SideGains February 2020 Blog Traffic Stats

I’m posting the SideGains February 2020 blog traffic stats report: my 8th! 8 months of hard work, blood (not quite), sweat (certainly) and tears (not tears really but certainly moments of blogger burnout).

On the whole, February shows good growth compared to my January 2020 Blog Traffic Stats Report. I made less posts in February (I’ll explain more below) but worked harder on Pinterest (again, I’ll explain below).

Anyway… here are the blog traffic stats for February 2020!

If you’re interested, you can find all my monthly reports here: SideGains Blog Traffic Stats.

February 2020 Blog Traffic Stats from Google Analytics

It’s been another month of growth for visitors. Although you can see my visitor numbers are still small, month-on-month growth continues. SideGains is still a relatively young blog… and it’s going to take time to build traffic to high enough levels before I’ll start to earn from it.

Looking specifically at January 2020 and comparing it to February 2020, Google Analytics shows the following:

• Users have increased by +31.6%.
• Sessions have increased by +16.29%.
• Pages Per Session has decreased by +0.05 pages.

This is quite a jump percentage-wise, especially considering February is a short month… albeit we’re in a leap year this year. This means I’m comparing a month which has 2 days less than the previous month, so it’s even more reason to be happy to see the +31.6% increase in visitors.

I believe there would have been an even greater percentage growth with two more days in the month!

SideGains Search Console Stats (Search Type: Web) February 2020

So… Google Search Console showed some movement for Web searches in February compared to January.

• Clicks have increased by +10.6%.
• Impressions have increased by +1.59%.
• Average CTR has increased by +0.1 percentage points.
• Average Position has increased by 3.9 places.

Good to see growth reflected here to… but the Google Search Console stats are indicators for me: I rely on Google Analytics for more precise data analysis.

What do I mean by this?

Well… let’s take the Impressions and Avg. Position stats for keywords appearing in Google searches: on their own they don’t mean much.

Because I’m adding new content each month, I would naturally expect to see more impressions. My new posts would add different keyword combinations into the mix, which I would expect to get impressions from. It’s not necessarily the case that my existing posts generate more impressions through those pages appearing higher in the search results.

In terms of Avg. Position, this too could be affected by a number of things other than existing posts ranking higher overall for searches triggering impressions.

It’s only by drilling down into individual search terms and monitoring them over time that the relationship between Avg. Position and impressions becomes clearer.

I can say that there are improvements in terms of keyword position for specific search queries… but I’m not providing that type of analysis here!

So… for the purposes of this report, my Google Search Console stats remain indicators of growth!

Blog Posts & Pages

The shorter month means I’ve had two less day with which to post… I would likely have added one more post with more time.

Here are all the posts I made in February 2020.

At the end of February I have a total of 109 posts. I made 9 posts in February 2020 (5 less than January 2020) totalling 13,284 words (6,071 less).

Social Media

I’ve been very focused on Pinterest in February… more so than previous months. I’m still active in Twitter (considerably) and Facebook (less so) and leaving Instagram for the moment.

Below are my stats broken down by social media channel.

Twitter – @gains_side

You can see I was far less active in Twitter in February in terms of Tweets. This is largely down to focusing more on Pinterest: there are only so many hours in the day!

I’m a little disappointed with myself to be honest though. I have a very soft-spot for Twitter and am connecting with people I really enjoy corresponding with… this month will be different since I am in a good routine with Pinterest now having got through the main teething problems.

One thing that is interesting to recognize though is that although I Tweeted around 1/5 of the number of Tweets compared to January, impressions did not drop in a directly linear way.

It may mean nothing, but it’s interesting as I say.

Pinterest – @SideGains

Big changes in Pinterest for me. I began trialling Tailwind in January, and having been suitably impressed with how easy it’s made life for me since, decided to pay the yearly subscription.

I’m now able to schedule pins much more simply and quickly, and on top of this I’ve joined some Tailwind Communities to share other’s pins that I feel will be useful to people who follow me.

Which leads me rather neatly on to followers!

Using Tailwind and pinning more frequently has seen the biggest “organic” increase in followers since I opened my Pinterest account.

What do I mean when I say organic?

I mean I haven’t actively followed other people as I have done in previous months. My Pinterest follower growth has occurred simply through publishing more Pins and people finding me as a result. This hasn’t been something I’ve cynically stopped doing… I just haven’t had the time with all the other plates I’ve been trying to spin.

March will see me being more active in terms of finding other great accounts to connect with.

Instagram – @SideGains

I still haven’t figured out what I’m doing with Instagram for SideGains and to be honest, I can only do so much.

For now I’m focussing only on Twitter and Pinterest and when I have gained ground in these areas I’ll revisit Instagram.

Facebook – @SideGains

As with Instagram, Facebook is not my primary focus. I’m keeping it ticking over only so it’s no surprise there’s been little growth in terms of Page Views and Follows.

I plan to keep Facebook on the back-burner for now until I’ve gotten Pinterest scheduling properly up and running.

What’s Next for March 2020?

February was a good month in terms of visitor percentage growth on January. So what am I planning for March to keep things on the up?

• Set Tailwind Pinterest pinning schedule for a month in advance.
• At least 14 posts on SideGains.
• More regular Tweeting (and scheduling of Tweets). I’ll use TweetDeck (Twitter’s scheduling tool) for this.
• A new WordPress theme. In recent weeks I’ve felt that my theme needs to look more professional than it does. right now. The theme I’ve used up to now is MH Themes “MH Newsdesk”. I like it but I want a more blogger-specific theme at this point.

Bye for now and thanks for reading!

Paul

I’d love to hear about how things are going for you. Drop me a comment and let’s compare our blog traffic stats!