Without even realizing it, I just discovered that I have been happily doing research and writing articles for my website for over 7 years. On March 28, 2017, I posted my first article. From that moment on, I wrote more than 200 articles. I think it is a good time to see which articles did do well, and which were not that successful. So, read about my most popular articles on RealLinuxuser.com in the last 7 years.
Content
- Introduction
- The most popular articles
- The least popular articles
- Final words
Introduction
As mentioned above, I have been writing articles for RealLinuxUser.com for over 7 years, from fairly basic to quite extensive and in-depth. I also wrote a Linux Mint Tutorial Series based on 35 articles, created a Zorin OS course and wrote and self-published my first book “Linux for the rest of us“. This hobby keeps me quite busy.
My decision to write about a particular topic is never based on what I think will attract most visitors but always based on what I find personally the most interesting to investigate. And from there I just hope a few other Linux enthusiasts will also enjoy and find the article worth reading. I am also very bad at SEO (Search Engine Optimization), so I do not tailor my word usage to popularity and do not use specific popular terms in the hope of attracting more visitors. If you had a look at the SEO dashboard in my WordPress backend system of RealLinuxUser.com, you would see that almost all of my articles have really poor SEO scores 🙂. But I ignore those scores and just prefer to write articles that fully reflect my personality and my tone of voice, rather than consciously adapting my writing style. I hope you can appreciate that.
My starting point has always been to write articles that can withstand the test of time. Except for a few articles, I rarely cover news items, because these type of articles have lost their real value already a day later. I hope you also appreciate my choice to write articles that will continue to provide added value for several years.
After 7 years of writing, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at my statistics and see which articles were the most popular among RealLinuxUser.com readers.
The most popular articles
As mentioned, even though I don’t tend to write in such a way that it attracts more readers, after 7 years I like to see which articles have been read the most. I do not have any information that can be traced back to individual users and that is exactly how I want it from a privacy perspective. I only see how many readers have read the article, or at least opened it. So below is a list of the 50 most popular articles on RealLinuxUser.com, in descending order of popularity.
So these are currently the 50 most popular articles on RealLinuxUser.com. What strikes me most is that out of these 50 articles, 23 are about Linux Mint. Apparently Linux Mint is the topic that is being searched for a lot and that is why many people also end up on my website for these articles. And that is of course not surprising, since Linux Mint is an extremely popular and highly regarded Linux distribution among both beginners and more experienced users. Linux Mint has a lot to offer out of the box and is stable and reliable. Based on the above statistics, I think it is a good decision that I am currently working on my second book specifically about Linux Mint.
What I also see is that 38 out of 50 articles are “How to” type of writings. That is what I expected, as a lot of people try to find explanations of how to solve issues, how to configure their system, how to use applications, etc. These types of articles are what I really enjoy creating, so I am really happy that readers like to read them.
The least popular articles
As a writer, it is, of course, nice to look at the statistics regarding the most popular or most selected articles, to see if I am doing some things right, but it is also good to look at the other figures that say something about my least-read articles. I mentioned earlier that I primarily write for myself, but if an article is not read by anyone at all, this is also important to take into account when deciding what to write and what not to write. What must be taken into account is the fact that some of these “unpopular” articles are very recent and have therefore not enough time to be found and have maybe therefore been opened relatively infrequently. Below are the 10 articles that are rarely read according to my backend system.
What immediately struck me here is that 5 out of 10 articles are news-related. As I indicated earlier, I write relatively few news items. But apparently, these news-like articles are not appreciated, or simply not considered important, useful, or interesting, by the readers of RealLinuxUser as much as the other posts. To me, that indicates even more that my reviews, my how-to’s, and my tutorial series are the type of articles that you Linux enthusiasts appreciate most.
Final words
I thought it was fun and interesting to take a look at the statistics behind RealLinuxUser.com. Even though I do not write primarily to reach the largest possible group, but more because I find the topics interesting myself and hope that some others do too, it is sometimes good to see what readers really appreciate. and what not. I now know that my Linux Mint articles, as part of my Linux Mint Tutorial Series, are highly appreciated. I now also know that I have to continue with my “How to” articles. I also know that I shouldn’t put too much energy into news items. Maybe just the release of a new version of Linux Mint or Zorin OS, but that’s about it. But most of all, I know that I still really enjoy writing about Linux and related topics, as well as reading your personal stories and experiences, and trying to answer your questions. In any case, I’m still far from tired of writing about these topics, so as far as I’m concerned you can expect many more Linux articles in the coming years. 🙂 Thank you for continuing to visit RealLinuxUser.com.
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