Starbucks, optical illusions, Danisco, H&M and blog traffic

I am not a fanatic about blogging stats. I write about what interests me and what I have an opinion about. I try to do so in a way which will be both informative and entertaining, and, sometimes, persuasive. I don't feel I am in competition and I don't do anything specifically to improve my blog stats, other than some tweets and retweets. From time to time, I take a look behind the scenes. Blog stats can tell you a lot about what your audience finds interesting. What do people search for, for example, that brings them to this blog? Checking out CSR Reporting Google Analytics, I found that the top ten key search terms of all time (around  two and a half years) on this blog are:

CSR Reporting: Hah! Now isn't that a surprise. This is the second item in a Google search for csr reporting. What's the first ? Wikipedia's Corporate social responsibility page.

Optical illusions: After scrolling through 400 returned search items (out of a possible 11,300,000), I could not find any reference to the CSR Reporting Blog. Funnily enough, though, my most read post of all time was about optical illusions.

Elaine Cohen: Yep, that's me. I suppose this is no surprise either. There are 11,000,000 returned search items with my name in them somewhere, but the CSR Reporting Blog is top of the list. No separating me from my blog, I guess.

Starbucks CSR Report 2010: The fifth returned search item for this search term is actually a post I wrote about Starbucks 2009 Sustainability Report. I did also write a post about Starbucks' 2010 report and some of the challenges they face, and no, I was not sipping a caramel frappucino at the time.

Best CSR Reports: This search terms brings the CSR Reporting Blog up in first place with a post called The Top Ten Reports of 2010. Guess that means I will have to do another post with the top ten of 2011 in a few months :).

Elaine Cohen Blog: The first item returned in this search is this blog, followed by antother four links to me and my writings in different places. However, the sixth item that turns up is Elaine Cohen Chow Champ, my namesake blogger who is a food writer, educator, and an all-purpose healthy food promoter. Healthy food? Hmmm. Hope she likes ice cream.

Danisco: Here again, I can't see exactly how this search term delivers anyone directly to this blog as it does not show up anywhere in the first 15 or so pages of items returned out of a total of over one million. I did write a post about Danisco's 2009 Sustainability report so I guess it's in there somewhere.

Starbucks Sustainability Report 2010: This returns (as the third item) the same post on the Starbucks 2009 Sustainability Report as the previous Starbucks search.

Starbucks Corporate Responsibility Report 2010: Ditto.

H&M CSR: The first item returned with this search is  a post I wrote about the H&M old clothes in New York fiasco which caused a little uproar and almost certainly a revision of warehouse procedures at this global fashion chain (the fiasco, not the post!) .

What have I learned from all of this aside from the fact that many, many people are interested in Starbucks' sustainability performance? I guess I now know that, if I want to increase my blog stats, I must write about Starbucks, optical illusions, Danisco and H&M. Maybe I will try that for a few months. It may get a bit boring but at least the stats will go through the roof :)

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices  Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my business website www.b-yond.biz/en  (BeyondBusiness, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)