First, I’d like to greet everyone with a Happy 2021! The best news is 2020 is over and if you’re reading this, I hope that you, your family and friends, and everyone close to you (including your pets) are all doing fine.
2020 has been very difficult for most of us. It’s a very challenging year and I’m so glad that it’s over. And since today is the beginning of a new quarter, I’m here to share with you guys my Q4 2020 Blogging Report.
A Brief Background
To those who are new to my blog, I started this blog last May 2019 and one of the things that I want to share is the performance of this blog and what I have been doing to keep on improving this. I’d like to share the ups and downs of this blog so fellow bloggers could hopefully learn from what works and what didn’t work in my blogging journey.
If you’re interested to read my past blogging reports, just click on the links below:
- First Year Blog Anniversary – Lessons and Surprises
- Q2 2020 Blogging Report – Blog Improvements
- Q3 2020 Blogging Report – Stalled in Q3 and Wake Up Call
Amazing Traffic Jump
Traffic jumped from 4377 users in Q3 to 17,829 users in Q4. I know it’s not a big number compared to bigger blogs out there, but for me, it’s already quite huge since I don’t do this full-time and that there were months that I didn’t touch this blog. My main gig is online selling and I do blogging on the side to keep myself focus on my financial goals.
Anyway, going back to the topic, I wasn’t expecting this huge jump in traffic but I’m so glad that it did. It means that my articles are getting indexed and people find value in what I write
Here’s a snapshot of this blog’s performance last Q3:
And here’s a snapshot of this blog’s performance this Q4:
Blog Inputs
I have written fewer articles in the past two quarters mainly because I have been so busy with my main hustle which is online selling. And again, there were months when I didn’t write anything at all.
Q3 Number of Articles
- July: 4
- August: 0
- September: 0
Q4 Number of Articles
- October: 6
- November: 4
- December: 8
My goal was to write at least 2 articles per week so that’s 8 articles per month and I only met that goal in December. I have decided to change my schedule so I can manage both my blogging goals and my online selling deliverables.
I also have not posted anything new on Pinterest and that’s something that I want to improve on as well this 2021.
What Works for This Blog
In the past 1 year and 7 months of blogging (minus 11 months of total inactivity LOL!), I can attribute the growth to the following:
Longtail Keywords
Longtail keywords just basically mean keywords with a lot of words in them. For example, if I’m going to focus on the keywords “credit cards”, it will be close to impossible for me to rank in Google. I will be definitely outranked by the bank’s websites and other major players in the financial industry targetting this keyword.
However, if I’m going to target longtail keywords such as “travel credit cards in the Philippines“ then I’ll have a better chance of competing against bigger websites in the SERPs.
To be honest, when I was first reading about this, it sounded so complicated, but when I actually did it, it’s actually not. It’s not rocket science.
Helpful Content
Targetting keywords is enough to reach new readers but helpful content makes them stay. I learned this from online selling. One of the keys to making something successful is to retain your customers. In blogging, it translates to retaining your readers or audience. If people find your content helpful, then they will keep on coming back.
Interlinking Articles
I don’t have much traffic success yet from social media, but I’m noticing that readers are clicking on my other articles linked to their article entry point. This is a simple thing that you can do to help improve your pageviews. This is also helpful to your overall SEO.
Areas for Improvement
High Bounce Rate
I have read that the bounce rate should be at least 70% or lower for older blogs and 80% or lower for newer blogs. My bounce rate is always hovering around 80% – 85% which is not good.
It means that users are just skimming through my post and just closing it afterward. I have to improve my engagement and I have to improve my writing style to make it more engaging to readers.
Low Average Session Duration
Again, this is something that I want to improve on. I find that 1 minute is quite fast to read an article with more than one thousand words. It also boils down again to improving reader engagement.
Diversify Source of Traffic
My main source of traffic is Google and if Google doesn’t want my content anymore then I’m doomed LOL!
I want to build other sources of traffic such as Pinterest and other social media and this is something that I plan to improve on in 2021.
Consistent Production of High-Quality Articles
This is something that I have been falling behind on consistently in the past 6 months. As I have mentioned above, I targeted 2 articles per week or 8 articles per month. Unfortunately, I only met this target last December 2020.
Monetization
Aside from Adsense, and some affiliate links from Amazon and other products and services here in my country, I don’t have a clear plan yet on monetization. The good news though is, as traffic grew in 2020 so is the Adsense revenue.
It’s not that much though, it’s still just at the level of just a few cents per day. But, it’s better than nothing I guess and it’s also a proof of concept.
I have decided to put on hold my goal to monetize this blog (except for the Adsense ads) until I get to consistently write high-quality articles. I’m inspired by one of the PF bloggers that I follow on Twitter.
Don’t stress about how to have a successful year.
Instead, focus on how you can optimize your schedule and your habits to have a successful week.
Then, repeat that week 52 times.
The successful year will take care of itself.
— Four Pillar Freedom (@4PillarFreedom) December 31, 2020
If you are not following him yet on Twitter, I suggest that you do so.
Overall 2020 Blog Performance
The blog is slowly climbing the traffic chart and I’m so happy about it.
Here’s a snapshot of its 2020’s users/traffic performance:
Final Thoughts and My Blogging Plan for 2021
I have some new content ideas for 2021 and I’m very excited about them. My overall goal is still the same, and that is to continuously grow the traffic of this blog and to improve my writing skills. Hopefully, after 2021, I will have a better idea of monetization. But for now, my main focus is to keep on writing SEO-optimized, high-quality content that people will find very useful.
Thank you to everyone who has visited my blog and I’m wishing you all a very Happy and Prosperous 2021!
Q4 2020 Blogging Report - 400% Traffic Jump from Q3 Click To TweetRelated Posts:
Congrats on the 400% traffic increase over last quarter, TH! Your numbers are interesting in that your users are higher than mine, but my page views are higher. I guess that’s because most of your traffic is SEO. Most of my traffic has come from Twitter and Pinterest in the past. But SEO is starting to outperform social. Also, it sounds like you should be earning more than pennies per day with Adsense based on your page views. You could consider an plugin to automatically display ads for you. Before Monumetric, that seems to increase my Adsense income. Once you pass 10,000 page views in a month, you could consider applying for Monumetric to get your RPM in the $2 to $5 range per 1,000 page views. And thanks for your thoughts on long tail keywords. That’s something I can improve on this year too. Wish you all the best in 2021 man! Keep up the great work! 🙂
Hi Graham,
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, my traffic does not come from US, Canada and UK. One of the requirements of Monumetric is that 50% of traffic should come from those countries. Perhaps the cost of ads varies per geographic region?
A high bounce rate isn’t an indicator of a problem, especially if your traffic is coming from organic search.
It means the readers are getting the information they’re looking for, satisfied with the answer, and bouncing. It means you did the job.
A high bounce rate doesn’t necessarily mean a bad thing so no worries there!
Thanks David. I guess I’m just hoping that they could also check out other articles as well while they’re here. LOL!