I can’t believe how much my blog traffic increased in July. Like, improved by nearly 70%. It’s mostly related to switching to WordPress – I seriously can’t praise its values enough – but I’ll get into that later. For now, join me on my journey to 20,000 monthly pageviews on Google Analytics, and find out how you, too, can increase blog traffic by nearly 70%.
Unique Pageviews – 6,468 (+71% since March, +67.9% since June)
Bounce Rates – 58.28% (-30% since March, -29.5% since June)
Sessions – 3,171 (+12.8% since March, +7.4% since June)
Users – 2,672 (+38.9% since March, +10.7% since June)
Bloglovin – 1466 (+8.9% since March, +0% since June)
Email Subscribers – 45 (started at 0, +32.3% since June)
Social Media
Facebook – 693 (+15.3% since March, +5.3% since June)
Twitter – 1709 (+10.5% since March, +2.6% since June)
Instagram – 573 (+42.9% since March, +7.5% since June)
Google + – 109 (+29.7% since March, +11.2% since June)
Pinterest – 1440 (+57.4% since March, +3.7% since June)
Top Posts
How Do Adults Celebrate Their Birthday?
Erin Condren End-of-Year Review
How To Help Someone Who Has a Chronic Illness
Traffic Analysis
What I Did
- Moved to WordPress
- New theme
- Facebook ad
- Promoted pin
- Started scheduling more social media promotion for posts as soon as I post them
- Added favorite posts from other bloggers to my monthly favorites posts
- Controversial post (about needing narcotics)
What Worked
- Switching to WordPress: I don’t know how much is related to the new theme (see below) or actually being on WordPress. I’ve heard for a while that being on WordPress increases the number of pageviews on Google Analytics, but I don’t know how much of that is blogger lore rather than truth. Also, because I’m on WordPress, I’m using the Yoast SEO plugin, so my SEO use has dramatically improved.
- New theme: This theme makes it so there are previews to all posts on the home page. On one hand, this means that readers can skip through posts they don’t want to read easier. This was my intention because I have 3 pretty distinct audiences: people who read for the health topics, people who read for the writing topics, and people who read for the lifestyle topics. Of course, some of them overlap, but not all. So now I have fewer people getting to the homepage, not seeing a post they like and moving on. On the other hand, because people have to click through to read a full post, I have more pageviews and a lower bounce rate (which is a good thing!). I also now have links to the posts in each category across the top.
I Haven’t Seen Results From
- Scheduling more social media promotion – My hope is that it’s just a matter of time before I see a distinct improvement based on this. Or maybe I need to go ahead and schedule extra social media posts promoting way old posts.
- Facebook ad – I’m trying to experiment with promoting different types of posts and using different audiences. The point is I’m trying to find which types of posts are received the best.
- Adding favorite posts from other bloggers
- Promoted Pin – Like the Facebook ad, I’m experimenting which posts I promote and which audiences I advertise towards. Didn’t have much success this month.
My Thoughts and Plans for the Future
- Next month’s goal: 7,000 monthly pageviews
- By moving to WordPress and changing my theme, I seem to have broken through the barrier of not having many improvements from month to month. My plan for August is to make as many changes as possible to get the blog looking how I want it to (I’m currently 75% of the way through this process) and to get the blog ready for when I start school in September. I’m planning on sticking to 3 posts a week, but I just want to avoid being pulled in lots of different directions. I’m probably going to need to start writing excess posts to have in my back pocket should things get crazy. I also want to see how my blog traffic is when the newness of the theme wears off.
Did this help? Do you have any suggestions of what I should try?
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.
I like hearing what worked for you. I honestly think the SEO and just being on WordPress makes a huge difference. Right after my jump, my page views went down for about a week. I think that was due to the fact that I needed to update broken links, etc. The last two months, I’ve posted less, but seen about ~500 more unique page views because I’m focusing on making sure my SEO works. WordPress is magic.
Yeah, if nothing else, the improvement in SEO is making a huge difference. Prior to being on WordPress, what I thought was good SEO wasn’t making a huge difference. Now that I’m on WordPress, I can see that I wasn’t actually making doing SEO as well as I could have. I’m so happy with how things are going now!
Congrats on increasing your blog traffic! Those are great margins, I definitely want to include more bloggers’ posts in my monthly faves, that’s a great way to make connections! Thanks for sharing what worked for you 😀
XO
Paige
http://eyelinerwingsandprettythings.com
Thank you so much! I’m really interested in seeing how my traffic is going forward and trying new things to improve it.
I love your new theme! So pretty!
Thank you! I still have some changes I want to make to the blog as a whole, but I’m very happy with it right now.
Pinned this! Thanks so much for the tips!
http://www.haynesherway.com
You’re so welcome! I hope this helps!
This is absolutely incredible- congratulations on the boost!! I don’t have Google Analytics installed yet, but I have WordPress and love the platform itself.
Thanks for these tips!
xoxo, Jamie
http://www.thefashionnewcomer.com
Thank you so much! Definitely install Google Analytics – it can be incredibly helpful.
An Increase is such great news! I am so intrigued by income reports and yours is one I would like to see evolve!
I hope I didn’t overread this, but how long have you been blogging? Thanks for sharing via The Blog Life group!
-Caressa
Thank you! I’m hoping that it can help people, and once I reach my goal on Google Analytics, I’m hoping to add the income portion. I’ve been blogging seriously (higher quality posts and putting in more effort) for about a year, and less seriously for 2 years before that.
Congrats on your traffic increase! I definitely think WordPress is the way to go!
Thank you so much! I wasn’t sure before, but now I’m definitely on board.
This is very helpful. I didn’t realize how much of a difference the platform makes!
xoxo
Hannah
http://www.frecklesandolives.blogspot.com
I’m so glad! I never thought much about the platform before now, but I really can’t believe it.
I just moved to wordpress as well. I felt it has been so much easier to manage everything, but I’ll admit that it took me a while to feel that way. I had been using blogger for so long that using any other platform was a huge learning curve!! I love the SEO by Yoast plugin too.
I’m starting to get to that point, but it has definitely taken a while. I was on Blogger for 3 years, so it was hard to get used to WordPress. But now I love it, especially the plugins!
You are my blog inspiration!! I’ve been learning so much from you as I try to get my new blog off the ground! <3
Oh you are too sweet! Thank you so much! I really truly hope that it helps.
I love seeing these posts every month and I, as a new blogger, find them helpful. I can see what works for you now so later in the game I can use some of your strategies to improve my page views. 🙂
I’m so glad that it’s helping! What’s really exciting is that as of right now, I’m halfway to my goal of 20k monthly views on Google Analytics. Once I do reach that goal, I’ll start sharing my income reports, too, as I will then focus mostly on monetization.
Great post. Moving to wordpress was the best decision I made! So many useful plug ins and just overall functionality. Thank you for sharing your tips!
Tiffany @ tiffanyeatworld.com