May was … interesting. Let’s just say that. It involved recovering from ER trips, the end of the semester, my sister’s graduation and the ensuing family events, and, of course, Google removing me from search engines. All of this definitely contributed to my May blog traffic, but I’ll get to that in a little bit.
Traffic Report
Current Statistics
Unique Pageviews: 7,271 (+92% from the start, -63% from April)
Bounce Rate: 16.46% (-81% from the start, +93% from April)
Sessions: 7,119 (+153% from the start, +4% from April)
Users: 5,315 (+176% from the start, +5% from April)
Bloglovin: 1688 (+25% from the start, +0.2% April)
Email Subscribers: 164 (started at 0, +11.5% from April)
Social Media
Facebook: 847 (+40.9% from the start, +2.8% from April)
Twitter: 2,462 (+59% from the start, +0.5% from April)
Instagram: 1,313 (+227% from the start, +4% from April)
Google+: 176 (+109% from the start, +0.5% from April)
Pinterest: 2,777 (+203% from the start, +11.2% from April)
Tumblr: 3,589 (+1.2% from April)
Top Posts
- On Plagiarism in Blogging
- 40 Blog Post Ideas
- Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
- Loving Someone Chronic Pain
- Christmas Gift Ideas for Dad (Or Anyone)
- People Prescribed Opioids Are Not Automatically Junkies
- Blog Post Ideas for 2016
- How To Pack for a Summer Trip
- 40 Blog Post Ideas for Lifestyle Bloggers
- The Giant Blogging Mistake I Made
Traffic Analysis
What I Did
- How I promote my blog posts
- Created a visual popular posts page
- Went through all popular posts and made sure that all outbound links opened in new windows to reduce my bounce rate
- Added 3 pages to the sidebar – About Me, Popular Posts, Start Here
- Another post published on Huffington Post
- Instagram loop giveaway
- Edited blog description under my picture
- Made sure social icons open in a new window to reduce bounce rate
- Relabeled sidebar newsletter signup
- Edited Instagram bio
- Found in violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines (read more about that here – after making more changes and filing another reconsideration request, I’m waiting to hear back from them on if I’m still in violation and if they’re going to put me back on search engine results)
- Made sure more links in different posts open in new windows
What Worked
- Popular Posts Page – several of the posts that are the most popular of all time have also recently become the most popular posts from the past month, and I think it’s due to the new page
- Google Webmaster Guideline violation – This “worked” in that it DRAMATICALLY affected my blog traffic in a negative way. Go read that post on nofollow links because they are no joke!
- The general ways I promote my blog posts – The number of times I share my posts (and the ads I do, as explained in that post) really helps my traffic. I have people liking and sharing my posts no matter the time of day. You really have to consider the life of a tweet, for example – people are tweeting so much that your tweet can get buried!
I Haven’t Seen Results From
- List of pages on the sidebar (About Me, Start Here, Popular Posts)
- Posting on Huffington Post – I think the more I post on there, the more likely it is that I’ll eventually see the benefits. However, I don’t think it will be blog traffic benefits; I think it will be more people being aware of who I am, maybe following me on Twitter, which will lead to blog traffic benefits
- Making more links open in new pages
- Editing bios
What I Can Learn from These Statistics
- Google Webmaster Guidelines are no joke
- Most changes I make are not changes that show an immediate result, but I have to believe that they will help positively in the future
Previous Goals
- 15,000 monthly pageviews – Did not achieve due to the nofollow links debacle
- 8,000 sessions – I didn’t achieve it, but I’m actually getting close!
Goals for May
- 10,000 monthly pageviews – Hopefully this will be possible once Google approves my reconsideration request
- 8,000 monthly sessions – Again, hopefully this will be achieved.
What has worked to improve your blog traffic?
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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.
All the bloggers will get more traffic by reading and following the steps given in this website.