September Blog Traffic Report

Happy October! As we get into the last quarter of 2017(!!), I’m looking at what I have left to accomplish in the year and how I can end the year on a high note. September was a mess of school, school work, and medical appointments. Like, I had 2-5 appointments a week on top of hundreds of pages to read every single week. So unfortunately my traffic wasn’t what I would like it to be in September, and that is 100% because I didn’t devote as much time as usual to this blog. I’m hoping that, now that I’m more adjusted in the school year, this will change in October. Worst come to worst, I cut down to two posts a week that are high quality. We shall see what is to come! But anyway – let’s talk blog traffic.

All traffic reports

Traffic Report

Current Statistics

Unique Pageviews: 6943 (-13% from August, -24% from last year)

Bounce Rate: 9.1% (-66% from August, -81% from last year)

Sessions: 3066 (-18% from August, -40% from last year)

Users: 2344 (-23% from August, -47% from last year)

Bloglovin: 1766 (+0.7% from August, +3% from last year)

Email Subscribers: 294 (+2.4% from August, +36% from last year)

How I have such a low my bounce rate

Social Media

Facebook: 952 (+0.1% from August, +10% from last year)

Twitter: 3013 (+0.9% from August, +15% from last year)

Instagram: 2533 (+0.07% from August, +52.8% from last year)

Google+: 233 (+1.3% from August, +21.3% from last year)

Pinterest: 5333 (+2.2% from August, +46.5% from last year)

Tumblr: 3812 (+0.2% from August, +4.9% from last year)

Top Posts

1. Loving Someone with Chronic Pain
2. Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
3. A Weekend in Boston
4. How To Increase Site Traffic: August Blog Traffic Report
5. A Day in the Life of an Arthritis Patient
6. Dating with Chronic Medical Conditions
7. 40 Blog Post Ideas
8. The Deadly Consequences of Incorrect Healthcare Reform
9. Simple Acts of Self-Care
10. How To Pack for a summer Trip

Top Sources of Traffic

• Direct: 20.25% – I included this in “sources of traffic” because it should be noted that most a solid 20.25% of people who came to the blog came here directly. What I’m interested in, though, is how many people came directly because they saw me promote a post on Snapchat or Instagram. If you’ve done that, comment below and let me know!
• Pinterest: 15.2% – Every single post has at least one image that is optimized for Pinterest success (and some have two or three), so seeing how many times people clicked on an image and came here from there is very rewarding.
• Facebook: 14.61% – There are multiple ways that people could come here from Facebook. One is through my Facebook page, another is by clicking on a post I shared in one of the Facebook groups I’m a part of, and another is from other people sharing my posts on their Facebook.
• Google: 9.33% – I try to have at least one post a week that is SEO optimized, and to only do that if it would be natural for me to do so in the course of the post.

Traffic Analysis

What I Did:

• How I promote my posts
• Big tool of the month: create shareable content – So I didn’t really work on this. Life happened (as mentioned above), so I just did what I was doing before instead of really focusing on creating shareable content. I might try this again in a few months to see what happens.
• Changed my Instagram strategy – Like a lot of people, for several months my Instagram was losing followers and engagement. I decided to switch things up and try something new. I based my new strategy on this post, and have done most of it. I haven’t done everything she mentions (yet), but so far I’ve worked on tiering my hashtags, targeting accounts, engaging more, and using analytics apps to find the best times to post. And it has helped! I stopped bleeding followers (and even increased some a little) and my engagement rate has increased. It is taking longer for my posts to get the engagement than it was before, but they do get there within a day or so.
• Shared the number of accounts visible for sharing on Sumo
• Featured in the IHC September email
• Went through posts from the last year and added more tags for easier access
• Created the Tags & Topics page
• Changed descriptions for boards on Pinterest
• Added a CTA (call to action) in more posts, like the image above for 164 blog post ideas

I Haven’t Seen Results From:

• Creating shareable content – Probably because I didn’t really focus on this nearly as much as I should have.
• Changing the visible accounts on Sumo
• Adding more tags and creating the Topics & Tags page – I’m not surprised about this because I created it equally for all of you to find things you want as well as for me finding posts easier.
• Adding a CTA in more posts – This is probably because I went through and added it in old posts. I need to do more in recent posts.

What I Can Learn:

• After a certain point, if you don’t actively try to grow your traffic, you probably won’t grow – I’ve had this blog for 4.5 years. I have a bunch of regular readers, but if I want to increase that number, I need to put in the work. Obviously my school work and my health are more important than this blog (sorry, guys), so if things get tough and rough in those areas I’m not going to be 100% awesome here. It happens. But if I’m able to, I need to put in the work in order to keep this blog growing.

Goals for September:

• 8,000 monthly pageviews – Fail.
• Maintain bounce rate below 40% – Success!
• 9-12 posts – Success! I had 11 posts this month

Goals for October:

• 7,000 monthly pageviews
• Maintain bounce rate below 20%
• 9-12 posts

What is the best piece of advice you’ve gotten for growing your traffic?

Like this post? Share it! You can also check out these posts:

8 Ways To Lower Your Bounce Rate, 10 Things Every Blog Needs, 5 Most Amazing Blog Post Ideas That Will Bring You Traffic for Years, 8 Tips To Get More Twitter Followers, All blog traffic reports