December Blog Traffic Report

Another month, another traffic report. This month was interesting because I actually started using a special tool in November and then only used it for a few weeks in December (I’ll explain what I’m talking about down below). My traffic decreased in December, but I’m pretty sure that’s because my tool worked too well at the end of November, increasing that month’s traffic which then made December look worse. Anyway, per usual, I’ll share the stats of my site traffic and then what I did that influenced the traffic in December.

All blog traffic reports

Site Traffic Report

Current Statistics

Unique Pageviews: 8113 (-4.2% from November, -22% from last year)

Bounce Rate: 12.83% (+4.9% from November, -58% from last year)

Sessions: 3680 (-11% from November, -33% from last year)

Users: 2930 (-6% from November, -38% from last year)

Bloglovin: 1774 (+0.2% from November, +3.8% from last year)

Email Subscribers: 331 (+1.2% from November, +40% from last year)

How I keep my bounce rate so low

Social Media

Facebook: 979 (+0.3% from November, +8% from last year)

Twitter: 3110 (+0.03% from November, +15% from last year)

Instagram: 2663 (-1.2% from November, +53.8% from last year)

Google+: 240 (+0.8% from November, +20.6% from last year)

Pinterest: 5587 (+1.2% from November, +39% from last year)

Tumblr: 3839 (+0.01% from November, +4.7% from last year)

Top Posts

1. Questions Not To Ask Someone with a Chronic Illness
2. Chronic Illness Hacks for the Holidays
3. A Weekend in Boston
4. Loving Someone with Chronic Pain
5. How Do Adults Celebrate Their Birthday?
6. Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
7. Gift Guide: Chronic Illness Gifts
8. Gift Guide: Books & Bookish Gifts
9. Using the Erin Condren Life Planner
10. 40 Blog Post Ideas

Top Sources of Traffic

• Pinterest (12.43%) – If you read my post about 12 blog traffic boosting tools I tried in 2017, you’ll remember that I spent a month last year really working on optimizing my images for Pinterest, and I continued doing this after that month was over. It really does make a difference, as my traffic shows. You can read about what I do here.
• Facebook (6.28%) – This is not surprising because I’m in so many Facebook groups for bloggers and I share my posts there. I’m sure some of these referrals come from those groups.
• Google (6.09%) – I generally do 1 post a week that is optimized for SEO, so that explains this. (PS – That’s the “Big Thing” I’m doing in January, so stay tuned to see if this percentage goes up this month!)
• Twitter (3%) – Twitter is my favorite social media network, so I love this! I share my posts 10-13 times a day because of how short the life is for a tweet, so I’m glad that this is helping bring traffic.

Note: In this list of sources, I don’t include direct traffic because that isn’t a source. However, if you’re someone who checks out blog posts because of my posts on Snapchat or Instagram, please let me know because that’s a bit of an exception (coming directly to my blog posts but because you saw a link in Instagram or Snapchat).

Traffic Analysis

What I Did

• How I promote my posts
• Gift guides – This was the Big Thing for December, but I actually started this in November. As you can see from my list of most popular posts, 2 of them are gift guides. Additionally, in my November blog traffic report, 1 of my most popular posts was a gift guide. The day that particular guide gift was posted and the two days after were the days with the highest number of page views from the entire month of November. These show that gift guides are a great way to bring traffic. But something that I’ve mentioned several times when talking about gift guides is that it’s important that you do unique ones. Tons of bloggers do gift guides, and while you’re probably not going to include the exact same gifts as everyone else, readers are less likely to click over to your site if they’ve already read 4 posts about what to get someone for the holiday.
• Sale post – Going off of gift guides, I also discovered just how beneficial blog posts for sales can be. My most popular gift guide this season was one for Cyber Monday gifts, aka gifts bought in the Cyber Monday sales. I understand now why so many bloggers do posts about what to get during sales! But I think also, similar to what I said above, you don’t want to be one of hundreds of bloggers doing a blog post about the same sale. I think everyone who reads blogs groans internally or out loud when they see 10 posts on the same day about the same sale. I kind of got around that this year because I published my Cyber Monday sale post on the Friday before, so my post was one of a couple on that day about this sale. The problem with these posts, though, is that they’re not evergreen – aka they have a short relevancy period.
• 1 round-up blog post (A Guide To Chronic Illness for Those Who Don’t Have One). This is a post with links to my other posts, aka one post that can lead to lots of other views.
• Fewer posts than usual because of finals and Christmas
• Updated the freebie in my Twitter profile

I Haven’t Seen Results From

• Updating the freebie – This is not surprising because I updated it on the 29th.

What I Can Learn

• Gift guides and sale posts can bring a lot of traffic, but they need to be different than every other blogger out there to make it work.

December Goals

• Maintain page views – Maybe? They decreased a little, but 4.2% is not a huge change.
• Maintain bounce rate lower than 20% – Success!
• 9-11 posts – Success, but barely; there were 9 posts this month

January Goals

• 9-12 posts
• 9,000 pageviews
• 4,000 sessions
• 3,000 users

Have gift guides given you larger-than-usual traffic?

Like this post? Check out:

All blog traffic reports, 12 Blog Traffic Boosting Tools To Try in 2018, Why Social Media Matters for Bloggers (And How To Grow Yours!), 10 Things Every Blog Needs, Why an Editorial Calendar Is Really Worth the Time + 164 Blog Post Ideas