What I Did To Drive Traffic to My Blog in September

Happy October, everyone! We’re heading into the holiday season – which in my eyes means Halloween to New Year’s – and the temperatures are finally cooling down. But this also means that it’s time for another blog traffic report. One of the many reasons I was looking forward to fall is that the end of summer generally means an increase in blog traffic. With people traveling less and spending weekends outside less, fall means that blog traffic picks back up after the summer, which it decreased. My traffic still isn’t back fully to what it was in April and May, but it has started increasing again. Which I’m sure isn’t just to do with the summer, as I worked hard to drive traffic to my blog in September. Let’s get into it.

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

All my blog traffic reports | How blog traffic reports can get traffic to your blog

Traffic Report

Current Statistics

Unique Pageviews: 10335 (+4.14% from August, +48.85% from last year)

Bounce Rate: 9.45% (-40% from August, +3.8% from last year)

Sessions: 7015 (+25.81% from August, +128.79% from last year)

Users: 3990 (-2.5% from August, +70.22% from last year)

Bloglovin: 1852 (+0.16% from August, +4.87% from last year)

Email Subscribers: 508 (+3.46% from August, +72.79% from last year)

How I keep my bounce rate so low

Social Media

Facebook: 1041 (+0.87% from August, +9.34% from last year)

Twitter: 3341 (+1.06% from August, +10.88% from last year)

Instagram: 2682 (+1.28% from August, +5.88% from last year)

Google+: 248 (-0.4% from August, +6.43% from last year)

Pinterest: 6701 (+3.76% from August, +25.65% from last year)

Tumblr: 3888 (+0.23% from August, +1.99% from last year)

Top Posts

1. What Does Endometriosis Feel Like?
2. Loving Someone with Chronic Pain
3. Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
4. POTS and Heat Intolerance
5. 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Received My Rheumatoid Arthritis Diagnosis
6. How Do Adults Celebrate Their Birthday?
7. Is Chronic Illness a Disability?
8. Hacks for Living with Chronic Conditions
9. A Weekend in Boston
10. 40 Blog Post Ideas

Top Sources of Traffic

• Pinterest (63.16%) – First and foremost, if you’re a blogger and you’re not on Pinterest, you’re missing out. Pinterest is so good for blog traffic because not only do people share other people’s posts, but it’s also a search engine. For example, when I focused on SEO more, my traffic from Pinterest increased dramatically. And as you can now see, it’s the biggest source of traffic for me. This is due to treating Pinterest like a search engine (which you can read more about here) but also due to having large vertical images, being a member of multiple group boards, being a member of multiple Tailwind tribes, using Tailwind in general, and more.
• Google (6.15%) – Believe it or not, this is higher than it was last month. I’m pretty sure this because of the keyword trick I started using in August (which you can read about at that link). I try to incorporate SEO in most, if not all, posts. Hopefully this number will keep increasing and I’ll keep getting traffic from SEO.
• Facebook (2.76%) – This is a tiny percentage down from last month. I do wish this was higher, as I’m a member of multiple Facebook groups for bloggers, but hopefully it will be higher in October.
• Twitter (1.85%) – Another one I wish was higher. Part of the problem (I think) is that tweets have such a short half-life. There are so many posts on Twitter, and they keep coming at all hours of the day, that your tweet can disappear into the air in seconds.

This list does not include direct traffic, as that is not a source.

How I use Pinterest for blog traffic, 9 reasons why Tailwind is worth the money

How I Tried To Drive Traffic to My Blog

What I Did:

• How I promote my blog posts
• Big thing this month: using my email newsletter to get traffic
  • I normally send my newsletter twice a month, but I tried sending it weekly this month. I decided that I would keep my mid-month and monthly newsletters basically the same, but I added some sections. I described my month so far, shared some things I loved (including blog posts, YouTube videos, etc.), shared the blog posts from the month so far, shared what was coming up on the blog, what I was reading, and a free download. These newsletters were sent at the beginning of the month (August recap) and in the middle, both on Sunday evenings. The added newsletters were a lot simpler, which I did both for my stress level and to not overwhelm readers. These featured the posts from the previous week and a preview of what was coming up in the next week. Again, these were sent on Sunday evenings.
  • I looked at how many clicks on blog posts in the newsletter I got in previous months and how many I got in September. The average month before September got 24 blog post clicks, and in September, there were 34 clicks on posts. Clearly, there was an improvement in September, but it wasn’t significant. Additionally, I sent out a survey to my subscribers to ask them whether they want me to stick to weekly newsletters or go back to how it was. I don’t want to spend extra time on the newsletter if people don’t want to read it! So we’ll see if I keep up with the new newsletter.
• Had a post featured in Darrian’s newsletter.
• Scheduled post promotions on LinkedIn
• Labor Day – most people out and about doing things and not on their computers
• Started posting to Instagram earlier in the day during the week
• Giveaway

I Haven’t Seen Results From:

• Post promotions on LinkedIn – I’m not surprised by this, and I’m okay with it. I started scheduling these more to demonstrate my expertise on certain topics. I’ve been doing this blog since 2013 and have nearly 1,000 posts, so I want to make it easier for people to see the ones that might demonstrate my knowledge and skill set.

What I Can Learn This Month:

• Keyword trick update – Remember how last month I started doing posts based on Google autocomplete results? Then, I said that I wouldn’t have a more complete picture on whether or not it works after just one month. I always try to continue doing the Big Things from previous months, and so I kept doing this in September. And it really helped! Nearly 25% of my most popular posts from the previous 2 months were those that I tried this trick with.
• Newsletter can grow traffic – While it might not have grown my traffic much, using a newsletter to get traffic definitely works. Like I said, though, I want to see what my subscribers thought of it before I decide if I keep doing it weekly.
• Instagram posting – Changing my posting schedule during the week really helped traction! I kept with posting around mid-day or afternoon on the weekend, and doing both of these helped my engagement rate and the number of followers.

September Goals:

• 8-10 posts – Success! I posted 10 times.
• 10,000 pageviews – Success!
• Grow social media – Success!

October Goals:

• 8+ posts
• 11,000 pageviews
• Grow social media

What have you done to drive traffic to your blog?

Like this post? Check out:

All blog traffic reports, Tips for New Bloggers, 6 Reasons Why You Should Start Blogging, My Proven Method for Blogging with Limited Time,  How To Use SEO To Stand Out + Free SEO Checklist