We’re officially one month in 🎉
I celebrated my first visitor… it was me!
This first month wasn’t about traffic or reach, it was about getting the foundation right. Seeing what worked, fixing what didn’t, and getting comfortable with the idea of showing up online. This is the phase where we build a baseline, both technically and mentally.
What I Said I’d Track
In the very first post, So why create a personal website in 2025?, I said I’d treat this like a product and be transparent with the data. So here’s the first snapshot of how things are shaping up, one month in:
Metric | Month 1 Baseline | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Visitors | 55 | Organic baseline before promotion |
Sessions | 94 | Avg 4 min 45 sec per session |
Bounce rate | 46 % | Healthy for an early-stage site |
Channels | 89 % Direct · 9 % Referral · 2 % Search | As expected pre-LinkedIn |
Device split | 84 % Desktop · 16 % Mobile | Skews professional |
Top countries | 🇺🇸 US (36) · 🇦🇺 AU (15) | Early reach beyond home base |
Indexed pages | ~3 avg over 28 days | Crawlers ramping up steadily |
Crawl errors | 1 total | Very healthy crawl baseline |
Outbound clicks | 1 (LinkedIn) | Next step: more engagement |
LinkedIn followers | 397 | Slight bump from offline events |
X followers | 1 924 | Flat — and fair enough, I haven’t posted in years |
Small numbers, sure, but meaningful ones.
Session times are strong, bounce rates are reasonable, and search engines are starting to trust the site.
What the Data Tells Me
The biggest learning so far is patience.
It takes time for search engines to crawl and index consistently. The root domain showed up first, but deeper pages lagged behind, it was nearly 3 weeks until a handful of pages were indexed. Changes to the root page title and description took nearly 4 weeks to update in search results.
That delay, though frustrating at first, became a reminder: this project isn’t about chasing instant reach. It’s about building equity in your own space — one crawl, one post, one update at a time.
Technical Learnings
This month had a few technical adventures (and minor facepalms):
- Redirects: Discovered that my early /writing page was still live in Prismic, and it was indexed. It didn’t break anything, but it bothered me. I learned how to set up proper 301 redirects in Next.js — lesson logged.
- Favicons: I built dynamic light/dark favicons via Next.js metadata (SVG-based), which browsers loved… but search engines apparently didn’t. Looks like I’ll need a static /favicon file too.
- Indexing: The homepage title and description took almost four weeks to update after launch — an unexpected delay, but part of the learning curve for a new domain.
- Analytics: I enabled Vercel Speed Insights and Vercel Analytics and started configuring PostHog for deeper engagement tracking. (Still early days there.)
Nothing too glamorous here, but it's built confidence that my setup is workable.
After realising most of the visitors were me, I’ve stopped obsessing over the technical details and started paying attention to the craft again.
This month reminded me why I built this site in the first place — not for reach, but for rhythm. To get back into the habit of making things public, learning in the open, and keeping a record that’s mine.
What's Next
The next month will be about substance.
I’ll be:
- Building out my Resume and Case Studies sections
- Configuring PostHog properly for event tracking
- Experimenting with Medium and Substack to cross-publish a few pieces from this blog
- Refining metadata, schema, and accessibility details behind the scenes
Building this site feels a bit like tending a small digital garden.
Here’s to Month 2 🍻