Welcome to my monthly blog traffic report, this is the 18 traffic report so far.
I'm doing both traffic and income reports to measure were I was, were I am and were I am heading to. Those reports keep me track my progress (or bounces), and hopefully can give a lesson to you as well.
What I have done in March
March was pretty crazy month - in total I posted 66 articles what is a personal best so far (Previous time I posted so much was back in October 2013, when I just launched my blog). The reason I decided to increase my blog post count is a plain simple - I believe it helps to give a SEO boost. In fact I have been posting more than 1 post per day for a last of couple months already. I'm planing to go back to my regular schedule (one article per day) starting this month. Read bellow why I made such decision.
Last month I made 8 Tbilisi restaurant reviews, did some hiking and cycling tours in Tbilisi and Georgia (See: Living in Georgia), crafted 2 food blogger posts (Damn, they are one of the hardest).
Pretty much I'm satisfied with what I have done and written last month, except I got trapped in 'Eurovision' traps (I made total of 19 posts related to Eurovision participants with little or no value added - just copy/pasted from official Eurovision.TV website by adding little or no description.
And here is my advice - despite how tempting it might seem - don't ever copy/paste articles if you are not very well known and passionate of that topic, so you can expand that article with more than 2000 with your own words.
On middle of March I realized that I have been trapped and I sworn to stop doing using copy/paste on my blog: Read How to Write a Blog Continuously (Tips After 18 Month of Daily Blogging)
I used Facebook ads to drive traffic to my blog, in total I created two different campaigns to promote:
Tbilisi restaurants
Best drones available on market
Speaking of Tbilisi restaurants - I have been doing for a while reviews of local Tbilisi café's, restaurant's, pubs e.t.c. I decided it's a good idea to attract local Georgian audience by spending a few dollars on Ads. The results - well I have ambivalent feelings regarding this. It did attracted a lot local Georgian Audience that's true, unfortunately few local web masters decided to scrap my content and republish on their websites. I stopped promotion when noticed this pattern. (Put it together how I coppied articles from Eurovision.TV and find how strange it might sound now)
Speaking of drones - I have been failing in love with them lately (though I have not obtained a one yet) - I created a best seller list with best drones available on market, and used Facebook Ads to drive US audience to that post - the result - well it was not so cost effective than in case of promoting Tbilisi restaurants, but it generated some likes and some clicks.
Visitors
This March come with a 40.61% traffic gain if compared to previous month (February 2015) and totalled in 20,499 unique visitors
Blog Traffic Report: March 2015 (Data source: Google Analytics)
Where I was a year ago
This is another interesting trend I like to measure. My blog now is 18 months old and since I have been doing monthly traffic reports from the first blogging month, it's easy to compare where I was year ago.
Blog Traffic Report: March 2015 vs March 2014 (Data source: Google Analytics)
A year ago my blog was 6 month old, back then I managed to attract modest 542 users, which back then seemed a reasonable traffic, now a year after, I have attracted 20,499 users what is almost 40 times more than year ago - pretty impressive growth, right!?
Road to 100K users in a month
Starting last summer, I have been measuring my success (or failures) to reach 100,000 unique visitors in a month.
Since there is nothing much I can analyse (just actual traffic results) - at end of the March 2015 - I stand at 20,49% level of eventual 100,000 unique visitors. I doubt I will reach 100 K any time soon, but I believe it might happen in next 2 or 3 years (Last summer I was concerned that it should take at least 5 years)
Road to 150K users in 2015
At the end of December 2014 I did set up another goal I would like to achieve this year - to attract 150,000 users to my blog in 2015.
It would ask around 12,500 users a month to reach such goal. Since I ended this month with a little bit more than 20K and almost cracked 20K milestone on January, and had a pretty good 14.5 K last month - I believe I'm on right track.
My cumulative traffic after 3 months stands at 54,499, so technically speaking I should average at least 10,611 users for next 9 months to reach this goal. I'm pretty confident that I will achieve my goal by the end of 2015.
In Conclusion: Forecast for April
I have pretty good feelings regarding this April, Google has announced that starting April 21 it will update it's algorithm giving a significant boost for mobile-ready websites, since my blog qualifies as mobile-ready I'm expecting something good at the last decade of April. Read: How Google 'Mobile-Friendly' Ranking Factor Will Affect SEO
It would be awesome to crack 25,000 user milestone this month, but as usual I will stick with more humble forecast saying 20, 000 users for April as well.