I didn’t do as much to grow my traffic this month as I have in the past, and it kind of shows. By this I mean that I didn’t do many new things – I still promoted my blog posts the same, and I tried some new ways to grow my traffic, but I didn’t majorly branch out. So I did increase blog traffic in February, but it wasn’t by a huge amount, and the number of sessions and unique visitors didn’t majorly grow, as well.
Traffic Report
Current Statistics (January 31 – February 29)
Why am I counting the end of January in a February traffic report? A big part of my traffic reports are seeing how much my traffic has changed over the course of the month. This comparison would be inaccurate if the two sets of traffic I’m comparing are not equal.
Unique Pageviews: 12,417 ( +238% from the start, +22% from January)
Bounce Rate: 2.86% ( -97% from the start, – 66% from January)
Sessions: 3,980 ( +41.2% from the start, -62% from January)
Users: 6,296 ( +237% from the start, +58.7% from January)
Bloglovin: 1671 (+24% from the start, +0.4% from January)
Email Subscribers: 111 (started at 0, +6.7% from January)
Social Media
Facebook: 815 (+35% from the start, +4.3% from January)
Twitter: 2197 (+42% from the start, +2.5% from January)
Instagram: 1055 (+163% from the start, +2.5% from January)
Google+: 169 (+101% from the start, +3% from January)
Pinterest: 2109 (+130% from the start, +4.87% from January)
Tumblr: 3507 (+0.7% from January)
Top Posts
- 40 Blog Post Ideas
- Five Life-Changing Books
- 40 Blog Post Ideas for Lifestyle Bloggers
- Blog Post Ideas for 2016
- Take Better Notes on Your Readings
- How I Promote My Blog Posts
- Recent Sephora Buys & Reviews
- People Prescribed Opioids Are Not Automatically ‘Junkies’
- January Blog Traffic Report
- How To Use Evernote for Blogging
Traffic Analysis
What I Did
- How I promote my blog posts
- In-post ads on Becca Dorr and Boone & Owl
- Added the Revive Old Post plugin; this automatically shares posts at least 30 days old on Twitter and Facebook. This is not the only way that I share old posts, as I explained in my post on promoting my blog posts, but it is a great way to automatically share more of them.
- Sharing more on Snapchat (katebmitchell! Add me!)
- I don’t share what I learned from Helene’s Quit Your Job To Blog course because that wouldn’t be fair, but there are other things I’ve done that I don’t mention.
What Worked
- In-post ads
- Revive Old Post plugin
- The Quit Your Job To Blog changes
I Haven’t Seen Results From
- Promoting posts on Snapchat
What I Can Learn from the Statistics
- Posts with blog post ideas are always popular. 3 of the 10 posts that brought the most traffic had blog post ideas; the most popular post is from June 2014.
- If content is king and promotion is queen, SEO is the prince. I used SEO (search engine optimization) in 8 of the 10 most popular posts.
Previous Goals
- 12,000 monthly page views – Success!
- 10,000 sessions – Didn’t get there, but maybe I will this month. I am disappointed with the drop in sessions, and I’m not 100% sure why that happened.
- 4,000 users – I didn’t get there, and I’m SO frustrated because I was SO close.
- Maintain other statistics (bounce rate, social media, etc.) – Success!
Plans and Goals for March
- 15,000 monthly page views
- 8,000 sessions – I want to aim for something more achievable. Could I hit 10,000? Maybe. But it isn’t likely unless something dramatically changes.
What have you done to increase blog traffic? Has it worked?
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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 would give this to my daughter as a gift if I won it because she is always looking at etsy and loving it. I am sure I could find plenty I want but I would give it to her as part of her birthday gift. Thanks so much.
this is so great my friend and love always seeing a great increase 🙂 i’m trying to do the same esp- reviving old posts on twitter to plug in throughout the day or adding a widget at the bottom of my posts to share other ideas! so excited for whats to come for you! xo
Thank you! I really suggest sharing old posts in other ways, too. I talked about how I promote old posts in my post on how I promote my blog posts in general. I hope it helps you! https://katethealmostgreat.com/how-to-promote-your-blog-posts/
It will definitely be hard to calculate how much traffic is driven from Snapchat.
Yup! I do a reader survey every year some time between May and July, and I’m going to ask questions that will hopefully help figure out how many people find out about new posts from Snapchat.
Congratulations! That bounce rate is really impressive and something I really struggle with.
Thank you! If your blog is on self-hosted WordPress, there are some things you can do to lower it, namely getting the Reduce Bounce Rate plugin. You can read more about that (and the important settings you need for it to work) in my January blog traffic report: https://katethealmostgreat.com/ways-to-increase-blog-traffic/
Thanks for sharing! Really awesome stuff you’re doing. Totally going to use your advice to grow my blog.
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I’m glad to hear it! Good luck! You might want to check out my post on what I did that majorly helped my blog traffic in 2015: https://katethealmostgreat.com/get-more-blog-traffic/