Blogging Report (February 2019) – Noticeable Increases compared To Last Year

When you start seeing noticeable year-over-year organic traffic increases on a consistent basis, it’s a sign that the SEO work you’re implementing is paying off.

I have more blog articles ranking in Google now then I did compared to this time last year, which in return is generating additional organic traffic for my website.

Again, as I always state, it takes time to see growth with your blog and you need to be patient when building your business.

Part of the reason I do these blogging reports is to be as transparent as possible to demonstrate that this has not been an overnight process for me (and will continue to take a lot of work).

It’s my own personal case study.

You’ll see months where my blog traffic spikes, plateaus/stagnates and even dips here and there.

That’s all part of the process…

Now of course everyone’s results will be different depending on the niche they operate in, posting frequency, SEO knowledge etc…Some will grow much quicker than me and others much slower.

But the important part is that you stick to a plan and continue on with your efforts over the long-term.

With that being said, let’s jump into this month’s blogging report.

Organic Traffic (February 2019)- 217 Visits

Organic traffic in February 2019 came in at 217 visits.

Not as high as last month (January 2019- 259 visits), but up noticeably when comparing year-over-year, which is a much better way to gauge how your website is performing overtime.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (February 2019 vs. February 2018)

Organic traffic for my blog is up 72.22% when comparing year-over-year (217 visits vs. 126 visits).

Overall I’m happy to see my organic traffic trending in the right direction and with the work I have planned moving forward, this should continue to tick upwards.

Let’s take a look at a couple of charts below from my Google Analytics account to show these organic traffic increases.

This first chart below shows my organic traffic over the long-term and I plotted Feb. 2019 and Feb. 2018 to clearly highlight the increases.

This next chart shows the full month of February 2019 compared to the full month of February 2018. The blue line represents the data in February 2019 and the orange line in February 2018.

It’s always helpful to look at various angles of your traffic within Google Analytics.

I especially like looking at the long-term view as you see in the first traffic chart above in order to analyze the organic growth of my website as a whole.

An increase of 72.22% year-over-year is definitely a number I’m happy with and below I’ve laid out a few next steps I will be implementing in order to build upon this trend.

Next Steps to Increase my Blog Traffic

Below are two specific areas that I will be focusing on in the coming months.

Of course this will go alongside my normal routine of producing high-quality, long-form style content and proper optimization of SEO tags and copy.

1.) New Link Building Techniques:

I will be incorporating two additional link building strategies into my routine.

• HARO – HARO (helpareporterout.com) connects journalists to sources for upcoming stories, articles and news. This is a great opportunity for the source (us) to gain some media coverage and potentially a link back to our website. Generally HARO will send out daily emails of journalists looking for additional information on a particular piece they are working on. If you see something in your area of expertise, you can simply pitch these journalists with the information they’re seeking. If they like your write-up, they will include it in their story and most likely reward you with a backlink.
• Roundups – Many times other bloggers will do an “expert roundup” type of post which highlights webmasters who specialize in a certain niche. This is a great way to gain additional exposure for your website as well as a quality backlink. There are different ways to find these opportunities and sometimes just a simple google search can do the trick. Roundups are not something I look into often, but I do want to weave this into my overall link building strategy every once in a while.

2.) Create a Strategic Content Calendar

I tend to create the content for my blog based on what’s currently going on with my business, what I’m experiencing and what’s working for me. While I’ll still continue to generate this type of content, I do think it would be beneficial if I created more of a concrete content calendar so I have my blog posts planned out weeks in advance. I will most likely utilize a Google Sheet or Excel file for this and break my ideas into sections such as:

• Topic Idea
• Keywords and monthly search volume (will be doing keyword research prior)
• Date of publication
• YouTube video in correlation to the post (yes or no)
• Additional notes/thoughts

Sometimes getting your ideas out of your head and onto “paper” (in this case virtual paper), is incredibly beneficial. Having my posts scheduled will help keep me more organized and consistent in my content generation.

How was your February 2019?

That about wraps up this monthly report.

The continued growth I see is encouraging and motivates me to continue pushing forward and share what strategies I’ve had success with.

If you want to follow my monthly blogging reports, you can do so by visiting this page here.

How was your February 2019?