Related read: November 2016 Traffic Report
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December 2016 Blog Stats
- Sessions: 6,616 (+63.20%)
- Users: 4,984 (+60.31%)
- Pageviews: 8,502 (+48.64%)
- Pages/Sessions: 1.29 (-8.51%)
- % of New Sessions: 67.23% (+0.46%)
- Bounce Rate: 85.16% (+5.36%)
In November I started seeing my Session, User, and Pageview site stats trend down after seeing some good increases in October. My initial thought is it had to be a result of the upcoming holiday season. That thought ended when I looked at my final December site stats. My Session, User, and Pageview stats all when up month-over-month and even when compared to October.
In addition to seeing the month-over-month change, I compared my November and December 2016 stats to November and December in 2015. When I saw the numbers I was like “this isn’t even a fair comparison”. I was getting next to no traffic in 2015. It was so little traffic that my Pageviews increased over 796% year-over-year. Really crazy. I can’t want to see what the increase from 2016 to 2017 will be.
Related read: Using Google Analytics to Improve My Blog
December 2016 Top 5 Blog Posts
- How to Keep Relaxed Hair Moisturized in the Winter
- I’ve Thrown Protective Styling Out the Window
- Hair Tip: Pre-poo Before Cleansing Chemically-treated Hair
- How to Create Blog Graphics with Canva
- 5 Ways to Avoid Relaxed Hair Breakage
December 2016 Top 4 Traffic Drivers
- Direct
December 2016 Social Media Stats
- Bloglovin: 88 (+1)
- Facebook (page likes): 80 (+9)
- Google+: 61 (0)
- Instagram: 288 (+4)
- Pinterest: 1,619 (+50)
- Twitter: 390 (+9)
- YouTube: 54 (+1)
While I didn’t have any net losses overall December wasn’t a great month for social growth. With Pinterest, I saw several people unfollow me, but I’m pretty sure those were spam accounts so I’m not upset about losing them.
Also with Pinterest, my month-over-month net followers were the lowest they’ve been since the beginning of the year. This is probably mostly due to the fact that I wasn’t pinning new content consistently. I’m still using BoardBooster, but earlier in the month I ran out of new pins on my secret boards so there would be days BoardBooster was only looping older content from my boards.
I also had small net increases for Instagram and Twitter which I think can be partly attributed to having people follow then unfollow me when I don’t follow them back. Get ready, I’m putting a disclosure out there - just because you follow me doesn’t mean I will follow you back.
Facebook was probably the only bright spot as I continue to see increased page likes there and have started to see a little more engagement from my followers in the form of posts likes.
How I Did With My December Goals
Grow my pageviews to 6,800 - YESMy total pageviews in December was 8,502. This is despite me not putting much effort into social media promotion. The only reason I met the goal was I had a pin go viral on Pinterest in December which helped to boost my traffic. The pin was for my post How to Keep Relaxed Hair Moisturized in the Winter. During December that pin received over
- 927,000 impressions
- 984 clicks
- 1,301 saves
Because the How to Keep Relaxed Hair Moisturized in the Winter pin went viral it contributed to the 75% increase in average daily impressions and the 97% increase in my average daily viewers.
Continue improving my SEO - KINDA
I couldn’t give myself a yes or no on this one. On one hand, I optimized more than 20 posts this month. On the other hand, I didn’t see my SEO increase month-over-month. It actually decreased slightly. This is something that I intend to work on over the next few months.
Complete my January content calendar - YES
January is all planned out and most of my content is written/created and scheduled. I just have a couple of January posts I need to finish and create graphics for. It’s really exciting to know that I’m a month ahead. I just hope I keep up the momentum
Start my February content calendar - YES
I’m almost finished with planning February and have even started on planning content for March. Additionally, I’ve written and scheduled some of the February content already.
Well, that’s it for 2016. Wow. I can’t believe how quickly the year flew by. Now that we’re moving into a new year I won’t be sharing monthly goals for January in this report. Instead, I’ll be doing a full post on my 2017 site and business goals. So each month I’ll be sharing updates on how I’m tracking against my yearly goals and not set separate monthly ones.
How did your blog fare in December?
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