Happy September! I’m so glad that summer is unofficially over. Next up: fall! But first, I have my last blog traffic report of summer 2020. Read up how to get blog traffic in this report, which includes the new-to-me Pinterest things I’ve been doing, how the how-to app Jumprope has improved my blog’s SEO, and more.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Kate the (Almost) Great!
How To Get Blog Traffic: Report
Google Analytics Statistics
Page views: 10,075 (-1.8% from August, -56% from last year)
Bounce Rate: 3.83% (-19.6% from August, -81% from last year)
Sessions: 8913 (-6.8% from August, +18.8% from last year)
Users: 6808 (-2% from August, +6.2% from last year)
Email subscribers: 710 (-0.6% from August, -0.1% from last year)
How I keep my bounce rate so low | How to track blog traffic in Google Analytics
Webhostinghub.com Statistics
Page views: 499,428 (+1.2% from August)
Sessions: 22,189 (-11% from August, -20% from last year)
Users: 11,293 (-0.7% from August, +521.1% from last year)
Social Media
Facebook: 1130 (+0.3% from August, +5.2% from last year)
Twitter: 3691 (-0.4% from August, +0.2% from last year)
Instagram: 3074 (+0.4% from August, +12.1% from last year)
Pinterest: 10257 (+3.1% from August, +16.7% from last year)
Tumblr: 3986 (+0.02% from August, +0.7% from last year)
How I manage social media for my blog | How to get followers on Pinterest
Top Posts
- The Products I Loved (And Wanted) in Grad School
- What Does Endometriosis Feel Like?
- What To Do When Chronic Pain Becomes Too Much
- What Every POTS Patient Needs for the Summer
- POTS and Heat Intolerance
- 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Received My Rheumatoid Arthritis Diagnosis
- What Is the Difference between Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis?
- Beginner’s Guide: Rheumatoid Arthritis Flare Up
- Why Is Rheumatoid Arthritis Hard To Diagnose?
- Loving Someone with Chronic Pain
Top Sources of Traffic
- Pinterest (76.85%) – Pinterest always brings me a lot of traffic, but I think this is increasing because of something I started doing in the second half of the month suggested by Ell of Pinterest with Ell and Boss Girl Bloggers. Which, of course, I will get to shortly.
- Search engines (7.03%) – I think that this might be the highest percentage that this has ever been! I’m truly surprised. I mean, I work on SEO, but it doesn’t normally pay off in terms of actual search engines. But, for the first time ever, one of my posts is showing up in the first 3 search results! Not to mention the number of posts showing up in the 4th-10th search results. I’m really thrilled by this.
- Facebook (3.26%) – I’m in a lot of Facebook groups for bloggers, many of which have daily or weekly threads for links and engagement. I joined a new-to-me one this week, and I think that has impacted my traffic from Facebook.
This does not include direct traffic.
How to use Pinterest for blog traffic | How to use SEO to stand out
How To Get Blog Traffic: Analysis
What I did
- How I promote my blog posts
- Big thing: Utilizing Jumprope
- Jumprope is an app where you can build how-to videos! You might be familiar with them if you follow Augsten Tosone on her blog or Instagram, as she works for Jumprope. I’ve made 4 so far, with several based on blog posts. (I’ll get into Jumprope more down below.)
- I also uploaded some Jumpropes to Pinterest to use as story pins!
- Published eBook for chronic health bloggers
- Updated some older (pre-2020) blog posts
- Joined PubExchange
- Joined Blog Passion Project Facebook group
- Changed blog tag from Boston Lifestyle Blog to Health Lifestyle Blog
- Started adding some extra pins directly to Pinterest on Sunday or Monday nights per notes from Ell of the Boss Girl Bloggers group
- Ell is amazing at Pinterest. (If you haven’t taken her course Pinterest with Ell, you are missing out.) But doing this in addition to lots of other stuff for Pinterest (which I won’t share because I learned it through her course and that’s not fair) seemed like too much. And then I got to the second half of August, and I was really bummed by my low traffic this summer. Low blog traffic in the summer is ALWAYS normal because people are doing things outside and not reading blogs. But just because it’s normal doesn’t mean that I like it! So I was feeling frustrated and decided to do this.
How to get the most out of Tailwind for Pinterest
I haven’t seen results from
- PubExchange – I would like to see this improve, and it might! It has brought me some traffic, but not much.
What I can learn this month
- Jumprope is great for SEO –
- I’ve heard this from Austen, but I wasn’t really sure. I tried Jumprope because TikTok and YouTube REALLY aren’t my things, and Jumprope is so much more my style. And it definitely boosted my SEO results! Like I said above, I genuinely don’t see a lot of traffic come from traditional search engines. But that really changed this month, and for the first time ever (I think) I had a post show up in the top 3 search engine results! How did this happen? There are a couple of things, which I’ll get to next, but one is that if you make a Jumprope that connects with a blog post, you can directly add the link to the post to your Jumprope. This enables you directly send traffic from your Jumprope to. your blog.
- One of the things I like about Jumprope is they make it really easy to save and upload your Jumprope to a variety of other platforms. Like I said above, I’ve uploaded most of my Jumpropes to Pinterest to use as video/story pins. One thing I’ve learned about social media over the years is that most networks like you more when you try their new things. For example, Instagram Reels (which I am not trying at all because, like I said, TikTok isn’t my thing). If you use that, Instagram is going to show you more to people following you. Pinterest is no exception. I uploaded one Jumprope to Pinterest on August 11, and that post is one of my top 5 pins in terms of Impressions.
- Plus, if you embed Jumpropes in your blog posts, you’re going to take up more space in Google results, including as an image in the search results. This can get people to notice your blog post among all the other search results.
- Learn about Jumprope:
- 4 Ways To Add Jumprope to Your Blog
- How Mediavine and AdThrive Bloggers Are Leveraging Jumprope
- Why I Joined Jumprope and Why Creators Will Love It
- Oh, and follow me! I’m katethealmostgreat.
- Want to see what Jumpropes look like? Look to the right. In the right column of my blog, I’ve embedded a Jumprope. You can also add lists of products used in your Jumprope!
- Adding a bunch of pins directly to Pinterest can be helpful in boosting traffic – Ell has been saying this in the Boss Girl Bloggers Facebook group for a while, but I decided to actually try it a few weeks ago.
- I created 8-10 new pins for older blog posts through Canva and scheduled them directly on Pinterest to be published on Sunday or Monday nights. I think directly scheduling them on Pinterest is the real key here, and not just because it’s a chunk of new pins all at the same time, although that definitely helps. I love Tailwind because I’m scheduling 200-300 pins over the course of a week or two and it figures out the best times to post, plus it has Tailwind Communities. But many social media networks like it best if you post directly on their site without 3rd-party scheduling apps, and I think that is being proven by this. I absolutely will continue to use Tailwind and that won’t be changing any time soon – it makes my life so much easier given I’m not a full-time blogger aka I work 33 hours a week at a non-profit. I recognize, though, that Pinterest rewards you for using them.
- So far, I’ve tried posting these on Sunday and Monday nights, although I’ve had the most success with Sunday nights. It’s definitely giving me a small surge of traffic on the nights when I do it!
Why isn’t my blog getting traffic?
August Goals
- 4 blog posts – Success! I published 5 posts in August.
- Grow blog traffic – This kind of didn’t happen, but I didn’t lose much traffic, either. I had a dip in my traffic at the beginning of August, but then it steadily grew over the course of the month.
September Goals
- 5 blog posts
- Grow blog traffic
What are your creative ways to get blog traffic?
Like this post? Check out:
What Blogging Platform Should I Use?, The Dos and Dont’s of How To Get Your Blog Noticed, Why Isn’t My Blog Getting Traffic?, The Process of Writing a Blog Post
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.
Leave a Reply