When we got the prompt last week about how we use SEO, I wrote my piece, liked a few others, and did my usual commenting on my own post and other people’s posts.
Bots Vs Humans
I also went down the rabbit hole, as I tend to do when I look at something like this. How is it measured? What does it mean? And how do I interact with the information?
As I’ve mentioned, I put some effort into SEO and understanding how it works. I use a few tools, including Rank Math and Google Analytics. I try to add links to previous posts, use logical H1-H3 headings, and include a focus keyword. But I don’t obsess over it. I do the basics, check how everything looks, and move on. What I write is more important. I’m not going to change what I want to say just to squeeze in a few more keywords. When it’s done, it’s done, and I publish.
Here’s where the rabbit hole began.
After that, I decided to review the blog. It was more than a year old, and my numbers were improving, but I wanted to look more closely at its appearance and performance. That led to a slight redesign of my home and About pages, mainly to improve the organization and readability.
I also noticed that my desktop performance was better than my mobile performance, so I made a few adjustments. Along the way, I found some overhead that looked fancy but wasn’t doing much for me. I removed things like the language selector and the Rate My Post plugin. They were adding weight to the site, and I wasn’t really using them.
Those changes improved the mobile experience and performance. Great! One problem solved.
Then something odd happened.
I already knew my views and visits were increasing, and the blog was becoming more visible. That was encouraging. But suddenly, my numbers went through the roof. For a few days, I was seeing more than 400 views, then more than 800. Those were numbers way beyond anything I had been seeing before.
Naturally, I wanted to know what was happening. Had the blog suddenly become wildly popular? Had I finally written something that the world couldn’t stop reading? Had I become the next big thing in blogging?
SEO and Performance
Well, not quite.
I dug into the data using Google Analytics and, with a little help from AI, investigated what was behind the spike. The evidence pointed to suspicious automated activity rather than a sudden stampede of actual readers. We used that information to identify the rogue activity and configure filters intended to keep it from distorting the numbers I rely on to understand how the blog is really performing.
That was useful, but it also left me with a bigger question.
Why should a blogger have to investigate all of this in the first place? Why can’t these automated visits be identified and blocked before they inflate the numbers? I understand that the internet is a complicated place, and not every bot is malicious. Some are legitimate search engine crawlers doing useful work. But surely there should be a better way to distinguish useful activity from junk that makes your statistics look like something they aren’t.
I started this whole exercise trying to understand SEO a little better. Along the way, I improved the site, made it work better on mobile, and learned more about how traffic is measured. I also learned that a big number on a dashboard doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it means.
Tools to help Audit your performance:
Apparently, even my blog statistics need adult supervision.
I’ll keep working on the writing, improving the site, and learning what I can. I just won’t celebrate every traffic spike until I know who, or what, is actually showing up.
After all, I want readers, not a bot convention.
Have you ever had a sudden spike in website traffic and discovered that the numbers weren’t telling the whole story?
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