March 2016 Traffic Report: Why My Blog Traffic Decreased

Wow! Only nine months left in 2016. That means it's time for another blog traffic report, this time for the month of March. Compared to February, March wasn't a good month for my blog stats. I did see some more improvement in some of my social accounts.

Now before we get to the numbers if this is the first of my traffic reports you're reading you may be wondering why. I share my monthly traffic reports partly to hold myself accountable and help me keep a closer eye on my monthly stats. I’m also doing this in the hopes of helping and encouraging other bloggers who are looking to grow their online presence.

Related read: January 2016 Traffic Report: Increasing My Pageviews 252.24%

(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.) 

March 2016 site stats

• Sessions: 3,898 (-52.69%)
• Users: 3,236 (-54.33%)
• Pageviews: 5,141 (-50.71%)
• Pages/Sessions: 1.32 (+4.17%)
• % of New Sessions: 71.07 (-7.92%)
• Bounce Rate: 85.43% (-6.70%)

March 2016 top 4 posts

1. Wash Day With L'Oreal Extraordinary Oil Shampoo System
2. Getting Started A Healthy Relaxed Hair Journey
3. 6 Ways To Use Coconut Oil On Your Relaxed Hair
4. How I Manage My New Growth During Relaxer Stretches

March 2016 top 4 traffic drivers

1. Stumbleupon
2. Direct
3. Google/Organic
4. Pinterest

March 2016 social media stats

• Bloglovin: 66 (+12)
• Google+: 57 (+1)
• Instagram: 172 (+3)
• Pinterest: 202 (+80)
• Twitter: 212 (+10)

My takeaways

After looking through my stats from February I planned the following for March:

• Sticking with StumbleUpon
• Being more active on Pinterest and Twitter
• Researching how to reduce my bounce rate

Blog Stats

I saw drastic decreases in basically all my stats which is surprising to me. I have seen in several other bloggers' traffic and income reports that they saw decreases in traffic during March though the decreases they saw weren't as much as mine. As you read on, I'll be sharing some of my thoughts on the cause of the decrease.

There is some good news though. I saw a decrease in my bounce rate. As mentioned in my February traffic report I wanted to do some research on how I could reduce my bounce rate. The key pieces of advice I found and focused on were working on my SEO and moving my images from the top of my blog post.

Also, though not noted here, I also saw a decent increase in the number of time visitors were spending on the site and the amount of content they are consuming. This was encouraging amidst the blog stat decreases.

Traffic Drivers

Since the ranking of the traffic drivers stayed the same month-over-month I did some additional digging to see what was the cause for my overall decrease of visitors. The decrease was driven by StumbleUpon and my direct traffic. They both saw a 50%+ decrease month over month. While one of my takeaways from February was to stick with StumbleUpon I have to admit that I didn't do as much Stumbling as I would have liked or even planned to.

Related read: Amazing Tools To Automate And Manage Your Social Media

On the other hand, Pinterest saw a month-over-month increase of 71%, and Google/Organic a 22% increase. I've been going through all of my posts working on SEO. This probably caused an increase in Google/Organic. Without these increases, my traffic would have been worse.

Social Media

I upped my social media game a bit in March since my second February traffic report takeaway was to be more active on Pinterest and Twitter.

Bloglovin

I'm surprised by the dramatic increase in my Bloglovin followers (not complaining though). I'd like to grow this following even more but have yet to figure out how to do it.

Twitter

Despite tweeting more in March and seeing all my Twitter stats increase I only gained 10 followers. This is the net increase of followers as the number takes into account the two people who unfollowed me in March.

Pinterest

Once again, Pinterest saw the largest gain among my social accounts. It also drove more traffic than it did in February. Some of this increase can be attributed to the free trial of BoardBooster I did during the last week in March. It helped me to stay active without doing much of anything with consistent pinning throughout the day. The result of the free trial was an increase in followers, repins, and clicks.

What I Plan to do next

• Do the Tailwind free trial for Pinterest and see if I see similar or better results as with Board Booster
• Figure out how to be more active on Instagram
• Spend more time Stumbling and hopefully get my traffic numbers back up
• Continue boosting my SEO