The first post of this volleyball coaching blog went up on June 20th of 2013. At that time my idea was really just about providing a platform to help the development of coaching in the South West region of England – the folks in and around where I coach in Exeter. That is still something very much in mind for me, but the blog rather quickly developed a broader appeal. It’s gone quite international despite my not really having done much in the way of overt promotion. A high point so far is having this little blog talked about very positively in the Education & Publication committee meeting at the American Volleyball Coaches Association convention last month. I’ll probably do a post shortly with some ideas for how I might take things moving forward, but for now I thought it would be interesting to have a look back on 2013 in terms of the numbers.
According to Google, over 4600 unique individuals visited Coaching Volleyball a total of about 6900 times as of the end of 2013. They accounted for nearly 14,000 page views. As the map below shows, volleyball coaches from all over the world have been to the blog. The US ranks first, with the UK coming in next best, followed by Canada, Germany, and Australia.
Google is the biggest source of traffic to Coaching Volleyball by a large margin. Given the relative newness of the site, and thus relatively low search rank positioning, this is rather interesting and bodes well for the future. Not surprisingly, Facebook and Twitter both account for a lot of visitors as well. I have been quite intentional about sharing links and such through the social media platforms. The biggest volleyball related site to send traffic here thus far has been Volley Talk.
Aside from the home page, which naturally gets the most page views, here are the top 10 posts in terms of readership in 2013:
- Drill: Run Serve Receive
- Are Your Warm-Ups Wasting Time
- Volleyball Set Diagram
- Volleyball Conditioning – A Sample Program
- Game: Bingo-Bango-Bongo
- Scoring Serving and Passing Effectiveness
- Planning Your Volleyball Strength & Conditioning
- Proposed FIVB Rules Changes Ahead
- About hitter training and the myth of the wrist snap
- Volleyball Coaching Concept: Wave Drills & Games
In terms of demographics, the visitors to Coaching Volleyball have skewed young, as can be seen in the table below. I’d say that tends to make sense given the more grassroots and developing coach level of the material here.
Male visitors top female visitors about 55% to 45%. Unfortunately, I don’t know off-hand how well that reflects the gender split in volleyball coaching at this point. I’ll have to give that a look.
The one last bit of interesting info – at least for me – is that desktop computers are the leading way folks view the blog, account for a bit under 2/3rds of the visits. Mobile phones are a distant second, with tablets bringing up the rear at this stage.
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