Now THAT is a traffic spike

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Thanks to my recent article about adding tag support to Wordpress 2.3, I’ve enjoyed a traffic spike that probably resembles reaching the front page of Digg. Unlike the Digg effect, however, this traffic spike was accompanied by around 30 to 35 quality backlinks, enough to improve my Technorati ranking from around 125,000 to around 65,000. Alexa shows my 30-day average rank as #497,667, but my seven day average is around #180,000. That’s a pretty hefty spike for just one article.

Good timing and good content were helpful, but they are not responsible for the traffic. When I decided to write the article on Saturday, it was only because no one else (As far as I could find) had written it yet, and I knew some people would be interested. I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, a few dozen would find and enjoy it. Maybe even a few would link to it. Even tho Wordpress 2.3 isn’t due to be published for another week, I knew I wanted to have the first guide available. Being first is almost always good.

Sunday afternoon, however, I decided to go a step further. After having received only one comment and backlink (Thanks, DCR, for both the link and the award!) I knew the article deserved a more widespread audience. So I took took my own advice and asked for what I really wanted… a link on the Wordpress Planet feed. I sent Matt Mullenweg an e-mail and asked for a link. It was the first time I’d ever e-mailed another blogger just to ask for a link, so I may as well start at the top!

Within an hour, there I was… every Wordpress blogger in the world could log into their dashboard and see a link to article. I have no idea how many Wordpress bloggers see the Wordpress Planet feed every day, but I suspect the feed reaches TechCrunch-level numbers. Cool thing is, as the article started to slide after a few more updates to the feed, Weblog Tools Collection linked back to me and kept the spike alive for a second day.

No, this isn’t about to become a Wordpress-related blog, but the fact is that I am interested in the Wordpress community, it is a big part of one of the businesses I am building online (Emerald Nova, check it out!), and and I’m good at it. I may be publishing some more technical articles in the future. Maybe it was foolish of me to act like an I’m only an Internet Marketing wannabe when what I really am is a know-it-all tech geek who’s been online since 1986 (Ahh, the gold days of Q-Link and the 300bps modem).

A spike like that can be addicting, and now that it’s fading, I want another hit.