Category: Blogging Reports

Welcome to another blogging report, this time for March 2020!

I’m writing this in April, reflecting on my March metrics and it’s interesting to see where things are at due to everything that’s been going on lately with COVID-19.

Many businesses have been hit really hard by this pandemic and especially certain brick and mortar stores around the country.

On the other hand, some businesses are actually thriving during these uncertain times.

For me, March 2020 has been my best month to date in terms of revenue and April so far is looking like it will easily surpass March.

I’m not saying this to brag, but more to demonstrate the power of running an online business that is not constricted to a physical location (or constricted to selling physical products).

This is exactly why I’m such an advocate of people starting a blog or a YouTube channel, because there is so much potential/scalability and very little downside.

At the very worst, even if you were to fail (only happens if you quit), you will have more knowledge compared to when you started and a broader set of skills under your belt.

To me, seeing my business expand rather than deteriorate during COVID-19 was a real eye opener and gets me even more motivated to help people acheive the same.

With that being said, let’s jump into March 2020’s traffic numbers.

Organic Traffic (March 2020)- 339 Visits

Organic traffic for March 2020 came in at 339 visits.

This is actually my second highest month all-time in terms of organic traffic and it also correlates with certain keyword ranking increases I’m seeing as well.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (March 2020 vs. March 2019)

When comparing year-over-year, my organic traffic is up 43.04% (339 visits vs. 237 visits).

Comparing organic traffic data year-over-year is an excellent way to gauge if your blog is growing (and by how much).

Increasing my organic visits by 43.04% is definitely something I’m satisfied with as this is an extra 102 set of eyeballs on my website, content, services and products.

Since this traffic is coming in from the search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo) it is highly targeted based on what people are searching for to find my website.

Always strive to craft quality content geared towards helping people solve a problem in your niche.

This is a sure fire way to earn a part-time or even full-time living from home, granted you have the right systems in place.

See below for two screenshots that demonstrate my year-over-year growth in organic traffic (from different angles).

Mar. 2020 versus Mar. 2019 (Longer-term chart)

Mar. 2020 (blue) versus Mar. 2019 (orange) (plotted daily)

Next Steps & Blogging Goals

To keep my momentum going, I will continue to implement my normal work of publishing consistent content/optimizing my posts, but I will also be focusing on the tasks laid out below.

1.) Publication of 2 Guest Post Articles on High DA Websites

Finally, I’ve gotten back into a consistent groove of building quality backlinks to my website through guest posting. There has been a define correlation in traffic and keyword ranking increases and consistent guest posting on other authoritative websites. This week I submitted two guest post articles to be published on sites that had a domain authority over 40. This should really help my overall SEO in the coming months once these are published. To learn more about building quality backlinks via guest posting, make sure to check out my video here.

2.) Research/Look Into Hiring a Virtual Assistant

As my income has grown with my online business and the busier I’ve gotten working on different tasks and with different clients, I am considering hiring a virtual assistant to help manage my workload. Certain tasks that are not as important but still necessary to complete, I am ready to delegate to a virtual assistant. This way I can focus on the most important tasks to increase my bottom line and grow my business. I’ve looked into a few services that provide VA’s looking for work, but I still need to do additional research. I have no problem outsourcing certain tasks if it frees up my time and provides me with additional space in my schedule.

3.) Plan/Start Building Out My Membership Website

This has been quietly in the works for a couple of months now. As my coaching/consulting clients have grown, I wanted to create a membership website for anyone I am not able to work with. This is a win-win as not only will this increase my income/free up my time but it will also help me serve a much bigger audience. I will be creating super high-quality video content within this membership website and offer a couple of different price points so the majority of people are able to join. I suspect this membership website will take around 8-12 months to build out completely, but I am looking forward to getting it going. I will most likely be using Memberpress to create this website.

How was your March 2020?

That pretty much wraps it up for this month’s blogging report!

If you would like to follow my blogging progress moving forward, I recommend bookmarking this page here.

You may also want to subscribe to my YouTube channel for additional tips, strategies and secrets.

Need additional help with your blog? Reach out to me here!

How was your March 2020?

Welcome to another blogging report, this time for February 2020.

Although February was a good month for my website, it will be interesting to see in the coming months how this trend plays out due to the Coronavirus.

I will not be surprised if my organic traffic slows a bit due to the pandemic we are currently facing and I think that is an important note to make in this particular blogging report.

If you also see a drop or decline in your organic traffic over the next couple of months, remember that it could be due to this issue.

On the flip side, some websites may actually see a surge in traffic depending on the niche they’re in or topics they’re writing about.

For example, a health and wellness blog may be highly visited in times like these and rightfully so.

I think another point to make is that many people are forced to stay home now due to the Coronavirus, meaning they are most likely consuming more content than they normally would.

This could also attribute to increases in traffic to your website.

Therefore, I really think it depends on the blog or website for what types of traffic fluctuations one may experience, whether that be positive or negative.

My advice in saying all of this is to keep producing high-quality content and potentially even ramp up your content generation efforts in times like these.

This is NOT the time to pull back.

Instead produce even more blog content, videos, social media posts etc. than you normally would to capitalize and grow in uncertain times.

Being able to generate extra income during difficult times is incredibly valuable and that’s why a blog in my opinion is one of the best side hustles someone can do from home.

With that being said, let’s get into this month’s data.

Organic Traffic (February 2020)- 292 Visits

Organic traffic for February 2020 came in at 292 visits.

This is actually my third highest month all-time and my long-term chart (which you’ll see below) is really showing a positive trend over the past few years.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (February 2020 vs. February 2019)

When comparing year-over-year, my organic traffic is up 34.56% (292 visits vs. 217 visits).

If we look at my long-term organic traffic chart below, we can really see the growth over the past few years and also the year-over-year comparisons.

My next goal is to consistently hit 300 targeted and organic visits each month, which I believe I can definitely acquire moving into the spring.

I already make a nice part-time income from the current traffic I am generating, and I’m making more revenue compared to last year as my blog traffic grows.

If I continue to increase my monthly flow of organic traffic, this will only result in more email subscribers, product sales, affiliate sales and coaching/consulting clients.

Screenshots from my Google Analytics account can be seen below:

Next Steps & Blogging Goals

As stated above, the next goal for me is to consistently hit (month-in and month-out) 300 organic visitors per month. I’ve been able to hit the 200 organic visits mark consistently for the past 14 months, so I think this is an attainable goal as we move further into 2020. Below are a couple tasks I currently have in the works to help me get there.

1.) Finish Up 3 Guest Post Articles for Other Websites

I’m currently finishing up writing three guest post articles for other relevant websites in my niche. I’ve identified/reached out to a few really solid blogs who were interested in my content ideas, which in exchange will build me a handful of quality backlinks. Link building is a strategy I’ve been meaning to get back into the groove of. I have a good amount of keywords right on the cusp of ranking highly in Google, where they just need a little push with the help of quality backlinks. Once I get these three guest posts published and give it some time, I should see a direct improvement in organic rankings and traffic. If you’re interested in learning how to find and land guest post opportunities yourself, I recommend checking out my video here.

2.) Working on 4-5 Long-Form Style Articles for My Own Website

I’ve identified a few strong keywords with relatively low competition/difficulty that I am crafting long-form style content around. By this I mean I will be writing blog content that is 1,500 words or longer on a given subject. This type of comprehensive content tends to rank well in Google for me. Every blogger’s style is different, but I really like to take the time on certain posts to create a piece of writing that is detailed as well as valuable. I always strive for quality over quantity and this generally results in higher search engine rankings.

How was your February 2020?

That wraps it up for this month’s blogging report!

Again, stay patient in uncertain times like we are facing now and produce even more quality content than you normally would.

If you’d like to follow my progress moving forward, I recommend bookmarking this page here.

You may also want to subscribe to my YouTube channel for additional blogging tips, tricks and secrets.

Need additional help with your blog? Reach out to me here!

How was your February 2020?

Welcome to another monthly blogging report!

It was a good kick off to 2020 for my website as I saw good overall movement in organic traffic.

I noticed a nice uptick both when comparing year-over-year and month-over-month as you’ll see in the data below.

This is definitely due to more and more blog posts ranking on page #1 of Google for various keywords.

NOTE: If you’re a blogger, I highly recommend you track your search engine rankings to see where you’re positioned in Google (there are many affordable tools out there that you can utilize for this). Also, make sure to set up Google Search Console (which is free) as it provides additional insight on keyword data, clicks and a whole lot more.

Some blog posts I’ve written years ago are just now starting to gain traction in Google, which is super exciting to see.

Remember, blogging is a long-term game and sometimes it simply takes time to generate results.

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

Organic Traffic (January 2020)- 302 Visits

In January 2020, organic traffic came in at a total of 302 visits.

In fact, this has been my second highest month all-time in terms of organic traffic (traffic coming in through the search engines).

As stated above, this was a nice uptick compared to the prior month and also the prior year during this time period.

I’d like to work on getting my organic traffic to consistently hit 300 visits moving into the latter half of 2020.

I believe this is attainable with the content and SEO work I have planned moving forward.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (January 2020 vs. January 2019)

When comparing year-over-year, my organic traffic is up 16.60% (302 visits vs. 259 visits).

It’s always important to analyze your year-over-year data.

Before January 2020, it almost looked as if my traffic was trending on the downward (see screenshot below), but knowing that blogging is all about longevity, consistency and at times monthly fluctuations I was confident more growth was on the horizon.

The more blog posts you write overtime and properly optimize, the more you stack the odds in your favor.

This content if approached strategically and with a value-based mindset will start to work for you.

My long-term chart below demonstrates this trend.

 

Jan. 2020 versus Jan. 2019 (Longer-term chart)

Jan. 2020 (blue) versus Jan. 2019 (orange) (plotted daily)

A Few Blogging & SEO Strategies I’ll Be Focusing on in 2020

To continue the growth I’m seeing with my website, I will be putting a big focus on the strategies below:

1.) Guest Posting

Towards the end of 2019, I was really slacking here in terms of guest posting. Guest posting is an excellent strategy to build quality backlinks to your website but it does indeed take time. Outsourcing is possible, but I prefer to do this in-house as I think the quality is better. Whenever I’m consistent in guest posting on other websites, I really notice good growth in blog traffic and improvements in search engine rankings. I will plan to ramp this up in 2020.

2.) Updating Older Blog Posts 

I’ve looked into some of my older blog articles and noticed that there’s a lot of room to update them with fresh, unique and higher-quality information. This can be a great tactic to give older content a total revamp and increase its ranking potential in the search engines.

3.) Target More Keywords with Lower Competition 

I’ve seen measurable results when targeting keywords in my blog content that are lower in competition and this was especially a focus of mine in 2019. Certain keyword research tools will provide some sort of competition or difficulty metric to let you know what you’re up against when trying to rank for a certain term. I will continue to target terms that I can more easily rank for in order to drive more targeted traffic to my website. Although some of these may have less search volume, you can stack these types of posts up overtime for great results.

How was your January 2020?

That wraps it up for this month’s blogging report!

If you’d like to follow my progress moving forward, I recommend bookmarking this page here.

You may also want to subscribe to my YouTube channel for additional blogging tips, tricks and secrets.

Need additional help with your website, reach out to me here!

How was your January 2020?

What plans do you have to make 2020 your best year yet?

Welcome to another blogging report, this time for December 2019!

I hope everyone had a nice holiday and took some time to relax and spend time with family.

After a busy year, I definitely made sure to unwind a bit myself and rejuvenate.

The picture below is of a hike I took on Christmas Eve.

Although it was brisk, it was a beautiful day to spend outside!

In terms of my blog, it’s not uncommon for December to be a slower month organically for me.

And this is also the case in general for many website owners since most people are either busy or away for the holidays.

You may see a dip in traffic compared to the prior months and that’s okay (unless you run an ecommerce store for example that thrives around this time of year).

This is nothing to panic about and a trend to actually expect moving forward.

As I always say, you’re better off comparing your data year-over-year within your Google Analytics account.

This will give you a more accurate snapshot of how your website is performing as a whole.

You may also want to take a look at your long-term organic traffic chart (date back as far as you have data in analytics) to see the trajectory of your website visitors.

Although this month’s blogging report isn’t the most explosive in terms of year-over-year growth, I am still in the green nonetheless and happy to be moving in the right direction.

Let’s take a look at the specifics below:

Organic Traffic (December 2019)- 201 Visits

In December 2019, organic traffic came in at a total of 201 visits.

Is 201 organic visits astronomical?

No, but this is hyper targeted traffic entering my website from the search engines (and mainly Google).

I take pride in making sure that the traffic I am driving is of the highest-quality and also super relevant based on the content I produce on my website.

This results in more blog followers, blog engagement, email subscribers, coaching clients and affiliate sales.

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

When we compare year-over-year, organic traffic for my website is up 14.20% (201 visits vs. 176 visits).

The two screenshots below reveals this year-over-year growth from a couple of angles.

 

I recommend that all bloggers get used to analyzing their data on a monthly basis.

When you understand your metrics, it makes it easier to strategize and plan for future growth.

Speaking of, let’s review some areas I will be focusing on in 2020.

Blogging Goals & Next Steps for 2020

The new year is always a great time to set some achievable goals for your website. It’s also a time to reflect on specific areas you can improve upon as well.

1. Get Ahead of Content Generation: A big goal of mine in 2020 is to get 1-2 months ahead of schedule with my blog content. This is a tactic that I struggle with from time to time due to being busy running other parts of my business. However, I believe as a blogger, it’s very important to get ahead of schedule and create some sort of content calendar to help you achieve this. I currently have blog content scheduled about 2 weeks out and will continue to build upon this.
2. Heavier Focus on Guest Posting: Guest posting on other websites has really been a major driver in my blog growth (helping to generate more organic traffic from increased search engine rankings and referral traffic from people clicking on my links). I do almost all of this manually, but am considering utilizing additional resources to help me scale up this part of my business.
3. Scale Up Paid Advertising: Although SEO is more my speciality, I’ve been running a few profitable PPC campaigns that have really allowed me to increase my coaching/consulting client base. Currently I am using Google Adwords, but will be exploring other paid advertising avenues as well. Also, knowing that my current PPC campaigns are performing really well, I will be investing more money into my existing ad strategy this month.
4. More Networking with Other Bloggers: When you network with other bloggers, truly positive things come out of it. Every time I make it a point to reach out, meet and talk with other bloggers, I am always amazed at the value in doing so. Not only can this result in various collaborations, shoutouts, backlinks, brand exposure etc., but you can also just learn a whole lot from the other person and process in general. In 2020, I will most definitely be making more connections with other bloggers in my general niche.

How was your December 2019?

That about wraps up this month’s blogging report!

If you’d like to follow my progress moving forward, I recommend bookmarking this page here.

You may also want to subscribe to my YouTube channel for additional blogging tips, tricks and secrets.

How was your December 2019?

Did you see any slowdown?

I am a little later on this blogging report than normal due to the holidays, but nonetheless here it is for November 2019!

If you’re new to these posts, each month I dive into my Google Analytics data to analyze the organic growth (or lack of growth) of my website.

This is a good way for me to monitor my blog traffic but also share some valuable insight on what strategies are working well for my website.

My goal with these posts is to help fellow bloggers and webmasters generate more targeted organic traffic from Google and the other major search engines.

I saw good overall growth in my organic traffic in November 2019, so let’s dive right into the data!

Organic Traffic (November 2019)- 200 Visits

Organic traffic in November 2019 came in at a total of 200 visits.

This is organic traffic strictly driven via the search engines.

To get a better gauge of my overall progress, we will look at the year-over-year comparisons below.

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

When comparing year-over-year, organic traffic for my blog is up by 39.86% (200 visits vs. 143 visits).

These aren’t the biggest increases I’ve seen if you look at some of my past blogging reports, however generating nearly 40% more organic traffic to my website is definitely still worth celebrating.

Below is a snapshot from my Google Analytics that shows the longer-term view of this.

I’ve also left below (as I normally do) the daily plot points when comparing November 2019 to November 2018 to provide you with an additional viewpoint. The blue line represents November 2019 while the orange line is November 2018.

As I’ve stated in previous reports, I’m never really concerned about month-over-month fluctuations or dips in organic traffic. As long as I am still up noticeably year-over-year, this is a much better way to review and compare the data.

Next Blogging & SEO Steps Heading Into 2020

1.) Consistent Content Generation

Now that the holidays are winding down, I will have more time to commit to creating consistent blog and YouTube content. I am normally pretty good at publishing 3-4 blog articles per month, but want to continue that rhythm and potentially even push it up to 4-8 pieces per month in 2020 (guest posts and sponsored posts can help me achieve that). This will help me increase the overall traffic to my blog.

2.) More Focus on Link Building

Every blogger should focus on a manual link building strategy if they want to improve their search engine rankings and therefore organic traffic. Guest posting is an excellent and predictable way to generate quality backlinks on a monthly basis and this is a tactic that I will be utilizing much more in 2020. Although I am able to build backlinks with little effort at times just by creating quality content that other bloggers link to, it’s good to supplement this with manual guest posting as well (watch my YouTube video here on how to do this for yourself).

3.) Fine Tune my PPC Campaigns

As you know, most of what I talk about on my website here has to do with blogging, SEO, YouTube and organic traffic generation, but I also run a few PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns using Google Adwords. Along with my blogging and SEO work, my PPC campaigns help me acquire more coaching/consulting clients and increase the overall exposure of my brand. With that being said, there is still room for improvement here and I have more to learn when it comes to PPC. I currently maintain a positive ROI, but want to focus on optimizing my campaigns even further for better results. This will be a big area of focus for me in 2020.

How was your November 2019?

That wraps up this month’s blogging report!

If you’d like to follow my progress moving forward, I recommend bookmarking this page here.

You may also want to subscribe to my YouTube channel for additional blogging tips, tricks and secrets.

How was your November 2019?

What are your plans moving into the new year?

Welcome to another blogging report, this time for October 2019!

If you’re new to these posts, each month I dive into my Google Analytics to monitor and track my overall organic growth.

October 2019 was a strong month for my website and actually the second highest all-time in terms of organic search traffic (more details on this below).

I also saw noticeable increases both when comparing year-over-year and month-over-month.

You will see in my long-term organic traffic chart below that October was a nice uptick compared to recent months.

Let’s take a look at the data as a whole in a bit more detail.

Organic Traffic (October 2019)- 272 Visits

Organic traffic for October 2019 came in at 272 visits.

Again, this is my second highest month all-time in terms of organic sessions.

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

Year-over-year my organic traffic increased by 71.07% (272 visits vs. 159 visits).

I don’t always see increases this large so I am very happy with this!

The chart below plots both October 2019 and October 2018 to show this year-over-year growth from another angle.

Looking at your traffic in Google Analytics over the long-term is really helpful to see how your overall data is trending.

In my case here, it’s clear the progress I have made when looking all the way back to 2017 (where I had very little momentum) compared to 2019 where I’ve been consistently generating over 200 organic visits per month.

And this is highly targeted traffic from the search engines!

It’s crucial to identify positive trends like this to remain motivated and hungry to keep pressing forward.

Blogging is a long-term game and can oftentimes feel overwhelming. This is why it’s important to appreciate any progress you are making and celebrate any small wins.

 

When looking at the screenshot below, we can see that in October 2019 (blue line) I generated more organic traffic almost every single day compared to October 2018 (orange line).

 

If you’re implementing proper SEO and generating really high-quality content, there’s no reason why you can’t experience significant year-over-year growth yourself.

In order to continue this momentum seen above, I have laid out a few action steps below.

Plan of Action for Continued Organic Growth

1.) More Strategic Keyword Research

Lately I’ve been focusing on targeting keywords that are longer-tail (2 or more words in a phrase) and have low competition. Since I’ve been seeing good results with this approach overall, I plan to continue this strategy and even ramp it up moving forward. You can utilize tools such as Ubersuggest (free) or Ahrefs (paid) to get helpful data like search volume and competition on your keyword phrases. Not every single post I write is totally driven by keyword research or SEO, but the articles I am attempting to rank highly in Google, I like to target longer-tail terms with lower competition. They are much easier to obtain solid rankings for.

2.) Get Ahead of Content (Blog Posts & Videos)

For me personally as a blogger, consultant and Internet marketer, it can be difficult to get ahead of content at times with so many projects going on. Even though I currently have my content scheduled out 1-2 weeks in advance, I do find myself getting behind on this more often than I would like. In fact, my goal is to have content pre-scheduled for at least 3 months moving into 2020. If I can accomplish this, it would really free up my time to work on other projects/ideas of mine (and one being a membership site I plan on launching). This is a good strategy for many bloggers who still juggle a regular day job and can help them feel liberated instead of a slave to their website.

How was your October 2019?

That wraps up this month’s report!

If you are new to these blogging reports, please be sure to follow the journey by visiting/saving my page here, or you can subscribe to my YouTube channel where I post monthly updates as well.

How was your October 2019?

Welcome to another blogging report, this time for August 2019.

In August, I was able to get back to my normal content generation routine and publish blog articles on a more consistent basis.

As stated in my last blogging report, July 2019 I didn’t publish as much content as I would have liked.

Now that summer is coming to an end, my schedule has opened up a bit more and I am able to get back into a better blogging rhythm.

This should help with more organic growth and traffic in the coming months.

With all that being said, I saw some good results in August 2019, so let’s jump right into the data!

Organic Traffic (August 2019)- 218 Visits

Organic traffic for August 2019 came in at 218 visits and I saw a nice increase when comparing year-over-year.

Let’s take a look at the specifics below:

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

Year-over-year my organic traffic increased by 61.48% (218 visits vs. 135 visits).

You can see both in 2018 and 2019 of August that this is a month that I notice a very slight dip in organic traffic when compared to the previous month.

I’ve learned that this has been a trend in my organic blog traffic the past two years, so I wasn’t totally surprised.

It’s important to identify trends on your own website, this way you have expectations on how your data may come in during certain months/time periods.

Every niche will have differences in terms of “slow down periods”, so it’s important that you dig into your Google Analytics to gain more insight.

The screenshot below shows my long-term organic traffic chart (plotted monthly).

The next screenshot shows us the daily plot points comparing August 2019 (blue line) versus August 2018 (orange line).

You can see I started off the beginning of August 2019 really strong and then slowed down a tad towards the end of the month.

Nonetheless, my year-over-year increase in organic traffic was evident.

 

 

61.48% is a good amount to grow in a year and I’m looking forward to the fall months coming up to keep things moving in the right direction.

Below are a few areas that I will be focusing on!

Next Blogging, SEO & YouTube Steps Moving into the Fall

The fall months really are an excellent time to get ahead of blog, content, SEO and YouTube work as things tend to slow down and the weather gets cooler here in Connecticut. A few next steps will be:

1.) Publish 4 Blog Posts Monthly at Minimum

Throughout the life of this blog, I’ve had periods where I’ve published 4 or more articles per month to my website…and other times where I was only able to get 2 or less articles published. I’ve definitely noticed surges in my organic traffic when I am on a consistent content schedule of 4 plus articles per month. Make sure to not sacrifice quality just to publish more content. You should strive for everything that you put out to be of the highest quality.

2.) Build Fresh Backlinks

I definitely want to focus on building fresh backlinks for my website by researching/generating a list of quality guest post opportunities to reach out to. If you are running a newer blog, I recently uploaded a video on building backlinks through guest posting that may be worth a watch. I have many content ideas that I’d like to get published on external websites within my niche through guest posting. Remember that building links in this manner is also an awesome strategy to increase your overall reach and generate more brand awareness.

3.) Transcribe 4-5 YouTube Videos Per Month

I’ve been focusing on better optimizing my YouTube channel lately and realized that I really needed to start transcribing all my videos properly into text (both new videos coming out and older content). I believe this will provide me with an SEO boost overtime on my channel and a better overall experience for my viewers. YouTube will automatically transcribe your videos, but many times these can be very inaccurate. I recommend exploring different methods to transcribe your YouTube videos into text so there are no glaring errors. I use a service called Rev.com which is both accurate and inexpensive. My goal is to transcribe 4-5 videos per month going forward, so that all of my YouTube content contains proper closed captioning.

How was your August 2019?

That wraps up this month’s report!

If you are new to these blogging reports, please be sure to follow the journey by visiting/saving my page here, or you can subscribe to my YouTube channel to stay up to date.

I hope these reports are helpful, insightful and motivate you to keep pushing in the right direction.

How was your August 2019?

When you start gaining some traction in the search engines and have articles ranked on page #1 of Google, this can provide your website with targeted traffic for months and years to come.

I remember when I first got my blog started, it seemed like it took forever to get any consistent traffic coming into my website.

Now with over 190 articles published on my blog and many of them ranked in Google, I’m able to reap the benefits of work I did weeks, months and even years ago.

I really noticed this when I was on vacation this summer and was passively generating traffic, emails leads and coaching inquiries.

Boy do I love blogging!

And this was all without physically having to be on my computer.

July 2019 was a pretty busy month for me yet my blog was still able to produce noticeable growth when comparing year-over-year.

Let’s jump into the metrics for this month’s blogging report.

Organic Traffic (July 2019)- 238 Visits

Organic traffic for July 2019 came in at 238 visits which is both an increase when comparing month-over-month and year-over-year.

As I’ve stated in many blogging reports, you won’t always see month-over-month increases and that’s totally normal.

Really keep your focus on the longer-term and year-over-year data instead.

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

When looking at my organic traffic year-over-year, my blog saw an increase of 41.67% (238 visits vs. 168 visits).

Is this an astronomical increase?

No…but nonetheless, I am still very happy with a 41.67% increase.

It’s important that you celebrate small wins when it comes to blogging if you want to continue experiencing organic growth.

This has been essential for my own motivation and persistence.

In the screenshot below, we can see exactly where I was 1 year prior.

 

The next screenshot shows my year-over-year increases as well from a different angle.

The blue line represents organic traffic for July 2019 and the orange line represents organic traffic for July 2018 (plotted daily).

Now that I’ve consistently hit over 200 organic visits for the past 7 months or so, my next goal is to crack 300 monthly organic visits (consistently) as we start approaching 2020.

To get there, I will focus on the work laid out below.

Next Steps to Crack 300 Organic Monthly Visits

You’ll notice that many of my next steps and goals can be repetitive from month to month but with SEO, a lot of these strategies need to be an on-going proccess. Once in a while I will adopt new tactics, but for the most part you need to keep doing what’s working for your website.

Two main areas I will be focusing on will include:

1.) Updating Old Blog Posts

I’ve recently browsed through some of my older blog articles and noticed that some of them can use a total revamp. When doing this, I also identified opportunities where I can add internal links to give a few of my newer articles a nice boost in search engine rankings (be sure to read my article on internal linking for SEO here to understand the importance of this). Updating older articles with fresh/relevant content can oftentimes produce spikes in rankings and organic traffic. Google loves seeing webmasters update old and outdated content. This is a win-win strategy to keep your readers happy and to gain more exposure in the search results.

2.) Writing Comprehensive Content

I’ve noticed my articles that really cover a subject in its entirety tend to perform the best in the search results and are also appreciated by new/returning visitors of my website. Writing comprehensive content of 1,000 words or longer is a great habit to get into if you’re a blogger. Not every article has to meet this word count, but make sure to weave in this type of in-depth content into your overall content generation strategy. Google more than ever is looking for really detailed and valuable content to recommend to users.

How was your July 2019?

That about wraps up this month’s blogging report.

If you’re new to these articles, make sure to visit my page here to follow my blogging journey.

I’m hoping that sharing exactly what’s working for me will provide you with actionable steps that you can implement on your own website.

How was your July 2019?

Being involved with Internet Marketing since 2007, I’ve definitely noticed for certain industries that traffic can tend to slow down around the summertime.

Normally I either see plateaus (month-over-month) or am down slightly (month-over-month) in organic traffic when looking at May, June, July and August.

Yes, this can be discouraging, but no need to freak out!

This is why I always remind people to look at their year-over-year trends as well…Which is a much better way to gauge the overall growth of a website overtime.

Expecting to always see increases month-over-month will most likely leave you quite disappointed and isn’t the best metric to go by when analyzing your organic traffic.

If you are in the green in terms of organic traffic when comparing year-over-year, then this means you’re heading in the right direction.

This longer-term view is a more realistic and accurate way to measure how your website is performing as a whole.

With blogging and SEO in general, you must remain patient and be willing to deal with monthly fluctuation both with search engine rankings and organic traffic.

Just keep producing quality content, optimize your posts and stay consistent.

With that out of the way, let’s jump into some of my traffic data for June 2019.

Organic Traffic (June 2019)- 224 Visits

Organic traffic for June 2019 came in at 224 visits.

Again, not my highest month all-time and a slight dip compared to last month, but that doesn’t deter me!

I am still up noticeably when comparing year-over-year (see data below):

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

When comparing year-over-year my organic traffic is still up 32.54% (224 visits vs. 169 visits).

Below is a screenshot from my Google Analytics account that plots both June 2019 and June 2018.

This long-term chart is my favorite to look at as it shows me where I was when I started my blog (with ZERO organic traffic) and where I am today.

Be proud of the progress you make on your website, no matter how small the growth is.

This will give you motivation to keep pushing forward.

The chart below now gives us a look at my growth from a different angle.

The blue line represents organic traffic in June 2019 and the orange line represents organic traffic in June 2018.

I’ll be honest, being up 32.54% has not been my biggest year-over-year increase thus far, but nonetheless I’m still trending in the right direction.

I also took a little time off recently (due to being busier than normal) as discussed in my last blogging report video here.

Next Steps/Goals for the Coming Months

1.) Get Ahead of My Content Schedule

Since I haven’t been able to put the time into my blog as I normally do over the last month or so, I really plan on getting back on track and even way ahead of schedule. This is a goal that every blogger should try to acheive. Having content prepared and scheduling it well in advance is one of the smartest things you can do for your blogging business. Whenever I am ahead of my content schedule, it allows me to focus on other aspects of my business whether that be blog graphics, creating YouTube videos, link building, coaching/consulting etc. The great thing about WordPress is that it’s very easy to schedule your posts weeks or even months in advance. Take advantage and try to get ahead of schedule, like I will be doing.

2.) Build More Quality Backlinks

I have a bunch of blog posts right on the edge of ranking really well in Google. Some of these are at the middle to bottom of page #1 of Google. If I can drive these rankings to the top 1-3 positions on page #1 of Google, it would really help drive more targeted traffic to my website. I plan on improving these rankings through additional link building work such as guest posting. I need to build links to both my homepage and the specific blog posts that are on the cusp of ranking well. By increasing the overall authority of my website/pages, this should help me climb further up the ladder.

How was your June 2019?

That wraps up this month’s blogging report!

The key takeaway here is to not get discouraged if you see some monthly fluctuation.

Remember to look at your data over the long-term and compare year-over-year.

Keep your work consistent and always strive to provide as much value as possible to your readers.

How was your June 2019?

If you’d like to follow my monthly blogging reports I recommend visiting and saving this link here.

I realize I’m a little behind on my blogging reports, so I’ve decided to combine both April 2019 and May 2019 into one post here.

The past few months have been abnormally busy for me, but I plan to get back on track starting this month!

With that being said, I continue to see positive growth despite me not being able to put as much work into my website as of lately.

This goes to show you that blogging combined with proper SEO is a true asset that can work for you at all times.

Now let’s get into the data.

Organic Traffic for April & May 2019

April 2019 and May 2019 were two of my highest months all-time in terms of organic traffic (see screenshot below).

April 2019 came in at 342 organic visits and May 2019 came in at 266 organic visits.

The long term chart above really shows the organic growth overtime with my blog.

Although at times it has been super slow, you have to keep pushing forward in order to eventually see breakthroughs or hit certain traffic goals.

We all know that blogging is not an overnight process.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases

Comparing your data year-over-year really gives you a good gauge to how your blogging efforts are paying off. Let’s take a look at year-over-year comparisons for both April 2019 and May 2019 below:

• Organic traffic when comparing April 2019 versus April 2018 is up 147.83% (342 visits vs. 138 visits)
• Organic traffic when comparing May 2019 versus May 2018 is up 56.47% (266 visits vs. 170 visits)

Here’s a look into both April & May 2019 compared to April & May 2018 (combined organic traffic is up 97.40% year-over-year – 608 vs. 308 visits):

Next Steps for Driving More Traffic

The summertime in general tends to be a little bit slower for my blog. Knowing this and also knowing that I haven’t put in enough time as of recently, I will be really upping my content generation and overall SEO work. Two areas I will focus on in particular over the coming months are below:

1.) More Consistency in my Content Generation

Now that my schedule has opened up a bit, I really plan on getting back into a good rhythm of consistent and quality content generation. I have a lot of good topics on the way that I think will really help my readers and new visitors that come to my website. Remember, always focus on creating value with your content so you can build a strong relationship and bond with your readers. Some of my future topics are actual questions that I’ve been asked recently that I feel will make great topics!

2.) Hammer the Link Building

I am overdue to build natural and quality links to my website since I’ve been a bit behind in general lately. I will be looking for relevant guest post opportunities in my niche to get both my content and website link published on other authoritative websites. Guest posting is a great way to spread your message, gain more exposure and build quality backlinks to your website. Link building is really important if you want to improve your keyword rankings within Google (and stay there). This can be a great way to noticeably increase your organic traffic and build connections with other bloggers in the process.

Conclusion

As bloggers, we all experience times where we are not able to put in as much time as we’d like to on our website. The past couple of months was one of those phases for me. However, one of the benefits of blogging is that once in a while you can truly take time off and still see organic growth (as I’ve demonstrated in this blogging report). This is why blogging is unique and by no means do you have to be a slave to it. Just make sure that after some time off, you hit the ground running again with fresh ideas, inspiration and valuable content for your readers!

How was your April and May 2019?