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in Writing & Blogging · June 4, 2018

How To Drive Traffic to Your Website: May Blog Traffic Report

How is it June already? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to be 5/12 done with the year, but I’m also surprised. Especially because my birthday is tomorrow! Time flies when you’re recovering from moderately-major joint surgery, apparently.

Anyway. New month, new blog traffic report! My blog traffic did decrease this month, but I’m not surprised because I had several high-traffic days at the end of April and beginning of May before it decreased a bit for the rest of the month. Hoping that I can bring it back up in June!

All blog traffic reports

Are you trying to figure out how to drive traffic to your website? I tried several tools in May, and in this blog traffic report, I'm explaining whether they helped my blog traffic or not.

Traffic Report

Current Statistics

Unique Pageviews: 14340 (-19% from April, +181.8% from last year)

Bounce Rate: 14.06% (+12.8% from April, -75% from last year)

Sessions: 6196 (-23% from April, +108.7% from last year)

Users: 5380 (-23% from April, +111.2% from last year)

Bloglovin: 1831 (+0.5% from April, +5.2% from last year)

Email Subscribers: 450 (+3.9% from April, +72.4% from last year)

How I keep my bounce rate so low

Social Media

Facebook: 1016 (+0.7% from April, +8.5% from last year)

Twitter: 3280 (+0.5% from April, +13% from last year)

Instagram: 2666 (+0.8% from April, +22.5% from last year)

Google+: 246 (0% from April, +15.5% from last year)

Pinterest: 6050 (+1.6% from April, +24.2% from last year)

Tumblr: 3867 (+0.1% from April, +2.7% from last year)

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Top Posts

  1. 5 Items Every Immunosuppressed Person Needs
  2. Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
  3. Loving Someone with Chronic Pain
  4. Hacks for Living with Chronic Conditions
  5. The 8 Things a Millennial with Arthritis Wants You To Know
  6. A Guide to Chronic Illness for Those Who Don’t Have One
  7. How To Pack for a Summer Trip
  8. Best Gifts for Graduates
  9. What To Do in Boston This Summer
  10. New England Trips This Spring and Summer

Top Sources of Traffic

  • Pinterest (69.57%) – I have been blown away by how much traffic I’ve been getting from Pinterest. Ever since I started focusing on SEO and repinning old posts, I’ve been getting more and more traffic. As you can see from this, I’m now at a point where close to 75% of my traffic is from Pinterest, while Pinterest brought 12% of my traffic in December. Which is just amazing. | How To Use Pinterest for Blog Traffic
  • Google (7.51%) – Like I said, I’ve been focusing on SEO, but clearly not enough or else the percentage here would be higher. I’ve been trying to do better at it, so hopefully that will make a difference in June.
  • Facebook (3.82%) – This has been steadily decreasing all year, which is more confusing than anything. I’m not sure if this something happening across the board, or if it’s just for me.
  • Twitter (1.35%) – This has also been steadily decreasing, and I’m rather surprised by it. I share posts on my Twitter at least 10 times a day, and those often get shared. I guess people just aren’t clicking on them.

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

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Traffic Analysis

What I Did

  • How I promote my blog posts
  • Big thing this month: social media ads – I did several ads on multiple social media sites this month, including Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Back in 2014-2015, I did this multiple times a month, but I stopped some time in 2015.
  • Updated the mailing list freebie for the bar at the top of the blog and the pop-up – I realized that I hadn’t changed it since I first installed them. Oh, and if you’re wondering why you don’t see it while you’re reading this post, I have the settings set so they don’t show up for a month or so once you’ve seen it. I want people to see them to help grow my mailing list, but I get so annoyed by these bars and pop-ups on other blogs that I don’t want you guys to feel the same way when you come here.
  • Started taking better pictures for Instagram (ie with my real camera) – I’m trying not to care about the numbers, but I do like having a pretty feed and I want to have an engaged following – I don’t want lots of Instagram followers who never engage with what I post – so the solution is nicer pictures. And the iPhone is great, but my Nikon is better. It’s not a DSLR, but it’s basically a step below.
  • Started loading the description of half of my Pinterest images with appropriate terms for that image and not just sentences about the blog post – Now that Pinterest doesn’t show the description of pins unless you click on them, I’m loosening up my own personal rules for Pinterest. I don’t like seeing a description that reads “books, books to read, to be read, tbr, book recommendations,” etc., but if people aren’t seeing them anyway, then it doesn’t matter. And I’m pretty sure this is helping get more blog traffic! I usually have two or more images per post, and I’ll write a proper description for one (“Looking for books to read? Check out my book recommendations for the summer”) and list appropriate terms in the other.
  • GDPR – If you’re on the Internet at all (and clearly you are if you’re reading this post) you’ve heard about GDPR. The short version is that it’s a new law that went into effect in Europe, but it affected anyone on the Internet who has European readers/followers. To be on the safe side, I made precautions. I emailed my mailing list and suggested people unsubscribe if they couldn’t remember how they were added to my mailing list (they were added if they downloaded any of my freebies connected to my mailing list) and I updated my privacy policy to be extra clear and transparent. I also made sure every freebie connected to my mailing list includes language that makes it clear that if you get that freebie, you are signing up for my mailing list.
  • Changed the freebie in my about page – Again, this was something I hadn’t changed in a while.
  • Scheduled LinkedIn promos through the end of June – I’ve never used LinkedIn for the blog, but I’ve seen some people do it, so I’m giving it a shot. I’m not sharing every post, just the ones

I Haven’t Seen Results From

  • Ads on social media – This surprised me. Like I said, I used to do this regularly, and it always brought me more traffic. There are a couple of reasons why these may not help any more: the algorithms have changed, people don’t click through ads as often as they used to, I chose bad posts to advertise, you need to buy a lot of ads for them to make a big difference, the list goes on. For me personally, I got more clicks on Pinterest through pins that were pinned to multiple group boards than pins that were advertised. And for Facebook, I got more clicks through on posts in Facebook groups for bloggers and my Facebook page than I did through posts that were advertised. This might be a personal thing, it might be because I’m not doing it correctly, I don’t know.

What I Can Learn This Month

  • Ads on social media may not impact your blog
  • Loading Pinterest descriptions with search terms can really help

May Goals

  • 9-12 posts – Success! I published 12 posts this month.
  • 14,000 pageviews – Success! I purposefully kept this number fairly lower than my April blog traffic because I (correctly) assumed that my high blog traffic in April was due to a couple high-traffic days. I figured that I would lose some traffic in May, but I hoped it wouldn’t be super significant.
  • 4,000 users – Success! I did the same thing with my users.

June Goals

  • 8-11 posts – So, here’s something you can expect: once I start my new job on June 14, we’ll be going to 2 blog posts a week instead of the usual 3. I need to focus on the job and I want to enjoy blogging without feeling tons of pressure to crank out tons of posts. My hope is that by August, once I and my body have adjusted, we’ll be back to 3 posts a week at least 2/4 weeks a month.
  • 15,000 pageviews – I want the blog to keep growing! We’ll see.
  • 4,500 users

What tips do you have for how to drive traffic to your website?

Like this post? Share is and check out:

All blog post ideas, How To Use SEO To Stand Out + Free SEO Checklist, 12 Blog Traffic Boosting Tools To Try in 2018, 10 Things Every Blog Needs, How To Use Pinterest for Blog Traffic

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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Having decades-long health problems sometimes mean Having decades-long health problems sometimes means coming across something in your health history that you completely forgot about⁣
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⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ID: Screenshot of a thread post written by Kate Mitchell | Kate the (Almost) Great with the username katethealmostgreat. ⁣⁣The background is dark teal. All text is what’s above the first black square.⁣⁣⁣
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Here are some ways I practice self care, aka talki Here are some ways I practice self care, aka talking care of myself AND who I am as a person separate from illness⁣
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This is my Wonderful Things jar. Every day, I write down something wonderful or good that happened that day. ⁣
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I know it looks like I'm forcing Harley to sit like this, but he was making this face before I put my arm around him. Dog snuggle time is the best!⁣
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I got a Kindle this year and it has been amazing. It's so much easier on my body than lugging around books and it makes borrowing from the library a lot easier.⁣
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Yes, I share this all the time, but filling my pill boxes every 3 weeks make it so I stick with all of my medications. But the self-care part of this is that I don't have to take the time to refill a box every single week.⁣
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I’m Kate, a chronic illness patient and advocate sharing what my life is like with 7+ chronic illnesses. Follow me for more and check out my blog at katethealmostgreat.com⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
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3️⃣ A Kindle on dark mode in Kate's lap⁣
4️⃣ 3 open pill cases on a yellow bedspread ⁣
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#AlmostGreatHealth #AlmostGreatLife #SelfCare #ChronicallyIll #ChronicallyAwesome #SpoonieLife #Spoonie #ChronicLife #ButYouDontLookSick #InvisibleIllness #MentalHealthMatters #RetrieversOfInstagram #Readers #Kindle #WonderfulThings #GratitudePractice
What I Bring To the Doctor _______ Video: a pa What I Bring To the Doctor 

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Video: a pan of an exam room. White text reads “What I Bring To the Doctor ” and the “1. Planner/notebook
2. List of current medications 
3. Notes on my biggest concerns and questions 
4. My kindle for wait time” 
The intro to Maroon 5’s Priceless plays. 

#AlmostGreatHealth #ChronicIllness #ChronicPain #RheumatoidArthritis #SjogrensSyndrome #Fibromyalgia #Endometriosis
💃🏼 Week 17 of #2025Weekly 💃🏼⁣
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1️⃣ She’s married!! ⁣
2️⃣ She married the best person in the world for her!!!!!⁣
3️⃣ I got dressed up! ⁣
4️⃣ The reality of doing fun things with chronic illness and pain is that then you have to recover from the fun things. It took … a while. One million percent worth it, but this is why I don’t do big events on a regular basis. ⁣
5️⃣ And then I had to be a person again for an appointment!⁣
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I’m Kate, a chronic illness patient and advocate sharing what my life is like with 7+ chronic illnesses. Follow me for more and check out my blog at katethealmostgreat.com⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
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2️⃣ Kate and Emmie stand next to Matt, Emmie's husband. He is a white man.⁣
3️⃣ Kate takes a mirror selfie. she's in the same red dress but now also wears a jean jacket and holds a cane and mask.⁣
4️⃣ Kate takes a selfie while giving a thumbs up. She looks tired. She's now wearing a pink flowery dress. ⁣
5️⃣ Kate takes a mirror selfie. She's wearing black shorts, a gray shirt, a jean jacket, a blue mask, and black aviator sunglasses. She has a bag over her shoulder and holds a cane.⁣
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On the one hand, you should always believe what pe On the one hand, you should always believe what people tell you about their bodies.⁣
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On the other hand, I’ve had so much ridiculous and unconnected health things happen that I do understand why people might not believe me.⁣
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Last week, I talked about how it surprised me how Last week, I talked about how it surprised me how systemic autoimmune arthritis can be. But something else that surprised me was how much pain can be caused by small things.⁣
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In this picture, I was getting ready to have an MRI on my knee. It has been bothering me a fair amount the last 6+ months, so I'm trying to do something about that. ⁣
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Unsurprisingly, some of the tissue is damaged, but it's not bad. What's probably causing it to bother me so much is a teeny tiny cyst. ⁣
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Baker's cysts are a type of cyst in the knee that are generally caused by arthritis. But having a cyst in my knee means that it's causing pressure on that damaged tissue. ⁣
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The body is a weird thing, and one of these weird things is developing tiny cysts that cause a lot of pain. ⁣
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I’m Kate, a chronic illness patient and advocate sharing what my life is like with 7+ chronic illnesses. Follow me for more and check out my blog at katethealmostgreat.com⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
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ID: Kate takes a mirror selfie. She's a brunette white woman wearing a hospital gown, scrub bottoms, black mask, round tortoiseshell glasses, and round tortoiseshell glasses. ⁣
🌸 Week 16 of #2025Weekly 🌸 ⁣ ⁣ 1️⃣ S 🌸 Week 16 of #2025Weekly 🌸 ⁣
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1️⃣ Spring has sprung … ⁣
2️⃣ … Which means I am overheating! ⁣
3️⃣ A quick view of NYC on my travels ⁣
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I’m Kate, a chronic illness patient and advocate sharing what my life is like with 7+ chronic illnesses. Follow me for more and check out my blog at katethealmostgreat.com⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
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1️⃣ A flowering tree on a street ⁣
2️⃣ Kate takes a mirror selfie. She's a brunette white woman wearing a blue t-shirt saying "The Future Is Accessible," a black mask, a green hat reading "Facilities Management), black shorts, a black knee sleeve, and a black knee brace. She holds a pink cane.⁣
3️⃣ A picture of the New York City skyline behind a bridge.⁣
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If I met my newly diagnosed self for coffee ... ⁣
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I tell her how things would get worse before they got better. ⁣
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I'd tell her to stop eating gluten, dairy, corn, soy, and eggs immediately (although that would have been a lot harder in 2010, more than it even is now). ⁣
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I'd tell her that she still needs to keep advocating for herself. ⁣
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I'd tell her that having a diagnosis unfortunately doesn't mean everything automatically falls into place. ⁣
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I'd tell her that she'll develop many more illnesses but her quality of life will actually get significantly better. ⁣
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I'd tell her that she would eventually have to get her right foot fixed, although she does expect that.⁣
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I'd tell her that using a cane is not a sign of failure, but a tool to make life better.⁣
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(I did a sort of tongue-in-cheek post about this a while ago and thought I'd post a more serious one).⁣
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ID: Kate poses for the camera holding a mug with the letter M on it. Kate is a brunette white woman wearing a blue sweater and round tortoiseshell glasses. A white text box reads "If I met my newly diagnosed self for coffee ...". ⁣
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The thing that surprised me the most about autoimm The thing that surprised me the most about autoimmune arthritis is how systemic it is. ⁣
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Like with most things, it's one thing to know the fact and it's something else to experience it. ⁣
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Yes, my joints are affected (a lot). ⁣
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But I've had enough serious infections thats I have to see an immunologist because we need to be aware of my antibodies and I sometimes need help recovering from illnesses. ⁣
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And, yes, I see pulmonology because of my asthma, but we also have to keep an eye out on developing rheumatoid nodules in my lungs. (So far so good!)⁣
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Not to mention that, when I developed POTS, the hospital admitted me to run every heart test to make sure that, at 26, I wasn't experiencing heart failure. ⁣
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Plus, when I developed endometriosis, I also went through a number of GI tests because one theory was that I had ulcerative colitis. ⁣
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Anyway, RA is so much more than "just" joints. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have to kill my immune system every 3 months like I am in this picture.⁣
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I’m Kate, a chronic illness patient and advocate sharing what my life is like with 7+ chronic illnesses. Follow me for more and check out my blog at katethealmostgreat.com⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
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ID: Kate takes a selfie in an infusion chair. She is a brunette white woman wearing a Boston Red Sox shirt, blue mask, and round tortoiseshell glasses.⁣⁣
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#AlmostGreatHealth #RheumatoidArthritis #RheumatoidDisease #Rheum #Autoimmune #AutoimmuneDisease #InvisibleIllness #ButYouDontLookSick #Sjogrens #SjogrensSyndrome #POTS #PosturalOrthostaticTachycardiaSyndrome #Dysautonomia
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