March Blog Traffic Report

I’m not going to lie – I’m pretty bummed with this traffic report. I’m trying to look on the bright side – I definitely learned something from this month – but it’s so frustrating to work hard and not get anywhere.

As a reminder, I’m focusing on one big traffic boosting tool every month. This month, I tried creating more content upgrades. In April, I’m trying recycling new content (which is perfect since I’ll be busy with school all month). The short preview of this post is that my traffic decreased for 2 key reasons. 1, I was in the hospital and basically off the Internet for around a week, which means I didn’t have new posts or schedule promotions, which definitely affected things. 2, the content upgrades I created were not successful. I’ll talk about both of those things in this post.

All Traffic Reports

Traffic Report

Current Statistics

Unique Pageviews: 6,981 (-12% from February, -48% from last year)

Bounce Rate: 56.19% (+3% from February, +800% from last year)

Sessions: 4,004 (-12% from February, -37% from last year)

Users: 3,531 (-12% from February, -21% from last year)

Bloglovin: 1,734 (+0.2% from February, +3% from last year)

Email Subscribers: 251 (+0.8% from February, +86% from last year)

Social Media

Facebook: 927 (+0.4% from February, +12.3% from last year)

Twitter: 2,859 (+3.6% from February, +20.7% from last year)

Instagram: 2,270 (+22.6% from February, +87% from last year)

Google+: 213 (+3.9% from February, +24.5% from last year)

Pinterest: 4,552 (+3.9% from February, +102% from last year)

Tumblr: 3,706 (+0.3% from February, +4.8% from last year)

Top Posts

1. Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
2. Loving Someone with Chronic Pain
3. A Weekend in Boston
4. Christmas Gift Ideas for Dad (Or Anyone)
5. 40 Blog Post Ideas
6. How To Talk about Your Chronic Illness + Free Printable
7. Drugstore vs. High End Mascaras: Which Is Really Better?
8. 5 Most Amazing Blog Post Ideas To Bring You Traffic for Years
9. How To Pack for a Summer Trip
10. 40 Blog Post Ideas for Lifestyle Bloggers

Top Sources of Traffic

• Pinterest
• Search engines
• Facebook
• Stumbleupon

Traffic Analysis

What I Did

• Offered more content upgrades than usual
• Spoke at the Arthritis Foundation Advocacy Summit
• Instagram loop giveaway
• Changed the link in my Instagram bio
• Spent 5 days in the hospital and 5-7 days without promoting any posts
• Changed my Tumblr queue plan
• Began using Instagram stories more
• Changed how I engage on Instagram
• Updated settings of my Reduce Bounce Rate plugin and reconnected Google Analytics
• Added a featured board to the top of my Pinterest profile
• Updated several posts with related posts

I Haven’t Seen Results From

• Updating posts with related posts
• Content upgrades

What I Can Learn this Month

• The content upgrades I’ve offered aren’t as enticing as I’d like them to be – You can’t just create free downloads and expect them to bring you traffic; you need to create items that you know your audience will want. For me, people liked the blog posts I wrote, but didn’t necessarily want the free downloads I created. For this to work for me in the future, I need to make sure that I’m spending time on creating content that I know people will actually want. I think I’ll look back at what free downloads I’ve made that people have wanted and use that to direct me to decide what to make in the future.
• I need to regularly promote posts or else I won’t get traffic –

Goals for March

• 8,000 pageviews – Fail
• 9-12 posts – Success! I had 9 posts
• Bounce rate below 50% – Fail

Goals for April

• Increase pageviews
• Lower bounce rate
• 9-12 posts

Like this post? Check out:

 5 Most Amazing Blog Post Ideas To Bring You Traffic for Years, How To Get Blog Traffic: My Blogging Advice To Actually Grow Your Blog, 7 Things I Did To Get More Blog Traffic in 2016