How I Increased my traffic by 10,000 monthly views (and hit Mediavine levels)

Hi everyone, today I wanted to do a quick post to blog about finally hitting Mediavine’s traffic requirements! Now I appreciate not everyone is into the type of posts about traffic stats, and, to be honest-they’re not my cup of tea all the time either. I don’t agree with random targets for the sake of it- but this time my goal was for a specific passive income.

For those of you who don’t know- Mediavine is an advertising networking that has strict entry requirements-25,000 sessions per month (a session is not the same as a page-view FYI); so I’d set myself this as the goal of meeting this by the end of the year on my main blog-A Balanced Belly.

I do make some money from this blog through sponsored posts but the thought of having a more regular, passive income did definitely appeal to me. Now, I’ve not actually been accepted yet (since you have to provide screenshots and send over additional information to be approved by their advertisers) but since I hit the milestone, I thought you’d still be interested in what I did!

In January, my sessions were hovering around 16,000; and on the day I submitted my stats to Mediavine-they were 26,200! So let’s break down the steps I took to get there! A side-note:a lot of this is explained in much more detail in my ebook ‘Your Blog Growth Toolkit’; so definitely check that out too!

1.Studied my most popular Pins and tried to replicate them

One thing I tried to do is to look at content and pins that had done well in the past. One of my most popular posts is a ‘gut health smoothie recipe’  so when I accidentally created one of my favourite soup recipes-I decided to follow a similar formula and called it my ‘gut rest and repair soup.’  I made sure I linked to both recipes in each post; and paid close attention to my pin for my smoothie recipe-using a similar style and description text for my soup one! It worked and quickly brought in 1000 additional views for several days in a row! For more on Pinterest, my ‘how I get 400 page views a day from Pinterest’ post may help.

2. Tried to engage with my Facebook page

I have almost hit 5000 views on my Facebook page and it’s been a slog! But talking to my readers and asking what content they’d like (by voting) has been really useful (I even went back to each reader who voted to share the post was now live when I’d finished!). I also used Lumen 5 to bring my blog content to life for Facebook! Another great tip for getting engagement on facebook pages is giveaway-either do them on your page or have a separate category on your blog (like this example here) of weekly giveaways. Giveaways can be a great traffic boost if you just need to push your traffic over the tipping point.

3. Asked for help!

Once I could see the sessions edging closer, I reached my support network of bloggers! I simply asked if they could help share my content, and I’d reciprocate back. Now I know there are dedicated Facebook groups that do this but I often find the bloggers involved are such a mix that my content wasn’t really reaching the right people (and I ended up sharing some really random stuff myself). So I reached out to the specific niche facebook groups I’m in such as one for gluten-free bloggers-and explained the situation. Of course, it helped I regularly take the time to share others blog content too (and didn’t just ask without helping in return).

4. Blogged super quickly

So I ended up ripping up the rule book and didn’t plan my posts. Instead, my blogging became spontaneous and I tried to get content up within a few hours of posting. For example,I shared a rant about gluten-free eating on Facebook which got lots of response-so I dashed home to write-up a full blog post to add to the post. It reminded me of a time when I’d whip out my laptop when inspiration truly struck; and it definitely helped my traffic!

5.Interlinked throughout and at the bottom of each post

As you might know, I also write for Metro Online-and one of the things I’m always reminded to do there is to link to relevant posts at the bottom of my articles. I realised I’m quite good at interlinking in my own blog postsl but rarely guide the reader on what to do next once they’ve finished reading! So I’ve started to personalise this-and include one or two recommendations (with images) on what to read next. There are plugins that do this; but I find this way much more effective and targetted!

So that’s my five top tips! As I mentioned at the start of the post, I kept chronicling all my strategies as I used them and have turned them into my ebook: The Blogging Toolkit: Everything you need to grow your blog in 2018. And before I go thought I’d just share a little testimonial from the lovely Rachel from Rocking 2 Stomas who purchased and shared this: ‘I bought Jenna’s ebook and audit-one of my goals was to reach 5000 page views. The last few months I’ve been around 3,500 page views but after following her suggestions the last 3 weeks; I am at 5025 views and my DA has increased to 23!’

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