Hi friends! Apologies for the unintentional blog hiatus. I dealt with a Nor’Easter (which causes significant joint pain) as well as a virus of some kind and I was basically in bed from Saturday to Monday, and it took several days for my body to catch up from that. I decided to give my body time to rest, which meant not pushing myself to publish blog posts.
That being said, I’m should be back to normal this week, which means you get a post today and on Friday! Today we’re talking how to increase blog page views. There are more than a couple of things that I did in October that made me grow my blog traffic despite not posting for a while at the beginning and the end of the month due to viruses. The fact that my traffic grew even though I dealt with that says a lot about their power.
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All blog traffic reports | How blog traffic reports can bring traffic to your blog
Traffic Report
Current Statistics
Unique Pageviews: 11382 (+10.1% from September, +53.3% from last year)
Bounce Rate: 14.35% (+51% from September, +36.2% from last year)
Sessions: 5310 (-24.3% from September, +45.9% from last year)
Users: 4526 (+13.4% from September, +71.9% from last year)
Bloglovin: 1855 (+0.1% from September, +4.9% from last year)
Email Subscribers: 539 (+6.1% from September, +75.6% from last year)
How I keep my bounce rate so low
Social Media
Facebook: 1042 (+0.09% from September, +7.5% from last year)
Twitter: 3358 (+0.5% from September, +8.6% from last year)
Instagram: 2647 (-2% from September, +3.5% from last year)
Pinterest: 6930 (+3.4% from September, +27% from last year)
Tumblr: 3903 (+0.4% from September, +2.1% from last year)
For the first time since I started doing these, I’ve not included Google+ here. That’s because Google has decided to shut it down for consumers after a security breech (x).
Top Posts
- What Is the Difference between Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis?
- Loving Someone with Chronic Pain
- Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
- POTS and Heat Intolerance
- 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Received My Rheumatoid Arthritis Diagnosis
- Most Popular Books Published in 2018 (So Far)
- How Do Adults Celebrate Their Birthday?
- Chronic Illness and Mental Health
- 2018 Recent Reads: July-September
- How To Become an Advocate for Patients
Top Sources of Traffic
- Pinterest (67.51%): I put a lot of time and effort into Pinterest, so I’m glad to see that it’s paying off! I use Tailwind to schedule my posts, and I also participate in Tailwind Tribes, which are kinda like Pinterest group boards but within Tailwind only. Get a free trial of Tailwind here. Additionally, I noticed a huge jump in my traffic from Pinterest when I started treating Pinterest like a search engine. And it is! I optimize my posts for Pinterest success, which includes having large, vertical images for my posts, among other things.
- Google (5.1%): I’m glad to see this as the second one on this list (even if there is a huge gap between Pinterest and Google). I use SEO in almost all blog posts, and if people are finding my posts from search engines like Google, then I’m doing my job. Here’s how you can use SEO to stand out as a blogger.
- Facebook (2.26%): I’m not surprised to see this percentage be so small because I haven’t participated in my blogging Facebook groups much recently due to my schedule. I’m hoping to change that in November.
- Twitter (1.45%): Ah, Twitter. My favorite social media network. I would really like to see this number be higher, so we’ll see what I can do about that.
This list does not include direct traffic, as that is not a source.
How I use Pinterest for blog traffic
Traffic Analysis
What I Did
- How I promote my blog posts
- Big thing this month: relaunch/repost old blog posts. By this I mean that I took old posts and used them as the base for a new post in October. I generally added a lot to it, as well as updating the information for 2018. I only did this for 3 posts due to other posts that needed to go up (September blog traffic report, 2018 Recent Reads, etc.), and they were enjoyed, but not the biggest draw this month.
- Participated in the Patients Have Power Twitter chat
- Started and ended the month with being super sick/under the weather: a grand total of over 2 weeks in October that I didn’t post (and I still grew my blog this month!)
- Bought the Genius Blogger’s Toolkit and began implementing things from that – but I won’t share them because that’s not fair to the people who made it!
- Joined more Tailwind Tribes
- Added an image promoting my newsletter to the sidebar
- Updated Pinterest board descriptions
I Haven’t Seen Results From
- Relaunching/reposting old blog posts. I’m not saying that this doesn’t work, as I only did it 3 times and maybe if I continue doing this I’ll find success.
What I Can Learn This Month
- Not posting on Instagram for several days in a row will mean lots of people will unfollow you. Seriously, when I got sick at the beginning of the month, I didn’t post for 5 days and nearly 50 people unfollowed me. Rude! Additionally, when I got sick at the end of the month, I lost another 20 followers when I didn’t post for 3 days. This is so frustrating because I’ve been hovering around 2650 followers for over a year. I go up to nearly 2700 and then lose around 50 followers. I go up to 2670 and lose around 20. It’s very annoying. If you have any tips, help a girl out!
- As of right now, the Genius Blogger’s Toolkit is really worth the money. I haven’t dug through allll the content yet, but so far, it’s A+ and was a great investment to make. (It won’t be available again until March – sorry!)
- Remember my keyword trick? It’s the real deal. Basically, you start typing something related to your blog post idea in a search engine and see what term autocomplete comes up with. This helps you figure out what very specific terms people are searching for in search engines. It’s more specific than most SEO keyword finders are, and can help your blog show up in more search result and have more people clicking in because you’re dealing with the specific thing they’re searching for, which can help you domain authority increase. If you look at the list of my most popular posts from this month, 5 of them are posts I used this keyword trick for.
October Goals
- 8+ posts – Just barely made it!
- 11,000 pageviews – Success!
- Grow social media – I grew 4 out of 5, so I’ll call this a success
November Goals
- 8+ posts
- 11,500 pageviews
- Grow social media
What is your favorite way to increase blog page views?
Like this post? Check out:
All blog traffic reports, 8 Ways To Blog Better, My Proven Method for Blogging with Limited Time, Tips for New Bloggers,
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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