Google Analytics Stats and July Recipes

Good morning and happy Saturday. Can you believe it’s already August? Well, you know what that means…it’s time for July’s monthly Google Analytics Stats and Recipe Recap!

I sure was busy cooking last month, wasn’t I? I’ll get to the recipes in a moment but first, I want to go over my Google Analytics Stats for the month of July. July was a great month for This Gal Cooks, for the most part. My traffic continued to grow and my bounce rate pretty much stayed the same. 

Last month I started having major issues with my previous hosting company, Bluehost. In June I switched to their pro-hosting plan in order to try to improve my page speed. Well, this ended up being a mistake. Pretty soon after switching to that plan (which meant switching to a different server) my site started going down periodically. I contacted them about this and the response I received was that the server had an error and had to be restored. They also said to cache my pages. So I started caching my pages with one of their products but I still had issues. Then one Saturday morning my site went down for FOUR hours! I was not a happy camper. My pageviews were affected drastically by this. I only had 680 pageviews that day! After going through that, I decided to switch to Servint. Since then, my site has been super fast and I have not been down at all!

Let’s take a look at some statistics:

• My page views were up 13% from 50,918 in June to 58,980 in July
• Unique visitors were up 12% from 29,320 in June to 33,511 in July
• Visits were up 13% from 35,384 in June to 40,984 in July
• Bounce rate increased from 82.21% in May to 82.30% in July
• For more information on page views, unique visitors and visitors, please visit here.

What factors contributed to this? 

• I continued to link to parties that drove traffic to my site. These included Lady Behind The Curtain, Six Sisters Stuff and Chef In Training
• I continued to share Marvelous Mondays link ups on Facebook and Twitter with a link back to the party along with the link up number. Not only does this drive traffic to my site, it drives traffic to the site of the person who linked up to my party.
• I continued to add photos with links to older recipes at the bottom of my posts.
• I continued to try to respond to each and every comment on my blog and I try to visit a post from those who comment on my blog. If someone comments on one of my posts, I feel it is important to stop by their blog and return the blog love.
• I started to slack off on linking up to parties. I need to start doing it again because I have seen a decrease in pageviews. However, this decrease also started after the issue with Bluehost so I don’t know if I am still recovering from that.

Referral Sites

Here are the sites that drove traffic to my blog. Unfortunately, Recipenewz is no longer in service. This is probably going to affect my pageviews in August. As you can see, Recipenewz was the number four referrer to my site.

What methods do you use to increase your pageviews?

Income

July was a great month for income. I started using Google Adsense and I was selected for quite a few campaigns. I was only paid for one of the campaigns so far, Glacier Fruitwater, but expect payment from the other campaigns within the next month.

Glacier Fruitwater via SITS – $50.00 (paid)
NatureBox via Burst Media – $250.00 (pending payment)
Schick Hydro Social Media Influencer via BlogHer – $50.00 (pending payment)
Wonderful Brands via Clever Girls – $125.00 (pending payment)
Google Adsense – $36.47 (pending payment)

I didn’t mention blogging income in my June post but here are the campaigns I worked on:
Tyson Grilled & Ready Chicken via Burst Media – $300.00 (pending payment)
Fruttare Fruit Bars via Clever Girls – $200.00 (paid in August)

I am currently working on two other campaigns with Clever Girls. Those will be posted in August and income reporting will be highlighted in September!

July Recipes 

And now it’s time for the July Recipe Recap. Enjoy!

{Click the images to view the recipes}

Vanilla Peach Ice Cream

Fresh Fruit & Cream Tarts

Caprese Chicken Roll Ups

Broiled Tilapia with Chipotle Peach Salsa

Cherry Crisp

Slow Cooker Chicken Enchilada Rice Bowls

Tomato Spinach & Artichoke Pizza

Blackberry Mojito

Blackberry Crisp In A Jar

Easy Chipotle Ravioli Bake

Blueberry Coconut Pancakes

Vegan Apple Berry Bran Muffins

Fluffernutter Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream

Clow Cooker BBQ Beef Sandwiches

Orange Creamsicle Mini Muffins

Which one of these recipes is your favorite?