Can the time of publishing articles affect Web traffic? Well, this is a question I have been asked a few times by fellow bloggers who are looking for ways of maximising visitors to their blog or managing their sites more efficiently. Perhaps, one of the best way of answering this question is by taking a look at your traffic stats and monitoring the results for a few days, weeks or months depending on your preference. While there are so many statistic tools out there that can perform this function, I tend to stick with AWStats particularly for this purpose. The image below is a random Website’s screenshot of an AWStats hourly traffic results display, in a one month period.
When observing these stat results, it is usually advisable to be patient and wait for a few months before reaching a conclusion. By making simple comparisons between results obtained from different months, you are likely to notice a trend in the amount of hits to your Website at certain periods of the day. This will make it easier to find the peak period or best time to publish articles on your site in order to take advantage of the perceived rush in traffic.
Challenges
Like everything else, you may face some challenges from for example, differences in time zones. This can be compensated for by writing articles or developing content in advance and using a scheduler to publish them. While knowing the right time to post content is not the only way to increase traffic to a site, it can certainly assist in providing better management and improved performance.
Talking Point
Can you suggest other ways to make a Website more effective and improve its performance?