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in Writing & Blogging &middot July 2, 2019

Can Canva Pinterest Templates Actually Help Your Blog?

Happy July, friends! Before we get into the July blog traffic report (in which I share my experience using Canva Pinterest templates), I wanted to give you all a heads up that this will be the only blog post this week due to the 4th of July. Thank you for understanding my need to take a blog-vacation last week – definitely wasn’t a real vacation because I was at a work conference – and hopefully I’ll be able to do 2 posts next week. That being said, subscribe to my newsletter to get blog updates so you’re in the loop! Now let’s talk blog traffic.

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Kate the (Almost) Great!

All blog traffic reports | How blog traffic reports can bring you blog traffic

Boston lifestyle blogger Kate the (Almost) Great tried using Canva Pinterest templates to see if they would help her blog traffic. Here are the results and her thoughts about it.

June Blog Traffic Report

Statistics

Google Analytics Statistics

Pageviews: 13579 (+16.60% from May, +33.78% from last year)

Bounce Rate: 17.04% (+7.98% from May, +3.9% from last year)

Sessions: 6560 (+19.42% from May, +46.2% from last year)

Users: 5542 (+16.50% from May, +47% from last year)

Bloglovin: 1791 (-0.16% from May, -0.7% from last year)

Email Subscribers: 678 (+1.34% from May, +43.94% from last year)

How I keep my bounce rate so low

Webhostinghub.com Statistics

Pageviews: 74339 (-20.8% from May)

Sessions: 23737 (-16% from May)

Users: 1594 (-28% from May)

Social Media

Facebook: 1066 (+0.28% from May, +3.79% from last year)

Twitter: 3541 (+1.63% from May, +6.97% from last year)

Instagram: 2625 (+1% from May, -2% from last year)

Pinterest: 8427 (+1.67% from May, +36.96% from last year)

Tumblr: 3934 (+0.48% from May, +1.75% from last year)

How I manage social media for my blog | How to get followers on Pinterest

Top Posts

  1. Chronically Ill Tips: What To Do When a Doctor Isn’t Listening
  2. POTS and Heat Intolerance
  3. 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Received My Rheumatoid Arthritis Diagnosis
  4. What Does Endometriosis Feel Like?
  5. Tips for Writing from Famous Writers
  6. Loving Someone with Chronic Pain
  7. 31 Historical Fiction Novels That Will Take You Back in Time
  8. My Biggest Fear Realized
  9. Fun Things To Do in Boston: A 3-Day Guide
  10. Beginners Guide: Seronegative Rheumatoid Arthritis

Top Sources of Traffic

  • Pinterest (70.05%) – While this is a huge number, it isn’t nearly the highest percentage of traffic. For example, in May, 74.10% of my blog traffic came from Pinterest. I work very hard on Pinterest, which obviously pays off. (Psst – this percentage jumped up dramatically when I started treating Pinterest like the search engine that it is. If you’re not doing that, you’re miss out!)
  • Facebook (7.38%) – I participate in a number of Facebook groups for bloggers, so between those and my Facebook page, Facebook is usually one of my top sources of blog traffic.
  • Search engines (5.54%) – I try to use SEO in most of my blog posts, which is why search engine results are generally in the top 4 sources of traffic. You can learn more about SEO here.
  • Twitter (2.08%) – I love Twitter! It’s my favorite social media network. But my one issue with Twitter is how there’s such a short lifespan for tweets. Something I posted an hour ago is wayyyyyy down in people’s timelines already, for example. But while I do promote my tweets on Twitter, it isn’t my primary use of it, so I stick with it.

This does not include direct traffic.

How to use Pinterest for blog traffic | How to use SEO to stand out

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Can Canva Pinterest Templates Actually Help Your Blog? June Blog Traffic Analysis

What I Did

  • How I promote my blog posts
  • Big thing: make Pinterest images with Canva templates
    • I did this for every June post (5 total). I have heard about how great Canva is for making Pinterest images for years, but since I have Photoshop, I generally don’t use it. My strategy was to make my usual 2 images per post in my normal way and then 1 extra with Canva. I uploaded all 3 to Tailwind to schedule post promotions, including adding all 3 to the appropriate Tailwind Tribes.
  • Worked to speed up the site
    • Deleted plugins that I don’t really use/need
    • Added the plugin W3 Total Cache plugin, which I read helps speed up your website.
    • Here are some other ways to speed up your site
  • Actually got properly signed up for The Blog Societies and set up
  • Stopped using Disqus for comments
  • Had a blog post featured in an InfluenceHer Collective weekly email

I Haven’t Seen Results From

  • Joining The Blog Societies – I’m not surprised by this. I didn’t join specifically to increase traffic but for the community.
  • Using Canva templates – So, before I really get into this, I want to clarify that I’m not convinced that Canva templates do not increase traffic from Pinterest. I’m going to give this another month before I make up my mind. Right now, my pins made in my typical, branded way bring much more traffic than Canva ones do. However, I do see how Canva can be extremely helpful, especially for a new blogger who doesn’t want to use Photoshop.

What I Can Learn This Month

  • Many more people wanted to comment on my blog than people who actually were commenting – I haven’t been getting many comments on my blog for a while, and I thought that was just because people didn’t want to comment. Turns out, it’s because they didn’t want to sign up for Disqus. I ditched them and started getting comments on my posts again. Once upon a time, Disqus was THE commenting forum. But blogging has changed a lot in the last few years, and apparently people don’t want to deal with it any more. Lesson learned!

June Goals

  • 5 blog posts – Success! I published 5 posts exactly.
  • Keep page views essentially where they are – Success!

July Goals

  • 6 blog posts
  • Keep page views essentially where they are

What has been your experience with Canva Pinterest templates?

Like this post? Check out:

What Should I Blog About?, 8 Ways To Blog Better, My Proven Method for Blogging with Limited Time, Tips for New Bloggers

Kate Mitchell

Kate Mitchell is a blogger, chronic illness patient, and advocate who helps people understand chronic illness and helps chronic illness patients live their best lives.

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Previous Post: « What Every POTS Syndrome Patient Needs for the Summer
Next Post: 2019 Recent Reads: April-June »

Reader Interactions

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  1. Ways To Promote Blog Posts: 2022 Edition says:
    January 25, 2022 at 7:04 am

    […] Can Canva Pinterest Templates Actually Help Your Blog? […]

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  2. The Process for Writing a Blog Post | Kate the (Almost) Great says:
    January 28, 2024 at 8:44 am

    […] Step 7: Images – The last thing I do for a post is make the images! Sometimes, I use stock images mostly from Unspalsh and Pixabay, but over the last year, I have been using images I took myself. Then, I put white space and text over it. I started doing this so that my text would stand out, but I continued doing it and ended up branding my images this way. Hopefully, people who are familiar with Kate the (Almost) Great see my images on sites like Pinterest and know that they’re by me just by looking at how they’re styled. Scroll back up and look at the images from this post to see what I’m talking about! I’ve also started recently trying Canva Pinterest templates to see how those images – made from templates created by the pros – compare to my traditional images. I’ve only been doing it for a little while, and I’ll give it a few months before deciding if I’ll stick with it or not, but it was the “big thing” I tried in June. […]

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