October was a month of achievements for Our Hometown

October marked the fifth consecutive month that traffic numbers for our site grew. In fact, our October numbers are 11.1% higher than September, our previous best month. October was a month of achievements and we would like to share some of those with our readers.

PHOTO CREDIT - OurHometown.ca

Cornwall - Nov. 1, 2011 - October marked the fifth consecutive month that traffic numbers for our site grew. In fact, our October numbers are 11.1% higher than September, our previous best month. October was a month of achievements and we would like to share some of those with our readers.

October saw site traffic grow to 36,286 visits and 110,508 page views. These are our highest numbers yet.

On September 19th, Alexa.com ranked us as the number one online news site in Cornwall and area. Today, we have an Alexa ranking of 2,278th in Canada. The lower your Alexa number, the better your ranking is. October was the first month that Alexa ranked us number one for each and every day of the month. The numbers below tell the story.

We also improved on one of our own internal benchmarks by posting a record 251 news stories in the month of October. As a small organization that relies heavily on the assistance of volunteer contributors and columnists, we are very proud to have offered up an average of eight stories each day last month. We currently have 16 columnists who provide regular submissions to OH along with a growing number of readers who submit content under our contributors section.

October 20th was our single busiest day with a total of 3,512 visits.

In just nine short months, the site has established itself as the most comprehensive event database for the region. To date, the site has helped promote 3,010 area events, including 1,312 in Cornwall, 326 in Stormont, 601 in Dundas and 771 in Glengarry. We have featured and/or covered 251 events in the region which you can access in our FEATURED EVENTS archive.

In the month of October, we were pleased to add three new columnists to our team. Rhiannon Kay, is a journalism student at Sheridan College and she is now contributing regular Health & Wellness articles. Our coverage of the Canadian NHL teams continues to grow with Rick Couchman covering the Toronto Maple Leafs and Rob Soria writing about the Edmonton Oilers. We are in the process of finalizing columnists for the Calgary Flames, Vancouver Canucks and Winnipeg Jets so stay connected.

Yesterday, we were pleased to announce that we had entered into a partnership with Terry Tinkess’ Journalism Program at St. Lawrence College. In the coming weeks we will be introducing to you some of the students from the program.

It was a very busy but successful month. A heartfelt THANK YOU goes out to the thousands of you who have made our site one of your regular online destinations.