After a record breaking 16,000 pageviews last year, I was expecting my stats to go up and onward. Sadly, it didn’t quite. My January 2017 blog traffic shows a slight decreased.
I was in two mind on how my traffic would go. I was off course expecting an increase but I was also expecting a decrease. There no point crying over spoiled milk, I’m still happy overall with my January blog traffic. Maybe over the year I will see a traffic increase.
I posted a total of 23 posts this month, a few less from December. If you can remember I was doing Blogmas and doing a mixtures of blogging challenge that month. For now, I’m not going to join in any blogging challenge as it eventually drained me and I ended up getting bored with it.
So with that I decided to set myself my own little blogging schedule this year. Blogs during the week and have the weekend off. Otherwise sitting on my computer all day every day was starting to drive me stir-crazy and give me a serious bout of writer block.
Sound like a good plan, right?
My Top 5 most popular posts from January:
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review
Going from dark brown to strawberry blonde
How I earned my first £100 from blogging
The majority of my popular posts are any that is on me. I had people tweeting and messaging me on how I’m opening up and telling people more about myself and it something I should keep on doing. I always been a really shy social anxious girl who don’t feel comfortable talking about myself. Yet when I decided to be a full time blogger and have blog with my name on it, it kind of forced me to be open and tell you more about myself. We shall see how this more open Anna go.
How did people find my blog?
In January Facebook gave me 4,000 again as part of my overall traffic. No jump but hopefully it will climb up. How the hell did I achieve so much traffic from Facebook? As I said last time it helps by joining various blogging Facebook groups. It’s a simple as that. By joining loads of blogging Facebook Groups and being active by helping people with their questions brought in new readers and new traffic to my site. My advice would be it’s worthwhile contributing to a few Facebook groups. I will say Facebook group is only worthwhile doing if you contribute to a thread. Don’t just link dump.
Blog Links Parties
People also found my blog from various blog links parties (or links up as they are also called!). What I do is contribute to various blog links parties throughout the week. People can easily find your blog and click on though. You can find blog links parties by Googling or by looking on this blog links parties’ directory.
Stumbleupon (SU)
Stumbleupon is like a rocket that just go off into the night sky. However, it crashed down into earth. Last year it was a blessing on traffic for me. But this month was an epic fail. I think it was down to me not really giving it much attention and kind of ignoring it.
Those I do still believe Stumbleupon have been a blessing this year on traffic. A few of you asked me last time on how SU work. It really simple. Every time I publish a new post I simple add it on SU and then stumble on a few pages. I also add my link (which has a SU button) to a few Facebook SU threads which allowed people to then add my site to their SU. So you get not only traffic from your own SU but from other people as well. Don’t just add your link and wait for the traffic to come as it more likely won’t.
Pinterest:
Now that really did went off like a rocket. My pinterest traffic was amazing throughout January. It helps that I did a very short Pinterest advert campaign. I did it as I was curious to see how it work and is it worthwhile for my clients to do. My answer is yes and Its really cheap to run a pinterest advert campaign. I made all images look visually inviting and linked it back to my blog.
Organic searches
My organic searches only slightly increased in January which I’m so happy about as I have been working hard on my SEO. I know sometime SEO feel like a drag and often feel like you’re not getting anywhere, my advice is to keep on it and you will see result. To help you increase your site organic searches it might useful to read my post on how to make your blog more seo friendly.
What didn’t work in January:
- Stumbleupon as I mentioned before. But that is due to me not giving th platform my full attention. I will do better next month.
- I also failed again on Twitter and Facebook.I promised myself that I will be more active on my twitter pages. But I didn’t. So next month I will use it as platform to write extra content and for me to be more open. Add images and start (perhaps) some Facebook live show.
Goals for February:
- To try some Instagram/Facebook Live show.
- Keep increasing my SEO and organic searches. To go back through old posts and to update it.
- Give my Facebook/Twitter profile page more attention.
Overall I was really pleased with my traffic on January. I see it as good start to a new year. As I said earlier things can only look up. Keep my fingers crossed for an upward trend.
