January 2016 Traffic Report: Increasing My Pageviews 252.24%

Now that the focus of my blog has shifted from just hair to lifestyle and I’m getting more serious about blogging I’ve started following bloggers whose focus is providing blogging advice. In following these blogs I’ve found many of them are run by bloggers serious about growing their online presence and provide monthly reports on their blog traffic and income.

(This post includes affiliate links. Should you click an affiliate link and make a purchase I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

I've decided that I want to do the same - provide monthly reports on my blog traffic. I'm partly doing this to hold myself accountable and to help me more closely monitor my monthly stats. I'm also now sharing monthly reports in the hopes of helping and encouraging other bloggers who are looking to grow their online presence.

January 2016 site stats

• Sessions: 8,410
• Users: 6,351
• Pageviews: 10,356
• Pages/Session: 1.23
• % New Sessions: 73.22%
• Bounce Rate: 88.66%

January 2016 top 4 posts

1. What To Include In A Fall Hair Regimen
2. Relaxed Hair Health Update: 5 Months Into My Hair Journey
3. Hair Health Update: 2014 Year-end Reflections Part 2
4. How To Know Your Hair Products Have Expired

January 2016 Social Media Stats

• Bloglovin: 51
• Google+: 51
• Instagram: 163
• Pinterest: 78
• Twitter: 185

January 2016 Top 4 Traffic Drivers

1. Stumbleupon
2. Google search/organic
3. Pinterest
4. Facebook

My takeaways

Overall I'm pleased with how my stats are trending. I mean I increased my pageviews by 252.24% in one month! I think much of this can be attributed to

• Renaming my blog to something easier to remember
• Getting a domain that matches the new name of my blog
• Broadening my content areas so I'm blogging about more than relaxed hair
• Updating images and graphics so they have a more professional and consistent look
  
• Promoting my blog more 

Despite the positive trending, there are a few areas I'd like to improve:

My bounce rate

My page views have increased dramatically thanks to Stumbleupon. My bounce rate has also increased due to Stumbleupon. Due to the nature of Stumbleupon readers tend to not dig deeper into a blog when they stumble across it. I feel that my bounce rate is way too high so I'll be researching ways to bring it down and may pull back from Stumbleupon some.

Related read: What I'm Doing To Reduce My Bounce Rate

Consistently promoting my content

While my pageview increase equates to an increase in traffic I want to make sure this isn't an anomaly but ends up being more of a trend. I'm hoping that promoting my content consistently on social media and Pinterest will help with that. 

Social follower growth

While my social numbers are relatively small I have gained several more followers on Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. Most of my social growth came from Twitter which I attribute to pre-scheduling tweets so I'm active on Twitter throughout the day promoting my content.

With all of this said I'm really excited about what's to come for A Relaxed Gal. 

What trends have you been seeing on your blog?