It feels like my journey to 20,000 unique pageviews on Google Analytics has featured more struggle and frustration than not. There have been plenty of things that have been out of my control – the normal fluctuation of blog traffic due to the time of year and holidays, missing weeks of blog posts due to ER trips, etc. – but there have also been things that I should have done differently. Hindsight is twenty/twenty, of course, but I always try to learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, the statistics from today’s post are a sign that I am.
Traffic Report
Current Statistics
Unique Pageviews: 9,132 (+69% since June, +141% since the beginning)
Bounce Rate: 6.79% (-31% since June, -92% since the beginning)
Sessions: 23,487 (+363% since June, +735% since the beginning)
Users: 4776 (+32% since June, +148% since the beginning)
Bloglovin: 1707 (+0.3% since June, +127% since the beginning)
Email Subscribers: 187 (+3.9% since June, started at 0)
Social Media
Facebook: 860 (+0.7% since June, +43% since the beginning)
Twitter: 2,506 (+0.9% since June, +62% since the beginning)
Instagram: 1,334 (no change since June, +232% since the beginning)
Google+: 182 (no change since June, +117% since the beginning)
Pinterest: 3,137 (+6.7% since June, +243% since the beginning)
Tumblr: 3,607 (+0.5% since June)
Top Posts
- Chronic Pain And Loving Someone with It
- Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
- 40 Blog Post Ideas
- Blog Post Ideas for 2016
- Christmas Gift Ideas for Dad or Anyone
- What To Do in Boston this Summer
- Need Grammar Help?
- How To Pack for a Summer Trip
- Erin Condren End-of-Year Review
- A Weekend in Boston
Traffic Analysis
What I Did
- Updated the Follow page so it’s more visually appealing
- New blog theme so the blog is more visually appealing and user-friendly (still not completely finished tweaking things)
- The new theme has the category list with images at the top
- The most-recent post shows in its entirety on the front page, which wasn’t how it was on the other one, so the bounce rate increased a bit
- Stopped advertising sponsorships because Passionfruit hasn’t paid me what they owe me
- Tried to stick to how I promote blog posts even when I don’t have new posts, but I didn’t manage that every time.
- Published 7 posts instead of the 11 planned on
I Haven’t Seen Results From
- The Follow page
- My normal way of promoting blog posts
What I Can Learn from These Statistics
- Advertising my sidebar advertisements does lead to higher blog traffic
- The new blog theme is MUCH better – page views went up significantly after changing it
- My most popular posts are about chronic pain and illness, blogging, and Boston. And in 9 of the 10 most popular posts, I focused on SEO, so you know it works!
Previous Goals
- Improve blog traffic and social media – I succeeded 95% of the time, and it wasn’t 100% because Instagram and Google+ remained exactly the same.
Goals for August
- Keep blog traffic steady or increasing as I have a very busy couple of weeks at the end of the month.
- Write at least 10 posts (currently have 12 on the calendar)
What do you do for your blog to increase traffic?
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.
Love the transparency! When you say you focused on SEO, was that through a plugin like yoast?
xx, Tomi
http://goodtomicha.com
At least 1-2 posts a week, I choose a focus keyword (that applies to the post) through AdWords and then use the Yoast plugin. Hope that helps!
Awesome, congrats!! I’ve never really understood how to use bloglovin’ but that’s one of my goals for August. Thanks for sharing!
Emily // http://www.exceptionallyemily.com
No problem! Bloglovin is the largest platform that’s focus is just on reading blog posts, so it’s helpful in getting views but not 100% necessary.