless of the format. But I'm now curious about what I haven't seen with Laurie's, or is it simply a different philosophy?

Jim.... gee, 500 a day would be great.... lol Do you have a special tool that can show these hits? I have typepad and it has a tool, but it doesn't work well. thanks

jeff belonger

I have 3 counters on my Other Blog, and each measures the visits differently. Still, it's fun to see where the hits are coming from, and it's often a surprise! Like, I have a fan in Oman!

Jeff B,

Try Google Analytics, Sitemeter or Mint (haveamint.com) for some great stat information. But beware, it's addiction, competitive and only relatively true. :)

Jim,

I took your advice and submitted to Blogflux. I have received a recent spike of activity and wondered about it until I saw the Blogflux results.

The rankings are skewed because they only go back one week; mortgage blogs will get the traffic these past 10 days because of the problems in the market. So, the rankings, in my opinion, are bunk.

The metrics, however, are a useful tool. I'm curious to see my stats.

AUG

2007

Good post. Thanks for clarifying this. This crazy internet world changes almost daily...Thanks for keeping us straight!!

I like the info I get from GetClicky.com. It's a very user friendly free stats package with great info I was not getting from other sources.

But really all that matters to me is who calls me. I don't care how many visit. Its nice that other Realtors visit and comment. I try to reciprocate. My only concern is who hires me.

Thank you, this was a helpful reminder...

There is a need for a common measure of traffic to a website, and that measure should be that of the "unique visitor". Where the (ahem) confusion lies is in the distinction of the following:

Visits - The instance of someone coming to your site.
Hits - The instance of anything visiting your site.
Page Views - The instance of someone clicking on a page in your site.
Impressions - The instance of your site appearing in a search result.
Unique Visits - The instance of someone coming to your site once, in a limited time frame.

As a newbie at AR, I was wondering the same thing and wondering where I could find the data. Thanks for the insight and the helpful link to learn more...

hi all!

i go fishing and look what happens.......

at the end of the day, if i'm a real estate agent or mortgage broker who blogs for business, my goal should be to get real buyers and sellers to contact me. period.

now back to fishing......

blog on!

-rudy.sellsius°

p.s. i use getclicky.com for sh*ts and giggles........

There are great tools that can show other peoples metrics. So we don't have to take anyone's word for it. Does one blog get more traffic than another? Simply go to alexa.com and find out. Granted, it's not perfect and there are ways to "work the system" but it gives a great overview.

Thanks so much for this great post. I had never seen the breakdown of all the different ways people visit your website or blog broken down so clearly in each category. I will be bookmarking this for reference. (sorry for the duplicate above - forgot to login). Also - thanks to those who mentioned getclicky.com - just went there and it seems like another great tool.

Hits? Unique vistors? It makes no difference to me if I don't get a client AND make a sale. The only number that matters is the, as one person put it, how many checks I deposit at the of the week. Popularity.....well I'd rather have targeted, focused traffic in low numbers with the highest amount of conversions from visitor to sale.

.02

Course, I could be wrong! ;)

Brad, I've found Alexa to be extremely inaccurate, personally. Since they only sample based on people who use the Alexa tool bar in their browser, it's highly suspect for sites that don't have a broad appeal. Example: Alexa only shows 121 sites linking into RealEstateShows.com. But our server logs show 46,967 different pages/urls that have links to RealEstateShows.com. Alexa also doesn't even attempt to indicate unique visits, which is the best number to use when looking at traffic, in my opinion. Hits and page views are nice, but unique visitor analysis allows me to really see how reach is growing. We almost never discuss hits or pages or just total visits. Our focus is on uniques. And there is a big difference in the numbers. Last month we had 898,907 visits, but only 562,353 of those were unique.

Jeff, I agree that Alexa is anything but an exact science! My only point in mentioning Alexa was to try to get a snapshot on comparing different websites. for example, it looks like Bloodhound Realty gets more exposure than Rain City Guide.

AUG

2007

Brad... I hear you. There is probably a really good study buried in this discussion. I'd love to get a few people to agree to compare data from actual server logs with alexa rankings and see how far off they really are. Whatever came from it, I think it would be beneficial.

I've just learned from comparing actual visits of sites, that alexa can be completely off base. Back in January, one of the AR guys wrote a post that they had just hit an average of 10, 000 visits in a day, or something like that. I tried to find the post for reference, but can't find it. They then commented on their Alexa ranking. When I read it I thought, "how is that possible? we get almost twice as many visits a day as they do and our ranking was many, many thousands lower than their ranking. Now this probably indicates that they do a much better job of SEO than we do, and they do, but it's not a true measure of actual visits. AR's alexa ranking was much higher than ours a long time before they passed us on the hitwise 100 real estate sites list. And the Hitwise list is based on much more accurate data directly from the ISP's.

For the top websites, I think Alexa may be a very good way to compare, but if a site is getting fewer than 20,000 unique visits a day, their sampling methods can be very misleading. Again, this is my anecdotal experience. I wouldn't bet my house on any of this. :)

Jeff: I would be willing to participate in your study with two sites--and think the information gleaned might be valuable to us all.

AUG

2007

What a great post. I read your post after reading about it in the ActiveRain "the week in review". Great job and congrats on the feature in the week in review.

Brad

As promised, Jeff has gone ahead and given us some great fodder on the value of Alexa Rankings

http://activerain.com/blogsview/172884/The-Problem-With-Alexa

Jim... I tried to paint as fair a picture as possible, with all data being pulled form the same sources.

AUG

2007

Jim,

I'm new to blogging and even though I had heard of "The Real Estate Tomato" this is my first visit to your blog. I'm impressed. You've got all the AR Superstars here with their hair down.

Very interesting.

I'm also glad to see that you are not anonymous. This has been an "issue" for me as several other members hide their identity.

I know nothing about "hits" or "visits" but I do understand "leads." I thought that this was what it was all about.

All the metrics in the world don't make the phone ring.
One "visit" that turns into a lead is worth more than a million "hits."

Thanks for being here and sharing your knowledge.

Bill Roberts

Bill,

I am so glad to have your readership. This topic was and is something that I think needs to be explained and debated. Certainly, leads are where it's at... but without traffic there's none. So how do we know how effective our sites are if we have no universal and objective metric? See you around!

Tomato, good debate. Always a good idea to hash things out with an open mind. Of course, without the hits there can be no leads. And since leads are what we are all about, it's important to know what hits are all about. Thanks for the clarification.

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