Blogging Report (October 2018) – Steady Results But Pushing For More

Blogging Report (October 2018)

I cannot stress enough the practice of patience when it comes to blogging and SEO.

It can sometimes feel like an uphill battle when you’re plateauing or possibly even dipping in terms of overall website traffic…However, it’s important to remain realistic here and realize that blog growth comes from long-term efforts.

It makes sense to me why so many bloggers fail or quit as it’s not the easiest nor quickest business model and it also takes a lot of hard work, commitment and you guessed it,  patience.

For example, if you look at my older blogging reports below, you’ll notice that I’ve seen periods of growth, decline and also plateauing.

• January 2017: 55 Organic Visits
• June 2018: 169 Organic Visits
• July 2018: 168 Organic Visits
• August 2018: 135 Organic Visits
• September 2018: 155 Organic Visits

But I keep pushing because I know more growth is right around the corner with the strategic work I do on a monthly basis.

Fluctuation is totally normal when you’re working on establishing your blog…Do not get discouraged by this.

It takes Google some time to recognize new content and SEO edits on your website.

Make sure to look at the long term traffic trend of your website by using Google Analytics to see your growth over-time.

Hopefully this brief introduction above is enough to steer some of you back on track and to finish out 2018 stronger than ever…And especially if you’ve been discouraged by some traffic fluctuations on your own website.

Let’s dig into some of my specific organic traffic statistics below.

Organic Traffic (October 2018)- 159 Visits

Traffic has been steady lately when comparing month-over-month, however when comparing year-over-year (which gives us a much better overall analysis) I’m continuing to see lots of growth.

Organic traffic in October 2018 came in at 159 search visits.

In August of 2018, Google put forth a core algorithm update and as a result my traffic dipped slightly.

But in September and October I have rebounded and am trending once again in the right direction.

To get a better understanding of my organic traffic data long-term, let’s take a look at the chart below.

Arrow #1: This is where I saw an initial surge and growth in Organic Traffic due to lots of quality content creation and link building to get my blog noticed by Google. As you can see, this was quite an increase to where I was months prior.

Arrow #2: The second plot point on this chart demonstrates a plateau I hit for around 3 months. I stayed steady at around 170 organic search visits after the large growth I saw in previous months (arrow #1).

Arrow #3: This is where I saw a slight dip in August 2018 mainly due to the Google core algorithm update.

Arrow #4: I rebounded the past two months after the dip I saw in August. Traffic is once again trending in the right direction.

As you can see, this chart is like a roller coaster with a lot of ups and downs.

However, it’s helpful for me to look at this type of birds-eye view, to indeed see the progress I am making with my blog…Fluctuation and all.

Let’s now take a look at the year-over-year increases below:

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (October 2018 vs. October 2017)

Organic traffic increased by 218% when comparing year-over-year (159 vs. 50).

See the traffic chart below:

The blue line represents organic traffic for October 2018 and the orange line represents organic traffic for October 2017.

I’m very happy with this increase yearly but am of course pushing for more results.

Below we will look at plans and next steps for the coming months to help drive more organic traffic to my website.

Next Steps To Drive More Results

I have a few specific steps I am going to implement over the coming months to really try to close out the year with a bang.

1.) Website Speed Improvements: I noticed I’ve been seeing some slower load times on my website recently which can negatively impact my search engine rankings. Google will favor and rank websites higher that have a faster load time, as it provides users with an overall better experience. This will be a major area of focus for me in the coming months to get my website loading as quickly as possible moving into 2019.

2.) Networking & Link Building: Although I try to do this on a monthly basis, I could be better at networking with other authoritative bloggers/influencers more often. It’s always good to establish relationships with other bloggers in your niche (as long as they’re not direct competitors). This provides the opportunity for potential guest posting and generating more brand awareness for yourself. It’s also an excellent way to build quality backlinks for your website.

3.) Writing In-Depth Blog Articles: I’m working on upping my content generation game both consistency wise and quality wise after attending SMX East in New York. This really opened my eyes to the importance of creating in-depth and extremely valuable blog articles for my readers. Google really loves long-form content (1,500+ words) and tends to rank these types of articles very highly in the search engines. Of course not every article that I write will be that long in word count, but more and more often I will be weaving in these types of blog posts into my overall strategy.

These three tactics above will keep me busy and moving in the right direction into the new year.

Consistent and focused effort will help me take my blog traffic and overall results to the next level.

Check out the video version of this blog post here.

How is your website doing?

Are you seeing some any good growth, declines and/or plateaus?