Happy May! If you felt the COVID-affecting-blog-traffic blues in March, I hope that this traffic report inspires you. When it comes to getting blog traffic in 2020, the biggest factor so far has been COVID-19. My blog traffic definitely dropped in March, as did a lot of people’s, but it popped back up in April. It didn’t go all the way back up to where it was in February, but it got close. But enough with recapping the past few months! Let’s talk about where I am now.
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Getting Blog Traffic: The Report
Google Analytics Statistics
Page views: 14243 (+13.97% from March, +39.56% from last year)
Bounce Rate: 23.10% (+17.32% from March, -25.1% from last year)
Sessions: 5932 (+3.25% from March, +20.74% from last year)
Users: 5162 (+4.53% from March, +18.5% from last year)
Email subscribers: 709 (-0.2% from March, +5.82% from last year)
How I keep my bounce rate so low
Webhostinghub.com Statistics
Page views: 121,379 (+4.4% from March, +193.37% from last year)
Sessions: 6,500 (+8.91% from March)
Users: 2,497 (+9.51% from March, +193.76% from last year)
Social Media
Facebook: 1100 (+1% from March, +3.67% from last year)
Twitter: 3691 (-0.3% from March, +9.23% from last year)
Instagram: 3004 (+1.48% from March, +15.09% from last year)
Pinterest: 9492 (+0.83% from March, +16.92% from last year)
Tumblr: 3994 (0% from March, +1.88% from last year)
How I manage social media for my blog | How to get followers on Pinterest
Top Posts
- 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Received My Rheumatoid Arthritis Diagnosis
- The Products I Loved (And Wanted) in Grad School
- POTS and Heat Intolerance
- What Does Endometriosis Feel Like?
- Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
- Loving Someone with Chronic Pain
- What Every POTS Syndrome Patient Needs for the Summer
- What Is the Difference between Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis?
- My Biggest Fear Realized
- 31 Historical Fiction Novels To Take You Back in Time
Top Sources of Traffic
- Pinterest (73.10%) – For several years now, Pinterest has brought me the most of my traffic. This percentage isn’t much bigger than March’s, but 71% of 12,497 (8,872) is significantly less than 73% of 14,243 (10,404). So how did this become where the most of my increased blog traffic came from? I kept implementing Ell’s Pinterest course more. While I did a bunch in February when I actually did the course, there’s some stuff that I didn’t do because I thought I didn’t need to. But after my traffic drop in March, I decided to do more, and I’m so glad I did.
- Search engines (8.32%) – I’m not positive, but I think that the reason this percentage also increased is because I’ve continued trying to write longer posts.
- Facebook (3.90%) – As always, I’m glad that my 3rd largest source of traffic is Facebook given how many Facebook groups I’m a member, let alone my Facebook page.
This does not include direct traffic.
How to use Pinterest for blog traffic | How to use SEO to stand out
Getting Blog Traffic: The Analysis
What I did
- How I promote my blog posts
- Big thing: WEGO platform moderating
- Ultimate Bundles sale – I always lose newsletter subscribers after these, but I also make money from them.
- Stopped using Smart Loop in Tailwind
- Left a Tailwind Tribe due to low engagement
- Tried to follow Ell’s Pinterest course more
- Updated the landing page for one of my freebies
- Recovering from the COVID-19 related drop traffic from March
How to get the most out of Tailwind for Pinterest
I haven’t seen results from
- WEGO moderating – This is not a surprise because (confession) that wasn’t the point of doing it. Would it be awesome if it did bring me blog traffic? Absolutely! But the point is to get more involved with the chronic illness/advocacy community and to make some money. Hey, those student loans don’t pay themselves! (Pssst – I’ve started sharing quarterly income blogging/advocacy reports in my newsletter! Sign up here.)
What I can learn this month
- Pinterest with Ell has a LOT of good information – I already knew this, and yet I still didn’t implement everything! As I mentioned above, I went back to it in April and decided to implement the advice that I hadn’t already followed. I’m not going to say what they were because that wouldn’t be fair to Ell, but it’s a very reasonably priced course.
Why isn’t my blog getting traffic?
April Goals
- 5 blog posts – Success!
- Increase blog traffic – Success!
May Goals
- 5 blog posts
- Maintain blog traffic
How have you been getting blog traffic in 2020?
Like this post? Check out:
The Dos and Don’ts of How To Get Your Blog Noticed, 11 Tools To Grow Blog Traffic, Why I Switched to MailerLite from MailChimp for My Email Newsletter, The Best WordPress Plugins: The Plugins I Use and Love
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.
Mine is increasing really slowly but it’s increasing so that’s something xx
That’s great! I hope it keeps up.
Interesting!! Why’d you stop smart loop?!
http://www.mollyonthemoveblog.com
It wasn’t helping at all and I was worried about Pinterest seeing it as too spammy. Plus, I make new pins for old posts all the time.
Most people talk about Pinterest being their main source of traffic and I CAN’T believe I have yet to implement the strategies into my own blog. Thank you for the gentle reminder and for explaining tangible methods of what has been working for you. I really like this series!
You absolutely have to use Pinterest!! A big piece of advice I have is to treat it more like a search engine than a social media network – because it is. Doing that is what really changed the game. Good luck!