Why bloggers should care about their page views

I have been blogging for less than a year, and once I overcame the common struggles of setting up my website and creating content consistently, I started to face a whole new problem: getting people to read my blog.

The more I emerged myself in the blogging community, the more stigma towards caring about page views and numbers came to surface. So this blog post addresses why it’s ok to care about improving your page views.

As hobby or business bloggers, we spend so much time creating, promoting, improving our craft and putting it all out there for the world to see. So how can we not care or put any importance on the number of people that we reach with your blogs?

The stigma out there (mostly observed on social media) is that you should either be pleased if you get even 2 people to read your blog or, no matter what the circumstances are, you should never brag if you get more than that. In other words, you should just blog for the sake of it and because you just loooove to spend all that time creating awesome content even if only your best friend and mother read it.

Am I the only one that sees something wrong with that picture?

Should Bloggers Care About Their Page Views?

I have no judgment to pass on bloggers who simply blog because they love it. Or the ones that don’t bother to ever check their statistics because that’s not what motivates them to keep going. In fact, I have great admiration for such bloggers.

But I am not one of them. And I believe we should all celebrate our accomplishments, no matter how small, and be aware of the impact our blog has.

I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that you want your blog to grow and you want to improve and grow alongside it. And your blog’s statistics play a part in measuring that growth.

So, to break it down and make it easier to understand why I’m so passionate about this subject, here are 5 reasons why bloggers should care about their page views:

1. Your Blog Is Not A Diary

Excluding those who blog anonymously and just for the sake of it, the big percentage of bloggers out there create an online platform to express themselves, help others or connect with their readers.

In other words, our blogs are not these secret online diaries that we keep to ourselves. We want to share what we create with others. We want to be able to help those who struggle with the same things as us. We want to connect. We want to inspire and to empower. We want to be unapologetically ourselves and share our stories with the world.

So how can we do that if we only reach 2 people?

I think we all have such a unique story to tell and an expertise that people would benefit from (be that either blogging tutorials, fashion tips or anything else in between), and it’s almost selfish not to share it. 

The bottom line is that it’s not all about fame, online prestige or even money. It’s not about finding our worth in the amount of page views we get per month. Sometimes we just want to maximize the impact we have because we use our platforms to reach and help other people.

2. Setting Blogging Goals Is Healthy

I truly believe that we should learn to embrace the work we do and that it’s completely healthy to want to improve and grow and do better than we are now.  And, as I said already, blog growth is usually measured in numbers, be that the number of people who come over to our blog, or our social media followers.

Our page views do not reflect our worth as bloggers but they do keep track of our journey and they help us understand where our efforts paid off, so we can focus our attention on blogging tasks that actually bring results.

Setting blogging goals is a big part of that and it can keep us motivated and consistent so we can keep showing up and doing the work.

While there is a fine line between that and only caring about the numbers, I think bloggers are usually pretty good at navigating that and using their goals as a point of reference rather than looking at it as an impossible finish line.

So set some goals. Make them realistic and write them down.

(A scary percentage of new blogs out there fail in the first 3 months and that it because people give up on them and they stop showing up when don’t don’t see immediate results. So stay grounded and recognize that some things simply take time and a lot of work.)

File your goals under “Good, Better & Best” to have a spectrum of what you can achieve. Get access to my Goal Tracker Sheet for bloggers from my resource library.

Celebrate when you reach them and don’t ever beat yourself up when you fall short. Blogging should be fun and you should recognize your improvement even if the numbers don’t add up.  But I truly believe that being consistent, striving to grow (even if that’s just 1% better than the day before) and showing up will make a real difference!

3. Understanding Your Audience Is A Must

Keeping an eye on your page views is not a matter of vanity. There is a lot that you can learn about your audience from your statistics, so ignoring them completely can be almost reckless.

Google Analytics, for example, let’s you know exactly what blog posts are being frequently visited, how much time people spend on your pages, where do they come from and what other interests they have.

If you’re struggling to understand and read your blog statistics, check out my Blogger’s Guide To Google Analytics.

The bottom line is that understanding who visits your blog can inspire you to create blog posts that people love, can help you figure out what’s missing and lead you to form a sound content strategy.

4. You Can Monetize Your Blog

Another stigma that brings a lot of negativity in the blogging community is that if you’re making any kind of money with your blog, you’re a sellout. And I couldn’t disagree more!

Why is it so frowned upon to make money while doing something that you love and pour hours and hours of work into? I think that this should be celebrated and embraced and I absolutely love seeing other bloggers in the industry doing so well for themselves.

The truth is that a lot of bloggers, especially those who blog full time and have no other revenue streams, count on their page views to get sponsorships, make money with ads, make affiliate sales or monetize their blogs in some other way.

Even if you’re blogging as a hobby and simply want to cover your costs, higher page views play a huge role in all this, so I think it’s natural to want to boost them and grow your following.

(Read my blog post on How I Made My First $1000 Blogging if you’re looking to understand how exactly you can make money blogging.)

5. Your Page Views Don’t Dictate Your Worth

To finish this up, I want to stress the fact that while keeping an eye on your page views and making an effort to improve them is important, these numbers don’t reflect your value as a blogger or the quality of your posts.

In fact, I have seen so many bloggers who are undervalued in spite of the amazing content they put out there and so many struggling to grow their blogs in spite of constantly showing up and putting their best work out there.

Because I want to encourage those bloggers to keep going and I would love to see them get the recognition they deserve, I have put my best strategies (because when it comes to boosting your blog traffic, doing things at random doesn’t bring any actual results), tips and tricks into my new e-book: The She Approach To Boosting Your Blog Traffic.

If you are not into a position where you can invest in your blog, you can grab a free sample chapter above or take my Free 7 Day Blog Traffic Challenge for bloggers.

As a final argument, I think it’s important for us bloggers to understand what goes on behind the scenes our blogs and it’s healthy to want to grow and improve. So make a plan and get excited about blogging again!

But don’t get sucked into the numbers trap (and whatever you do, don’t check your blog’s statistics every single day) and recognize that there are more important things to consider in your journey and you can still have a real impact with small numbers!

Improve Your Page Views – Resources

Ready to take matters into your own hands and be strategic about your blog growth? Here are a few posts and resources that can help you do that:

• 65+ ways to promote your blog posts
• Best Blog Traffic Tips From Pro Bloggers
• How I get 70% of my blog traffic from Facebook