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5 Tips On How To Set Traffic Goals For Yourself

IFB » Traffic and SEO » 5 Tips On How To Set Traffic Goals For Yourself

Higher traffic on your blog means a greater possibility of making your blog a self sustaining business. So, what's the magic formula behind getting higher numbers? There's a myriad of things you need to do, but one way to grow your reach is by setting tangible traffic goals for yourself. Here's how to strategize:

1. Set concrete numbers to hit for both your blog traffic and social media followers.

Just having a vague idea of “I want to have more traffic” won't do anything, but if you set a numerical goal for yourself, you can work on gaining more followers in a formulaic and mathematical way. Make sure you are setting numbers that you can actually hit — for instance, if you have 40 page views daily, it's most likely that won't have 2,000 page views daily by next week. The same goes with larger blogs, 27,000 page views daily this week won't mean a million the next. Pick numbers that make sense, but are also challenging.

Example: If you have 10,000 daily page views, try to hit 11,000 a day seven days from now. That's a 10% increase — a tangible and reachable number. If you continue this every week, your site will only keep growing!

Give yourself a high five every time you reach your goal, and if you don't reach your goal, figure out why. Was the goal to high? Or did you post less content? What can be adjusted so you can achieve your desired number by the next week?

2. Make a spreadsheet to keep track of your growth and your potential growth.

Write down your current numbers, along with short term goals and long term goals. Say your goal is to hit a total of one million page views on your site within the next year, calculate how many page views you would need every day to reach this goal. Then ask yourself, “is this goal possible?” If you think it is, plan your trajectory accordingly.

3. Check your traffic every day.

This should seem obvious, but sometimes when you're blogging you can get caught up in your content and forget to check your stats. If you are below your daily stats, you can try to make it up the next day.

Example: Your daily goal (based on your long term goal) was 700 page views, but you only hit 620. Tomorrow, your goal should be 780 to make up for the loss you suffered the day before. You may need to use social media more or beef up your content that day to make up the gap.

4. Write down which posts do the best, and which ones do the worst.

Have you ever experienced a spike in traffic? What about that day made your traffic go up? Did someone retweet you? Was it a certain accessory you talked about? Did you change the style in which you presented your post? Using your analytics tools, hone in on which posts have had the best traffic and which posts have had the lowest traffic. Then use these numbers to quantify what to repeat and what to avoid when you are publishing your content.

5. Keep a list of anything you notice that has hurt or helped your traffic.

Did you work with a brand or a fellow blogger and it boosted your stats? Or perhaps you uploaded a really great photo on Instagram? Or is there a certain key word that drives traffic to you? Keep a list of what affects your blog and how to stay in tune with what resonates with your readers and what doesn't — this will be most helpful in the long run.

32 Responses

Zoobia July 24, 2012

This is great! I’ll admit, I’m a little bit obsessed with checking my traffic everyday. I like to see where my traffic comes from, and which posts attract the most visits. I’ve never actually set a tangible goal though; I’m usually content with aiming to do better than the day before. I’m going to set some goals, spread the word, and see what happens.

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nikkistyle™ July 24, 2012

Great tips! (#5 is really important)

Best,
Nikki

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matthew July 24, 2012

Great article although at the moment I’d be happy with 10 page views a week that’s 520 a year, that’s one hell of a way a million but 10% every week and one day might get there!!

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Jade July 24, 2012

Great idea’s! I’m going to set a goal for daily visits and also for my Twitter & Facebook followers & likers 🙂 I already check each week to see what post’s have received the most views and then plan my posts accordingly which really helps lift my stats! I WILL make a success out of my blog (although I’m still going to love blogging even if I don’t make my goals).

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Myrna July 24, 2012

Thanks for posting this one! My traffic isn’t that great and whats weird is the outfits I put together that I feel will generate traffic NEVER does! These are realistic tips and I wil have to try ! I rarely look at my traffic I’ll have to check it so I can set my goals! Thanks again

XX-Myrna

Http://mybeatboutique.blogspot.com

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Krystal K. July 24, 2012

This was a very helpful post! Keeping a spreadsheet is a great idea. I just started mine!

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bestofbklyn July 24, 2012

This is great advice- I really appreciate the practicality of your points! Will definitely be implementing these in my goal-setting!

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Heather July 25, 2012

Traffic is really a difficult goal because so much of it seems rather random. For instance, I decided to up my twitter interaction to boost my traffic. Low and behold after a couple days there was a big jump in traffic! But it wasn’t twitter that brought the traffic, just more people searching on google and finding my blog.

On the other hand increasing my posting frequency has helped improve traffic, and working on improving the SEO of my posts seems to be making a difference too. I think brainstorming the ways you might increase traffic are more important to improving traffic than just making goals. It’s the way you implement the goals that is important.

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Becky Bedbug July 25, 2012

I always check my stats to see patterns. I’ve seen that Sundays are really good for me but I have a mid-week dip. So I can see that I need to work on content mid-week.

Becky
http://www.beckybedbug.com

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TheAsiaMonique July 25, 2012

Excellent tips!

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ZhenyaH July 25, 2012

I’ve been doing this for my blog, and to be honest I am a little obsessed with checking my traffic, wordpress makes it so easy, it’s right there in the stats. It’s also always fun to see what countries the readers are from! What’s been working for me is posting regularly (I do monday-friday at 9 am ET). But I also think that summer is a slow season 🙂

Zhenya

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Chloe July 25, 2012

Great tips! One question though, how exactly can you consistently boost traffic? Should I be using a new social media tool every week or something like that?

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- Jay July 26, 2012
  
  I think it’s a mix of social media and the ‘ripple effect’! People who love it will recommend it!
  
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Jay July 26, 2012

Thanks! I’ve been afraid to make goals because I’m afraid of not meeting them, but I’ve realized in the last few weeks that you have to make those goals for a reason to push myself!

Jay

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Maria Losch July 26, 2012

I’m obsessed with checking my analytics to see what keywords drive people to my blog. It’s so fascinating to see what ticks and what doesn’t. I still believe in SEO, tags and keywords. They do help. All these are great tips, thanks!
xo, Maria
http://savvynista.com

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Ms. Toni July 27, 2012

I’ll have to agree with an above commenter, #5 is key. You can do all of the above but you’re only as strong as your network. Aligning yourself with bloggers/brand similar to your own can help tremendously.

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Ana July 27, 2012

Analytics can be so useful, but they can suck you in and … get you a bit addicted to them, no?

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Susann Akers July 28, 2012

What a great post, but while I was reading it I was thinking its common sense to measure and test your blogs. But then why was I not doing it ? I think we so busy looking for the difficult things to do we forget that is is the easy stuff that usually make the most difference. Thank you for reminding me about the KISS word.

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bhakti July 28, 2012

very useful post, great one, its difficult to gain followers though traffic is increasing ..

xoxo
bhakti

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Tracy @ Ascending Butterfly July 29, 2012

This is advice I’ve given often, by doing this I discovered that an offbeat promotional collaboration I did awhile back still gets an INSANE amount of traffic, which means I’ve got to collaborate with them again! 🙂

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Célèste July 29, 2012

I feel like every article on building traffic is the same: pick goals and try to meet them. But no one ever explains how to meet them. If I’m doing everything I always do to increase traffic, I don’t see how decided I want to increase traffic by precisely 10% will change anything.

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Donna July 30, 2012

I’ve never set goals because I didn’t know how to meet them. But when you wrote about a 10% increase, I can see where that would give me more motivation to try different things to get that 10%. I have no idea how to get FB interaction going – nothing seems to work there. But I have lots of other ideas.
Also does anyone know how to get a Google Analytics account? I check my Blogger stats every day, but I know that GA gives you much more info (sometimes too much).
Incidentally, I tried changing from Blogger to Google + to see if that would boost views, but I didn’t see much of a difference. And very few people that I know are on Google +. If anyone has had a different experience, please share!
Donna
www.prettysparklythings.blogspot.com

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Raquel July 30, 2012

Great information here & this just reassures me that I’m doing all that I can correctly! I set goals every month with what I want to hit traffic wise & on all of my social media outlets. I highlight them once the goals have been met, it’s wonderful to see your results!

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Louise July 30, 2012

Great post, whilst I do monitor my traffic, I’ve never actually thought of settings goals/targets in order to achieve final goals. This is deffo something I will look into trying out.

[email protected] xx

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thechococolatefashionblog August 2, 2012

Great post. I haven’t checked my traffic much but I need to start doing that!

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Mike Panic August 7, 2012

#3 is about the worst piece of advice on growing traffic that I’ve ever heard. Setting goals with a website should be similar to trading stocks, look at the large picture. If you compare day to day volatility you will go nuts, and waste good time that could be allocated towards creating content on checking stats.

There are certain aspects to the blogging world that are simply over-run by local and world events. For example, NYC fashion bloggers can fully expect a massive dip in stats on Friday, Saturday and Sunday since most people aren’t in the offices. Likewise, you’ll see drops when there are major world events happening, such as Bid Laden getting killed or the Olympics, those have a far greater reach than just about any blog. These day-to-day happenings will have an affect on your blog and traffic, that’s just a fact. Looking at a 90 day capture and comparing that with the previous year’s quarter, or the previous 90 days will get you a better idea of how your traffic is growing.

More important than page views, and often over-looked by new bloggers is bounce rate. Achieving a bounce rate sub 55% should be a goal of bloggers, sadly most don’t even know what a bounce rate is. The next important goal should be conversions. Whether that’s clicks on ad space, sign-ups for email notifications or RSS subscribers, finding a baseline and then expanding on that is key to growing repeat visitors. Lastly, increasing organic traffic (via search engines / SEO) will ultimately help grow numbers across the board. Sure your site’s Facebook might have 5k fans, the new FB algorithm only delivers your updates to about one quarter of those fans, and you can’t sustain a site’s traffic on that alone. Having organic traffic, and consistently growing that is key.

Number 4 also doesn’t make sense. There’s virtually no reason to write down or keep spreadsheets of successfully written or poorly written posts. all that information is available via Google Analytics. Learning to utilize the tools that are probably already running on your site will give you a better insight to your traffic. Heck, they even built a “goals” functionality into their software! Oh yea, it’s free too.

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- Jennine Jacob August 7, 2012
  
  Hi there,
  
  Actually, #3 is vital to growing traffic. Every day we go over our traffic, even track it by the hour, to understand when peak times are for posting and how to best leverage content, and when to give extra pushes if it’s a slow day.
  
  Since February our site has grown over 400%… well into the seven figures. This has been done by building strategies and tracking what works and what doesn’t work. So yes, I would heavily advise bloggers to check in daily where their traffic is coming from.
  
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Gemma Carey November 9, 2012

Thank you for this post!

Given me a great idea 😉

http://beaufashionbygemma.blogspot.co.uk/

xx

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Petya January 21, 2013

Wow, this is really nice!
http://instyle21.blogspot.com

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Sarah January 21, 2013

I don’t think the first three tips help much honestly. Sure, it might help me get organized and visualize things. But writing down the number of traffic I want to achieve actually does nothing. I’ve wrote it down and waiting around for my stats to miraculously hit that goal seems quite impossible. What am I supposed to do to reach that number? Check my traffic everyday? I’ve been doing that too and my numbers haven’t improved at all.

Social media also hasn’t helped much since I barely have any followers there, too, so it’s like I’m tweeting to no one but myself. Maybe I’m overreacting, but it’s frustrating not seeing any progress come out of dedication. I don’t mean to complain.

I think maybe the fashion blogging world should start forming “networks” like they do on tumblr that showcase a group of similar, or just great, blogs on one site. check this http://thejewelnetwork.tumblr.com for an example.

-Sarah

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choolee July 15, 2013

well i am so obsessed by checking my stats every day. its kinda low at the moment. need to get know about seo and stff didnt get it exactly. is there anotger “how to use” or something post?
maybe u wonna see my blog: chichoolee.blogspot.co.at

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FiFi Qin December 23, 2013

This is a great inspiration to me for I always ignore the numbers behind the analytics chart…! Love this post!

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