October Blog Traffic Report

After the disappointment of September, October wasn’t looking too good at first. But then things changed early in the month. I’ll go into more detail on that, and what I think caused it, in a little bit. But first, let’s look at the statistics and how things have changed from October’s blogging traffic.

Previous Blog Traffic Reports
Original Statistics

Traffic Report

Current Stats (November 1)

Unique Pageviews: 4,598 (-43% from last month, +21.6% from start)

Bounce Rate: 82.32% (+17% from last month, -1% from start)

Sessions: 3,359 (-33% from last month, +19.5% from start)

Users: 2,891 (-35% from last month, +50% from start)

Bloglovin: 1,549 (+3.4% from last month, +15% from start)

Email Subscribers: 58 (+3.5% from last month, started at 0)

Social Media

Facebook: 735 (+1.2% from last month, +22% from start)

Twitter: 1,810 (+4.3% from last month, +17% from start)

Instagram: 900 (+2% from last month, +124% from start)

Google+: 133 (+8.1% from last month, +58% from start)

Pinterest: 1,685 (+2.2% from last month, +84% from start)

Tumblr: 3,380 (+0.6% from last month, +8.3% from start)

Top Posts

1. Dear Selena Gomez
2. 40 Blog Post Ideas
3. Fall Finds and Target Giveaway
4. On Plagiarism in Blogging
5. The One Thing Every Woman Must Do
6. September Blog Traffic Report
7. How Do You Blog with Limited Time?
8. How To Succeed as a Spoonie Student
9. 6 NaNoWriMo Tips
10. What’s in My Bag?

Traffic Analysis

What I Did:

• How I Promote My Blog Posts
• Updated some old posts with SEO
• Added new plugins: Click To Tweet and Popular Posts
• Started using a social media calendar, based on posts from Kayla Hollatz and Chloe Social
• Working on the quality of blog posts
• Promoted pin (blogging)
• Created a special Error 404 page with links to posts
• Played around with Google Analytics and Jetpack to see if that was affecting bad stats
• Updated Genesis
• Promoted pin (plagiarism in blogging post)
• Huge Target giveaway
• Started Quit Your Job To Blog* course
• Added a “Start Here” subpage under my “About” page with information, links to popular posts, email lists, etc.
• Started working on revamping “About” page
• Added Popular Posts widget – this widget only counts from when it was installed, hence including the popular posts link on Start Here page
• Renewed a whole bunch of ads, mostly ad swaps
• Updated many of my secret Pinterest boards so BoardBooster* could publish my scheduled pins

What Worked:

• Updating old posts with SEO
• New Plug-ins
• Social media calendar
• Improving quality of posts
• Promoted pins
• Combination of uninstalling and reinstalling Google Analytics and Jetpack and updating Genesis – My months of pageviews dropping seems to have finally ended! The lowest numbers were on October 10 and things have started really improving since then. I don’t know if it was coincidence or this combination. I did see something from a Genesis child-theme designer posted before the most recent WordPress software update saying that if you didn’t update Genesis and WordPress in that order, it could mess with things. I don’t know if that’s what happened, but after I updated Genesis (along with doing several other things on this list), things started getting better.
• Target giveaway
• Start Here subpage

I Haven’t Seen Results From:

• Quit Your Job To Blog – I started this course on October 22 and did only 2 little bits of it. Those bits were things that I already knew because of my consult with Helene back in August 2014. However, what I have done in November with the course has, so far, really helped. Just so you know, though, nothing in this post is from Helene’s course and, going forward, I will not be saying what things I did from the course that have helped me. That’s not fair to Helene or to me, honestly, because I’m paying for the course and she’s charging for it. Going forward, I will say mention the course and if it helps me, but I will not say what I do from it. Hope you understand!

Previous Goals:

• Increase pageviews back up to 10,000+ – I didn’t do this, but, like I said, at least my pageviews have stopped dropping. I’ll take it!
• Decrease bounce rate back down to below 50% – Also didn’t do this, but it stopped increasing. I’ll take this, too!

Plans and Goals:

I’m going to stick to simple, general goals for blogging for now. But social media? Reaching for the stars!

• Keep increasing statistics
• Reach over 2,000 Twitter followers
• Reach 1,000 Instagram followers

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