I worked really hard on my blog traffic in January, and I’m really happy with the results. I don’t know if this is because January was the first month since August that I didn’t have schoolwork or what, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that contributed to it.
If you’re looking for how to drive traffic to your blog, scroll down to check out what I did this month that really helped grow my blog traffic.
Blog Traffic Report
Current Statistics
Pageviews: 11258 (+38.7% from December, +57.9% from last year)
Bounce Rate: 14.41% (+12.3% from December, +40.8% from last year)
Sessions: 5550 (+50.8% from December, -22% from last year)
Users: 4494 (+53.4% from December, +33.3% from last year)
Bloglovin: 1796 (+1.2% from December, +4.3% from last year)
Email Subscribers: 352 (+6.3% from December, +41.9% from last year)
How I keep my bounce rate so low
Social Media
Facebook: 984 (+0.5% from December, +7.6% from last year)
Twitter: 3147 (+1.2% from December, +15.6% from last year)
Instagram: 2640 (-0.9% from December, +52.4% from last year)
Google+: 246 (+0.3% from December, +21.2% from last year)
Pinterest: 5667 (+1.4% from December, +34.6% from last year)
Tumblr: 3847 (+0.2% from December, +4.6% from last year)
Top Posts
- The Best Fair Skin Makeup
- Loving Someone with Chronic Pain
- How Do Adults Celebrate Their Birthday?
- A Weekend in Boston
- 12 Blog Traffic Boosting Tools To Try in 2018
- Dating with a Chronic Illness
- 5 Items Every Immunosuppressed Person Needs
- Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
- 40 Blog Post Ideas
- Tips for Writing from Famous Writers
Top Sources of Traffic
- Pinterest (53.42%) – OH MY GOODNESS! In December, Pinterest brought a little over 12% of my traffic and now it’s up to over 53%. When looking at my analytics, most of the pins that brought my traffic were for my post about the best fair skin makeup. Because of this, I have a couple of theories for why my Pinterest traffic grew so much. 1) I have more pictures than usual in that post, leading to more options for pinning. 2) I focused on search engine optimization in January, and Pinterest is a search engine. Learn more about what I do to get the most out of my Pinterest account here.
- Twitter (7.54%) – Not only do I share posts on Twitter at least 10 times a day, but my posts also got shared by some brands (more to come on that), that explains this.
- Facebook (5.72%) – This is probably because I am a member of multiple Facebook groups and I share my posts in those groups.
- Google (5.49%) – Like I said, I focused on search engine optimization in January. Obviously it didn’t necessarily all translate into Google driving traffic, but it did help some.
This does not include direct traffic because that’s not a source.
Blog Traffic Analysis
What I Did
- How I promote my blog posts
- Focused on SEO – I’ve included SEO in my blog strategy for a little while now, but in January I decided that I would double down on it. I had gotten rather lax with using SEO, so I figured a month focusing on it would help me get back into the rhythm. I found this post on it to refresh SEO tools for myself. In the 12 blog posts from January, I used SEO in 8 of them. Out of the ones that I didn’t use SEO, 1 was a sponsored post (used nofollow links), 1 was the Currently post (no real good idea for SEO in an all-over-the-place post like that), and I just decided not to use SEO in the other 2. As a part of my SEO strategy, I use the SEO term in the URL of the post and in the file names of my images. This helps them stand out in searches in general, but especially so on Pinterest, as Pinterest is really a search engine.
- Mentioned by brands on social media (TheraPearl and Tailwind) – I mentioned both of these in some posts, and they then shared that post on their various forms of social media. Now, I mention anywhere from 5 to 50 brands in a week, and they almost never get shared by the brands themselves, so don’t count on this strategy. I consider it a special bonus.
- Shared all-time most popular posts on days when I didn’t have a new post – I always share old posts on days when I don’t have a new one, but for a week or so, I specifically shared my most popular posts. I was concerned that my traffic would decrease in January after the holidays because I had so many gift guides and holiday-based posts in December. If you’re concerned for similar reasons or just want to see if it helps, I suggest doing this. My traffic was definitely higher on days when I promoted popular posts than when I just shared other posts.
- Posted a freebie with a mailing list opt-in
- Scheduled 2 months of post promotions on Tumblr – I’ve usually this every couple of months for several years, but I accidentally stopped for a little while, which is why I mention it.
- On Instagram, I changed my strategy a bit. I started sharing more images because I liked them and fewer because I thought those were what my followers wanted. If people are just following me for pretty pictures and not who I am, then then should not follow me. I’m still trying to post pretty pictures because I like pretty pictures, but I’m trying to post more things that show my life.
- Joined Helene’s Instagram workshop
- Featured in the InfluenceHer January email
I Haven’t Seen Results From
- The freebie in January – This surprised me. I gave away a checklist to see if your social media is optimized to help you, a blogger. I was surprised that this wasn’t as successful as I hoped it would be.
- Instagram strategy change – On the other hand, this did not surprise me. I believe that because I’m changing things, I lost followers who don’t like what I’m posting now. And that’s okay! I would rather lose people now and gain people later who are the people I would rather have following me.
- Helene’s Instagram workshop – This is just because I haven’t done much of the things she mentioned here because of everything happening in my life recently.
What I Can Learn
- SEO helps on Pinterest, too
January Goals
- 9-12 posts – Success!
- 9,000 pageviews – SUCCESS! (I’m most pleased about this. Can you tell?)
- 4,000 sessions – Success!
- 3,000 users – Success!
February Goals
- 9-12 posts
- 9,000 pageviews
- 5,000 sessions
- 4,000 users
Because I had one post expectedly explode in January, I don’t know how that will transfer into February. Will my traffic die down because that post won’t be new any more? Or will I have a new post that takes off like I did in January? I’m not sure, which is why I’m setting these goals.
What tool has helped drive traffic to your blog?
Like this post? Check out:
All blog traffic reports, How To Optimize Your Social Media Platforms as a Blogger + Free Checklist, 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
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.
Pinterest definitely increases my traffic when I least expect it to! I still have people visiting my site from older blog posts because of Pinterest. I’m trying to become more consistent on Pinterest for that reason to see if it will help me increases even more traffic to my blog! Great Post!
For me, my traffic comes from a various amount of places. Pinterest is one of them, but not my main source. Facebook… StumbleUpon… Instagram and YouTube – and then of course, other people’s blogs and blogs where they linked to specific posts of mine, but my main source is definitely Facebook OHH and trusty google !
This was so helpful- thanks Kate!