This is a guest post by Meg Stivison from Simpson’s Paradox, if you want to know more about Simpson’s Paradox.com and to hear more from Meg, please subscribe to her RSS Feed.

 Everyone wants to increase their traffic, but bloggers often lose sight of the difference between hits and readers. There’s no bad traffic, of course, but some hits are better than others. Casual one-time visitors are just eyes on your blog, while repeat readers bookmark you or add you to their feedreader, and make checking in for your updates part of their internet routine. Obviously, repeat readers are much better than just eyes on your blog, and as a blogger, your work should focus more on getting repeat visitors and turning casual traffic into fans.If you — like me — are an obsessive stats-checker, you may experiment with changing your posting schedule, article length and frequency. You may find that your readers are much more interested on weekdays, that new Friday-afternoon content gets buried, or that letting days slip by without a post decreases your hits. This is all valuable knowledge but understanding publishing isn’t a substitute for good content.
 
A keyword-rich article draws spiders and searchers, but what you ultimately want is not just eyes viewing your page, but fans coming back. Anything else is just a numbers game, a short-term stats increase that will need to be maintained with similar tricks. Dedicated readers don’t need that kind of maintenance… plus, they will do your advertising for you as they spread the word about your amazing blog.