Before we get into this part of my 2019 blog traffic report, a few comments from yours truly.
I’m not going to lie: September was all over the place in regards to my personal life. I went to Ireland. That was awesome! But it also took me a few weeks to physically recover from my trip. Then I had my Rituxan infusion (FINALLY). That was basically the same level of awesome-ness, as it means that in a few weeks, I will feel significantly better. I’m really pumped to feel the best I have the entire year. But it also meant that I was out of commission for 6 days.
What does this have to do with this post? It partially explains why my blog traffic dipped this month. I’m not surprised, but I’m all about honesty, so I’m also sharing the other reasons why my traffic decreased. With that in mind, let’s get into September’s blog traffic.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Kate the (Almost) Great!
September 2019 Blog Traffic Report
Google Analytics Statistics
Pageviews: 12570 (-19.8% from August, +21.62% from last year)
Bounce Rate: 24.34% (+23.18% from August, +157.56% from last year)
Sessions: 6113 (-18.5% from August, -13% from last year)
Users: 5310 (-18% from August, +33% from last year)
Bloglovin: 1794 (+0.11% from August, -3.2% from last year)
Email subscribers: 691 (-3.5% from August, +36% from last year)
How I keep my bounce rate so low
Pageviews: 75,150 (-7.6% from August)
Sessions: 32,351 (+16.8% from August)
Users: 1,840 (+1.2% from August)
Social Media
Facebook: 1073 (-0.1% from August, +5.8% from last year)
Twitter: 3688 (+0.14% from August, +10.38% from last year)
Instagram: 2797 (+2% from August, +4.28% from last year)
Pinterest: 8.9k (+1.26% from August, +32.81% from last year)
Tumblr: 3956 (-0.1% from August, +1.74% from last year)
How I manage social media for my blog | How to get followers on Pinterest
Top Posts
- 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Received My Rheumatoid Arthritis Diagnosis
- What Does Endometriosis Feel Like?
- POTS and Heat Intolerance
- Fun Things To Do in Boston: A 3-Day Guide
- Chronically Ill Tips: What To Do When a Doctor Doesn’t Listen to You
- My Biggest Fear Realized
- Loving Someone with Chronic Pain
- Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
- Arthritis Glossary: Frequently-Used Words
- Beginner’s Guide: Seronegative Rheumatoid Arthritis
Top Sources of Traffic
- Pinterest (65.24%): I feel like I say the same thing every month, but I really am glad that Pinterest is such a huge source of my traffic because I put a LOT of work into it!
- Facebook (7.89%): Given that I am in
way toomany Facebook groups for bloggers and I have a Facebook page, this makes sense. - Search Engines (5.69%): I’ve been slacking a little with SEO recently, but I’m trying to change that in October. Basically what I’m saying is that if you’re not using SEO, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
- Twitter (1.27%): Twitter is my favorite social media network, so I’m glad that at least some of my traffic comes from it, even if I would like this number to be higher.
This does not include direct traffic.
How to use Pinterest for blog traffic | How to use SEO to stand out
September 2019 Blog Traffic Report:
Traffic Analysis
What I Did
- How I promote my blog posts
- Trip to Ireland (beginning of the month) and last-minute infusion (end of the month) meant many fewer blog posts than usual
- Pinterest stopped showing my exact follower count (all is shows is 8.9k)
- Participated in an Ultimate Bundles sale, which meant a lot more emails than I usually send, leading to more people unsubscribing than usual
- Started using some new-to-me hashtags on Instagram
- Switched my newsletter service from MailChimp to MailerLite
- Increased the number of pins I share per day
- Had a blog post featured in an InfluenceHer Collective newsletter
I Haven’t Seen Results From
- Switching to MailerLite – I feel like I’m way too new to MailerLite for this to be an indictment, but like I said, I’m all about honesty in these posts, so I’m saying it. Part of the problem is that it is taking forever to completely 100% switch. Don’t get me wrong: MailerLite is easy-peasy to use. But I have links to my MailChimp newsletter in hundreds of blog posts. And I’m not exaggerating; there are probably links in 300-400 posts, if not more. (I’m coming up on my 1000th post this year, by the way!) Once I’m fully adjusted to MailerLite I’ll write a blog post about this experience, and I’m sure that I will talk a bit about it in these traffic reports as I adjust.
What I Can Learn This Month
- If I’m not actively trying to grow my blog in some way, I probably won’t gain traffic – September was a big month for my personal life. Between my trip to Ireland and my last-minute infusion, there were fewer blog posts than usual. And because of these things, I didn’t spend much time actively working on my blog traffic; I was fully focused on just getting posts up.
September Goals
- 4 posts – success!
- 16,000 pageviews – fail!
October Goals
- 5 posts
- 14,000 pageviews
What have you tried to grow your blog traffic?
Like this post? Check out:
How To Get the Most Out of Tailwind for Pinterest, The Process of Writing a Blog Post, 8 Ways To Blog Better, My Proven Method for Blogging with Limited Time
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.
This is a really interesting post and gets me thinking about a few things. Actually, it’s given me an idea for a blog post. It’s always wild to see what blogging is to other people and how things kind of stack up.
Exactly! Which is why I share them – you can’t do what you don’t know exists!
Congrats on such a great month! So much traffic from Pinterest. Makes me think that I should definitely utilize my account more.
You absolutely should!