Category: Blogging Reports

Over the long-term when looking at my organic traffic trend in Google Analytics, it’s motivating to see that I’m now generating over 200 targeted organic visits to my website per month…

There was a time where I wasn’t even breaking 50 organic visits in a given month when just starting out, so this is a noticeable improvement.

This is why I always encourage bloggers to remain persistent with their efforts and never give up.

Although you may not be seeing the type of results you want right now, you MUST be in this for the long term.

It takes time for you to build up the authority of your website and for Google to take notice as well.

As long as you’re providing massive value and optimizing your website with SEO best practices in mind, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t begin to notice organic growth on your blog.

With that being said, let’s jump into my March 2019 blogging report.

Organic Traffic (March 2019)- 237 Visits

March 2019 was actually my second highest month all-time in terms of organic traffic at 237 visits.

I’m seeing lots of search engine ranking improvements in Google which in return is generating more organic traffic to my website.

This traffic comes in passively without me having to be physically working on my blog, which truly makes my website an online asset.

This is why I love blogging combined with proper SEO!

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (March 2019 vs. March 2018)

Organic traffic when comparing year-over-year is up 78.20% (237 visits vs. 133 visits).

I’m definitely happy with over 100 extra organic visitors coming to my website this year.

This has resulted in more email subscribers, YouTube subscribers and revenue for my online businesses.

This first chart below shows my organic traffic over the long-term (plotted monthly).

 

You can see the overall trend in organic traffic is marching upwards!

This next chart compares the full month of March 2019 versus March 2018 (in organic traffic).

 

In both screenshots above taken from Google Analytics, you can see that my blog is gaining more traction and generating increased traffic from the search engines.

This is a trend I’m going to continue to push for with the SEO work laid out below.

Next Steps for Continued Year-Over-Year Growth

These blogging reports really help me take a step back and see where I need to be spending the most time on moving forward to increase my traffic and readership.

Below are two ares that I will be focusing on in the coming months.

Targeting Less Competitive Keywords

I think we all tend to target keywords that are way too broad and/or competitive, I am definitely still guilty of this. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t aim our sights high every once in a while in our keyword strategy, but we also need to be realistic and go after terms we can actually rank for. Trying to rank for keywords that are just too competitive can leave you buried in the search results (and very frustrated). Instead my focus here will be to target long-tail type keywords that contain 3, 4, and even 5+ words in a given phrase. I’ve noticed that these blog posts rank a lot better and much quicker. Check out my post here on keyword research and targeting long-tail keyword phrases.

Quality and Comprehensive Content

A common problem I see with many bloggers is that they try to post too often on their website which takes away from the quality of their writing. Google more than ever is looking for in-depth and comprehensive content to rank on their first page. My best performing blog articles are generally the ones that are at the very least 750 words or longer and really cover a subject in its entirety. Strive to answer your readers questions, provide examples and make your posts as informative as possible. Quality content that is highly valuable to your readers will give you the best possible chance of ranking in the search engines.

How was your March 2019?

That wraps up this monthly report!

I hope some of the tips and insights I provide with this series is helpful for your own blogging journey going forward.

If you’d like to follow my monthly blogging reports I recommend visiting and saving this link here.

How was your March 2019?

When you start seeing noticeable year-over-year organic traffic increases on a consistent basis, it’s a sign that the SEO work you’re implementing is paying off.

I have more blog articles ranking in Google now then I did compared to this time last year, which in return is generating additional organic traffic for my website.

Again, as I always state, it takes time to see growth with your blog and you need to be patient when building your business.

Part of the reason I do these blogging reports is to be as transparent as possible to demonstrate that this has not been an overnight process for me (and will continue to take a lot of work).

It’s my own personal case study.

You’ll see months where my blog traffic spikes, plateaus/stagnates and even dips here and there.

That’s all part of the process…

Now of course everyone’s results will be different depending on the niche they operate in, posting frequency, SEO knowledge etc…Some will grow much quicker than me and others much slower.

But the important part is that you stick to a plan and continue on with your efforts over the long-term.

With that being said, let’s jump into this month’s blogging report.

Organic Traffic (February 2019)- 217 Visits

Organic traffic in February 2019 came in at 217 visits.

Not as high as last month (January 2019- 259 visits), but up noticeably when comparing year-over-year, which is a much better way to gauge how your website is performing overtime.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (February 2019 vs. February 2018)

Organic traffic for my blog is up 72.22% when comparing year-over-year (217 visits vs. 126 visits).

Overall I’m happy to see my organic traffic trending in the right direction and with the work I have planned moving forward, this should continue to tick upwards.

Let’s take a look at a couple of charts below from my Google Analytics account to show these organic traffic increases.

This first chart below shows my organic traffic over the long-term and I plotted Feb. 2019 and Feb. 2018 to clearly highlight the increases.

This next chart shows the full month of February 2019 compared to the full month of February 2018. The blue line represents the data in February 2019 and the orange line in February 2018.

It’s always helpful to look at various angles of your traffic within Google Analytics.

I especially like looking at the long-term view as you see in the first traffic chart above in order to analyze the organic growth of my website as a whole.

An increase of 72.22% year-over-year is definitely a number I’m happy with and below I’ve laid out a few next steps I will be implementing in order to build upon this trend.

Next Steps to Increase my Blog Traffic

Below are two specific areas that I will be focusing on in the coming months.

Of course this will go alongside my normal routine of producing high-quality, long-form style content and proper optimization of SEO tags and copy.

1.) New Link Building Techniques:

I will be incorporating two additional link building strategies into my routine.

• HARO – HARO (helpareporterout.com) connects journalists to sources for upcoming stories, articles and news. This is a great opportunity for the source (us) to gain some media coverage and potentially a link back to our website. Generally HARO will send out daily emails of journalists looking for additional information on a particular piece they are working on. If you see something in your area of expertise, you can simply pitch these journalists with the information they’re seeking. If they like your write-up, they will include it in their story and most likely reward you with a backlink.
• Roundups – Many times other bloggers will do an “expert roundup” type of post which highlights webmasters who specialize in a certain niche. This is a great way to gain additional exposure for your website as well as a quality backlink. There are different ways to find these opportunities and sometimes just a simple google search can do the trick. Roundups are not something I look into often, but I do want to weave this into my overall link building strategy every once in a while.

2.) Create a Strategic Content Calendar

I tend to create the content for my blog based on what’s currently going on with my business, what I’m experiencing and what’s working for me. While I’ll still continue to generate this type of content, I do think it would be beneficial if I created more of a concrete content calendar so I have my blog posts planned out weeks in advance. I will most likely utilize a Google Sheet or Excel file for this and break my ideas into sections such as:

• Topic Idea
• Keywords and monthly search volume (will be doing keyword research prior)
• Date of publication
• YouTube video in correlation to the post (yes or no)
• Additional notes/thoughts

Sometimes getting your ideas out of your head and onto “paper” (in this case virtual paper), is incredibly beneficial. Having my posts scheduled will help keep me more organized and consistent in my content generation.

How was your February 2019?

That about wraps up this monthly report.

The continued growth I see is encouraging and motivates me to continue pushing forward and share what strategies I’ve had success with.

If you want to follow my monthly blogging reports, you can do so by visiting this page here.

How was your February 2019?

What better way to start off the new year than with a new all-time high in organic traffic for my website (and by a long-shot).

January 2019 came in at 259 organic search visits and if you’ve been following my other blogging reports, you’ll see that this is quite a big increase.

I’m starting to really “cement” myself on page #1 in Google for a few really solid long-tail keyword phrases, which in return is bringing in a steady stream of targeted traffic.

A couple of these ranking blog posts were written months ago and some even over a year ago.

Again, a reminder that you must be patient when it comes to blogging and SEO.

However, this is also very encouraging because as I’m generating new content, some of my older articles are getting recognized and ranked in Google.

These blog posts that are now ranked highly are acting as virtual assets for me, bringing in targeted traffic and leads passively.

As long as I maintain these search engine rankings, these blog articles will work for me 24/7!

Another reason why blogging in combination with SEO is an excellent side hustle.

Organic Traffic (January 2019)- 259 Visits

Organic traffic in January 2019 came in at 259 visits.

This is a new all-time high for my website and motivates me to keep plugging along!

I did have to go through some plateaus before I saw this big spike in organic traffic (as you will see in the screenshot below), but I knew my persistence would eventually pay off.

Let’s take a closer look at my Google Analytics data.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (January 2019 vs. January 2018)

When comparing year-over-year organic traffic is up 78.62% (259 vs. 145).

Here’s the long-term organic traffic chart from my Google Analytics account to show the history of organic search visits coming into my blog.

Notice the recent spike!

And in the chart below you can see specifically the difference when comparing organic traffic year-over-year.

The blue line represents January 2019 and the orange line represents January 2018.

I am definitely happy with the growth my blog is seeing as of recently.

There are months where sometimes you feel like you’re getting nowhere and that all of your hard work simply isn’t worth the effort.

But remember that it takes time for Google to notice changes on your website…As in the example above, a big part of this spike in traffic is due to older blog posts now being ranked on the first page of Google.

If you start to adopt the mindset that each blog you write has the potential to pay off big down the road, you may spark some new inspiration.

Next Steps for the New Year

The start to 2019 has been very encouraging and I really look forward to seeing more growth in the new year.

With that being said, here are some next steps that I plan on focusing on in the coming months.

Continue Taking a More Aggressive Approach to Link Building:

The past couple of months I have really ramped up my link building efforts and believe this is a big reason for the recent search engine ranking increases I’m seeing. Not only am I increasing the total number of backlinks built to my website on a monthly basis, but also the quality of them as well. The last 4-5 backlinks I’ve built to my blog have all been from websites with a domain authority of over 50. This in combination with crafting high-quality content is a recipe for blogging success.

Target Keywords That Are Obtainable:

I’ve really been a bit more strategic lately about the keywords I am targeting and will continue to be moving forward. I think many of us bloggers and webmasters from time to time tend to target keywords that are far too broad and competitive, just because the monthly search volume is high. Well, some of my best performing blog posts are targeting longer-tail and more specific keyword phrases. If you rank for many of these types of blog articles overtime, the traffic really starts to stack up.

Upload YouTube Videos More Frequently:

For a while, my average uploading process was about 2 videos per month on my YouTube channel. Since there is so much traffic floating around on YouTube, I really want to utilize the platform to drive more of it to my website. Just like blogging, it’s important that I publish content consistently on my YouTube channel in order to grow my subscriber base and drive more targeted traffic to my blog. Within my YouTube video descriptions, I generally always leave a link for people to navigate to a specific blog post of mine (many videos of mine have a correlating blog post). In fact, over the recent months, traffic to my blog from YouTube has increased noticeably as I start to rank more videos. This motivates me to publish videos more frequently and although my channel is still small, it’s been steadily increasing.

That about wraps up this blogging report!

A really strong month for my website and actually the best organically to date.

How were your results in January 2019?

Interested in working with me one-on-one? Make sure you check out my coaching services here.

We’ll cut right to the chase in this blogging report.

December 2018 was my highest month all-time in terms of organic traffic at 176 visits!

After 4 months or so of monthly fluctuation, December traffic came in strong even with the busy holiday season.

I’m not surprised though as I’ve implemented a lot of strategic SEO work all throughout 2018 to get me to this point.

Now my goal one year from now in December 2019 will be to at least double this number and get my organic traffic closer to 400 visits per month.

Remember, SEO and organic growth of your blog is a marathon and not a sprint.

And although these numbers may seem a bit small, looking back over the course of my blog analytics/metrics, I’m very happy with this progress.

Let’s look at the details below together:

Organic Traffic (December 2018)- 176 Visits

As stated above, organic traffic in December 2018 came in at 176 organic search visits.

A new all-time high for my website!

When checking my search engine rankings recently, I noticed a few of my blog posts shot up to the first page of Google, which in return helped me generate additional organic traffic.

These blog posts were written months ago, and Google is finally starting to take notice/reward me for my efforts….And especially since these were really well-written and longer-form style content (over 1,000 words in length for each).

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (December 2018 vs. December 2017)

When comparing year-over-year organic traffic is up 61.47% (176 vs. 109).

Below are a couple of screenshots from my Google Analytics account to give you a better visual of my results.

The screenshot above is more of a birds eye view of my organic traffic over-time.

Looking at your data from different angles is always helpful and can help you identity certain trends.

This particular screenshot shows the difference in organic traffic in December 2018 (blue line) versus December 2017 (orange line).

You can see that there was much more action in regards to organic traffic in December 2018.

Comparing the full year of 2018 to 2017

The last metric I’d like to compare is the full year of 2018 versus the full year of 2017.

This shows me even further the progress that I’ve made for the full calendar year.

I highly reccomend looking at a comparison like this for your own site if you’ve been blogging for long enough. It really helps to see if your marketing efforts (in my case SEO), is paying off.

As you can see in the screenshot above, organic traffic when comparing 2018 to 2017 is up 293.29% (1,817 vs. 462).

Sometimes it can be hard to stay motivated when it comes to blogging, but when you start seeing increases such as this (over the long-term), you realize that all of your effort are truly paying off.

Reflection of 2018 and Next Steps

I must admit, I was really happy with my overall results in 2018.

I saw noticeable growth in organic traffic, grew my email list, increased my blogging income and learned a lot along the way.

With all that being said, I will not be “taking it easy” in 2019.

In fact, I plan on pushing even harder and implementing new tactics and techniques to my website.

Let’s take a look at some of my core strategies moving forward.

Consistent Content Creation & Long-Form Content:

No surprise here, increasing your organic traffic and online influence truly comes down to generating consistent and quality content. I am really good about publishing content to my blog on a regular basis (I average anywhere from 4-8 blog posts per month). Something I have really focused on in 2018 and will continue to do so in 2019, is writing long-form content. Meaning crafting blog posts that are over 1,000 words long. Google loves in-depth and helpful articles and will favor these websites heavily compared to sites that publish shorter content. The combination of publishing content consistently and ensuring that it’s fleshed out over 1,000 words long should produce excellent results in the new year.

Build Quality Backlinks From High Domain Authority (DA) Websites:

This is an area I feel I can ramp up a bit. The focus here would be to write quality guest post articles on other high domain authority websites in my niche. This means researching other influential bloggers that have a domain authority of at least 50 or higher and submitting well-written content for them to publish to their website. In return, you are usually allowed a link back to your website which eventually helps with overall search engine rankings, increasing organic traffic and referral traffic.

Upload 2-4 YouTube Videos Per Month:

My YouTube channel has been more of a secondary focus in the past but I’d like to prioritize this powerful platform just as I do my blog. There is so much traffic “hanging out” on YouTube on a daily basis, it’s incredible. More and more people are using YouTube as their main search engine than ever before and video marketing will only continue to be more important in the years to come. Currently I average 1-2 videos on my channel per month, but I’d like to double that to around 2-4 videos to start. My YouTube channel is small but it has been growing steadily monthly which gives me incentive to keep pushing.

Monitor/Improve Website Speed:

I believe a big reason for December 2018 being my highest month in organic traffic is due to the website speed improvements I made in late November 2018. I shaved off 3 seconds overall in total loading speed which can be extremely beneficial from an SEO standpoint. I will continue to monitor this in 2019 and also work on making my site even faster, if possible.

Network with other Bloggers & Entrepreneurs:

By networking with other bloggers and entrepreneurs, you never know what type of opportunities can open up. It’s even good to connect with people who are a step or two above you, as there’s always more that one can learn in this ever evolving digital world. I will really be looking to build more quality relationships in 2019 to expand my reach and refine my skills even further.

The start of a new year is always a great time to reflect on your past efforts/results and also a great time to set new and concrete goals for yourself moving forward.

How were your results in 2018?

If you’re looking for more guidance on how to generate more traffic and exposure for your blog, please connect with me here.

Below is the video version of this post:

Blogging Report (November 2018)

As a blogger you need to be prepared for some monthly fluctuation in in terms of organic traffic.

Although it’s good to analyze the monthly trend, it’s even better to compare your traffic data year-over-year versus month-over-month.

So even though my organic traffic is down slightly month-over-month, I’m still seeing good increases when comparing the data year-over-year.

This shows that my SEO work and blogging efforts are paying off and resulting in natural organic growth.

Was November my best month to date?

No.

But my long-term view/mindset keeps me from getting discouraged. I feel that too many people in the blogging space expect to see incredible growth, month in and month out when that is just not realistic.

Of course this is possible depending on the person, niche and blog, but please look at the long-term trend instead of a narrow monthly view.

It’s also important to point out that traffic can sometimes slow down a bit around November and December due to the holidays.

But these months are perfect for creating concrete goals and strategizing for the new year to come.

With that being said, let’s take a look at my blogging results for November 2018.

Organic Traffic (November 2018)- 143 Visits

Organic traffic in November 2018 came in at 143 organic search visits.

This is down slightly when comparing month-over-month but I am still up when comparing year-over-year.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (November 2018 vs. November 2017)

Organic traffic is up 22.22% when comparing year-over-year (143 vs. 117).

An interesting thing about this comparison, is that November of 2017 is when my blog really started to see its first growth spurt.

Back then (Nov. 2017), that was my highest month in regards to organic traffic in around 12 months.

Now the reason I’m stating this is because being up 22.22% year-over-year when that was at one point my best month in organic traffic is still pretty good.

Let’s take a look at my organic traffic chart overtime to understand this better:

You can see the growth I’m talking about when looking back at November 2017 (and months prior) and although there’s been some fluctuation month-over-month recently, I am indeed UP when comparing Nov. 2018 to Nov. 2017.

Next Steps for Increasing My Blog Traffic

One very key point to highlight is that on November 28, 2018, I increased my website speed by around 3 seconds.

I believe this is really going to help moving into the new year, as my website was pretty “sluggish” prior.

As for other strategies I plan on implementing, much of this remains the same month-in and month out.

1.) Create Long-Form & High Quality Content: Part of the reason for the growth I have seen thus far with my blog, is due to creating quality and in-depth blog articles that get ranked in Google (targeting both broad and long-tail keyword phrases). When I first started this blog in 2016, my posts were much shorter in content and I believe not as valuable as they are today. You always want to try to provide as much helpful information to your readers as possible, so they keep coming back for more. I will continue to push out as much quality content as I can on a consistent basis.

2.) Focus on My YouTube Channel: Although my YouTube channel is very small still, I’ve noticed since I’ve been more consistent with my video content creation, it has steadily been growing each month (more so than in the past). In return, because I leave my blog links in my video description, this has driven some nice extra referral traffic to my website and resulted in more subscribers to my email list. A lot of people spend their time on YouTube these days and love watching videos to find the information they are looking for. If you don’t have your own channel yet, I encourage starting one up. You can see and subscribe to my YouTube channel here. It’s still a work in progress!

3.) Guest Posting on High Domain Authority Sites: Link building is a strategy that I can be a bit more consistent with, especially since it’s so vital to the organic growth for any website. Google wants to rank websites that have a strong backlink portfolio so it’s essential to work on this on a monthly basis. I’m really going to refine my guest posting strategy, and try to publish articles on higher domain authority websites for the best results. This should yield in higher search engine rankings, increased organic traffic and also increased referral traffic.

Make sure to have a plan each month for your website. You do not want to approach this blindly.

Keep producing content for people to see, answer questions, solve problems and always engage with your audience.

Learn from any mistakes or hurdles you encounter and always be fine tuning your efforts.

How have your results been?

Are you having success with any particular strategy?

Blogging Report (October 2018)

I cannot stress enough the practice of patience when it comes to blogging and SEO.

It can sometimes feel like an uphill battle when you’re plateauing or possibly even dipping in terms of overall website traffic…However, it’s important to remain realistic here and realize that blog growth comes from long-term efforts.

It makes sense to me why so many bloggers fail or quit as it’s not the easiest nor quickest business model and it also takes a lot of hard work, commitment and you guessed it,  patience.

For example, if you look at my older blogging reports below, you’ll notice that I’ve seen periods of growth, decline and also plateauing.

• January 2017: 55 Organic Visits
• June 2018: 169 Organic Visits
• July 2018: 168 Organic Visits
• August 2018: 135 Organic Visits
• September 2018: 155 Organic Visits

But I keep pushing because I know more growth is right around the corner with the strategic work I do on a monthly basis.

Fluctuation is totally normal when you’re working on establishing your blog…Do not get discouraged by this.

It takes Google some time to recognize new content and SEO edits on your website.

Make sure to look at the long term traffic trend of your website by using Google Analytics to see your growth over-time.

Hopefully this brief introduction above is enough to steer some of you back on track and to finish out 2018 stronger than ever…And especially if you’ve been discouraged by some traffic fluctuations on your own website.

Let’s dig into some of my specific organic traffic statistics below.

Organic Traffic (October 2018)- 159 Visits

Traffic has been steady lately when comparing month-over-month, however when comparing year-over-year (which gives us a much better overall analysis) I’m continuing to see lots of growth.

Organic traffic in October 2018 came in at 159 search visits.

In August of 2018, Google put forth a core algorithm update and as a result my traffic dipped slightly.

But in September and October I have rebounded and am trending once again in the right direction.

To get a better understanding of my organic traffic data long-term, let’s take a look at the chart below.

Arrow #1: This is where I saw an initial surge and growth in Organic Traffic due to lots of quality content creation and link building to get my blog noticed by Google. As you can see, this was quite an increase to where I was months prior.

Arrow #2: The second plot point on this chart demonstrates a plateau I hit for around 3 months. I stayed steady at around 170 organic search visits after the large growth I saw in previous months (arrow #1).

Arrow #3: This is where I saw a slight dip in August 2018 mainly due to the Google core algorithm update.

Arrow #4: I rebounded the past two months after the dip I saw in August. Traffic is once again trending in the right direction.

As you can see, this chart is like a roller coaster with a lot of ups and downs.

However, it’s helpful for me to look at this type of birds-eye view, to indeed see the progress I am making with my blog…Fluctuation and all.

Let’s now take a look at the year-over-year increases below:

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (October 2018 vs. October 2017)

Organic traffic increased by 218% when comparing year-over-year (159 vs. 50).

See the traffic chart below:

The blue line represents organic traffic for October 2018 and the orange line represents organic traffic for October 2017.

I’m very happy with this increase yearly but am of course pushing for more results.

Below we will look at plans and next steps for the coming months to help drive more organic traffic to my website.

Next Steps To Drive More Results

I have a few specific steps I am going to implement over the coming months to really try to close out the year with a bang.

1.) Website Speed Improvements: I noticed I’ve been seeing some slower load times on my website recently which can negatively impact my search engine rankings. Google will favor and rank websites higher that have a faster load time, as it provides users with an overall better experience. This will be a major area of focus for me in the coming months to get my website loading as quickly as possible moving into 2019.

2.) Networking & Link Building: Although I try to do this on a monthly basis, I could be better at networking with other authoritative bloggers/influencers more often. It’s always good to establish relationships with other bloggers in your niche (as long as they’re not direct competitors). This provides the opportunity for potential guest posting and generating more brand awareness for yourself. It’s also an excellent way to build quality backlinks for your website.

3.) Writing In-Depth Blog Articles: I’m working on upping my content generation game both consistency wise and quality wise after attending SMX East in New York. This really opened my eyes to the importance of creating in-depth and extremely valuable blog articles for my readers. Google really loves long-form content (1,500+ words) and tends to rank these types of articles very highly in the search engines. Of course not every article that I write will be that long in word count, but more and more often I will be weaving in these types of blog posts into my overall strategy.

These three tactics above will keep me busy and moving in the right direction into the new year.

Consistent and focused effort will help me take my blog traffic and overall results to the next level.

Check out the video version of this blog post here.

How is your website doing?

Are you seeing some any good growth, declines and/or plateaus?

Blogging Report (September 2018)

So if you read my August blogging report by any chance, you know that Google rolled out a core algorithm update which actually caused some shake up for many webmasters.

I also saw a slight dip in organic traffic myself (month-over-month)…Nothing dramatic, but enough to make me take some strategic action in September.

Just to re-iterate, Google does multiple core updates throughout the year, but this one seemed to be a bit more impactful than normal.

I combated some of these organic traffic fluctuations by publishing 7 quality blog posts in September.

A few of these were my own and a few were guest posts written for my website by other bloggers/content specialists.

Being consistent with your content generation efforts despite what is going on in the SEO landscape never hurts.

That was my big push for September to rebound from the month-over-month decreases I saw in organic traffic.

There was other SEO work I put in place as well which we will discuss briefly below.

For now, let’s get into some of the traffic data for September 2018.

Organic Traffic (September 2018)- 155 Visits

I was happy with my organic traffic in September considering I saw a rebound when comparing it to the month prior.

You’ll also see below that it’s up 761.11% when comparing year-over-year!

Organic traffic came in at 155 search visits in September.

Let’s look at a few more metrics:

Month-Over-Month Increases

• Organic traffic is up 14.81% when comparing month-over-month (155 vs. 135).

 

Year-Over-Year Increases

• Organic traffic is up 761.11% when comparing year-over-year (155 vs. 18).

 

 

 

 

The blue line in the chart above highlights this year’s data and the orange line highlights last year’s data.

These year-over-year increases are really solid and to think that I’ve grown my organic traffic by 761% in just 12 months is fantastic.

Now we are still dealing with small numbers and I’m aware of that, but regardless this is still substantial growth.

Income (September 2018) – Just under $3K

I don’t generally report on income on my blog, but it may be worthwhile to do so moving forward.

And also, September was a profitable month for me, especially considering I only had 155 organic visits to my website.

Total income came in at just under $3,000.

The bulk of this was from a high-ticket affiliate sale and the rest was a combination of sales for my email advertising business and lower priced affiliate products.

The best part about this is that, these were organic sales…meaning these people found my website through Google search.

This goes to show you just how important SEO and generating laser targeted traffic is.

It also demonstrates the power behind blogging and passive income. I put in the work up front, and now my website works for me 24/7 while I’m free to do other things.

Work Completed In September 2018

To help produce this kind of traffic growth, I pushed both the content generation and link building work hard in September.

I also did some routine SEO maintenance to clean up any technical errors.

Below is a quick list of what I accomplished.

• I published 7 blog posts to my website in September.
• I wrote 2-3 guest posts for other authoritative websites in my niche…These all contained a link back to my website.
• I cleaned up a handful of 404 errors (broken links) by them to the closest relevant page.
• I also fixed a few unnecessary redirect chains.
• I networked with another popular blogger in my niche and was featured on his website and also obtained a backlink from that relationship.

In order to build upon this momentum, in October I’ll be publishing more quality content, building additional quality backlinks and continue to network with other authoritative bloggers.

I am also working on a new funnel for my website, which will be part of the workload in October.

To sum everything up, once you get to a certain point with your website, the on-going focus should really be new content in combination with link building.

This one-two punch is incredibly effective when it comes to generating more traffic and gaining more exposure within the search engines.

It’s not always super exciting but it works.

You can see the video version of this blog post here.

Please also make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can follow my progress.

How have your results for your blog been?

Are you seeing success with any specific strategies?

Blogging Report (August 2018)

In August, there was a Core Google Algorithm Update that affected a large amount of people and shook up their traffic/rankings quite a bit.

Now Google does these core updates throughout the year, but this particular one that rolled out around August 1, 2018 seemed to have more of an impact than others.

With that being said, as with all Google algorithm updates, it’s good to keep them on your radar but not to panic.

Google even said that there is no “fix” to this one if you were affected.

So keep producing quality content, building quality backlinks and ensuring your website is user/mobile friendly.

I saw slight fluctuation myself in terms of organic traffic and search engine rankings when comparing month-over-month but nothing drastic.

See screenshot below to see what I’m talking about:

Organic traffic for August 2018 came in at 135 search visits compared to 168 search visits in July 2018.

However, comparing month-over-month isn’t what I generally look at when analyzing my data.

A better metric is to compare year-over-year to really see how your website is doing over a full 365 days.

Which we’ll get into below.

Organic Traffic (August 2018)- 135 Visits

For the month of August, organic traffic came in at 135 search visits.

August was an excellent month for content generation as I was able to publish 10 blog posts to my website!

A few of these were guest posts, mixed in with my own articles as well.

My goal is to publish 4-8 articles every single month and this was by far one of my best months in terms of content generation.

As I said above, comparing month-over-month, my organic traffic was down slightly, but now let’s take a look at year-over-year data.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (August 2018 vs. August 2017)

I continue to see large year-over-year increases which I’ll continue to push for with the SEO work I have planned moving forward.

For starters, organic traffic is up 365% when comparing year-over-year (135 vs. 29).

The two charts above reveal quite a bit.

This type of growth keeps me motivated to push ever harder than I have in the past, especially since SEO and blogging can take a little while to start building momentum.

The second chart dives in a little deeper and shows the daily plot points from August 2018 (blue line) and August 2017 (orange line).

Overall I’m very happy with these results even though I saw a little fluctuation (month-over-month) due to the core google algorithm update.

Strategy & Next Steps For September 2018

Now that summer in Connecticut is winding down, I really plan to ramp things up starting in September.

Let’s take a look at some of my next steps below.

1.) Publish 4-8 Blog Posts: I’ve been very consistent with my content generation the past year which is partially why I’m seeing the year-over-year growth in traffic lately. To continue building upon this, I plan on publishing 4-8 blog posts to my website in September. Remember, this is always high-quality content for my readers which gives me a better chance of ranking in the search engines.

2.) Link Building: I know it’s boring that this is always on my list but it’s crucial in any successful SEO campaign that you are doing consistent link building. I had a handful of really quality links built last month, and plan to acquire 3-5 more in September. Boy does this help with search engine rankings!

3.) Set Up New Funnel: I’m setting up a new funnel for my blog which will be a bit more robust than my current one and offer some very high-quality training. I have already started it at the time of writing this, but am hoping to be mostly finished by the end of September. You constantly have to be adapting and improving your website if you want to grow in this space.

That pretty much wraps it up, short and sweet this month.

If you’re reading this and haven’t started your blog yet, I reccomend you take a look here.

If you already have a website but are looking to generate more results, send me a message here so we can chat!

I also recorded a video for this blogging report here.

How is your website traffic looking?

Did the core google algorithm update affect you?

Below is the video version of this blog post:

Blogging Report (July 2018)

Welcome to another blogging report, this time for July 2018.

Let’s jump right into it…

July was a busy month for me.

I had to buy a new car (actually used but new to me) since mine completely broke down and wasn’t worth the money to fix it…This involved a dreaded DMV visit and the tasks that come along with that.

The car I bought was a used 2009 Honda Accord with 94K miles. Surprisingly, this is a big upgrade compared to what I was driving previously which was a 2004 Nissan Altima with high mileage.

I’m all about reliability and do not need a big nor fancy car. If you’ve read some of my other posts, like the one on minimalism, you know that I do not care much about material possessions.

Anyways, here’s a picture of my new (well it’s new to me) Honda below:

I also went on a mini vacation in July with my girlfriend to hit up the wineries in Long Island, NY.

We took a long weekend to sample and taste some of the best wines in the area. There’s close to 40 wineries within a 15-20 mile radius from each other and although we didn’t stop at everyone, we tried a whole bunch of them.

It was a really fun trip and definitely a location I would travel back to in the future.

Here’s a photo I took of one of my favorite wineries of the trip which was right on the water.

I also had a bunch of doctor appointments in July which I’ve been overdue on that made my month a bit more chaotic.

To top it off I had many plans/obligations with family and friends, a busy day job to take care of (doing SEO) and my various online projects that I run.

It’s safe to say that July was pretty jam packed for me.

Unfortunately I didn’t get as much work done on my blog as I would’ve liked to, but August is a new month.

So enough of me rambling, let’s get into the analytics.

Organic Traffic (July 2018)- 168 Visits

Organic traffic for July 2018 came in at 168 search visits, which is pretty consistent with the last few months.

As busy as I was in July, I was still able to publish 6 blog posts which is great.

2 posts were content that I produced, and 4 were guest posts from other contributors.

That’s an excellent benefit of accepting guest posts that I’m realizing as I’m writing this…I had enough content queued up where I really could have taken all of July off if I wanted to.

Just another reason why blogging is such an excellent business model.

What I would have loved to do more of though is link building.

In fact, I am planning on hitting link building really hard to finish out the end of the year.

Let’s take a look at my monthly traffic chart below:

Organic Traffic all-time (by Month)

So maybe a little bit of a plateau here since May came in at 170 organic search visits, June came in at 169 organic search visits and July now at 168 organic search visits.

However, since I’ve had a lot of SEO experience, I know that plateaus do indeed happen…even dips in organic traffic can happen as well.

Plateaus normally tell me that I need to push a bit harder in order to continue my growth.

For August, the plan is to take care of any crawl errors on my website (404 errors, unnecessary redirect chains etc.), publish at least 6 blog posts and acquire 2-4 fresh backlinks.

This will serve me well in the months to come.

One more note on this…The “plateau” I’m talking about here is when comparing month-over-month.

So it’s not the most accurate measure of organic growth.

Now we’re about to compare year-over-year which is a better benchmark to see how you’re site is doing organically overall.

And boy is this a different picture.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (July 2018 vs. July 2017)

Analyzing year-over-year data in Google Analytics is as simple as clicking the “Date” area in the upper right hand corner, ticking the “Compare to” box and selecting “Previous year”.

Let’s take a look at my year-over-year increases below:

The blue line represents this year’s data (July 2018) and the Orange line represents last year’s data (July 2017).

You can see that I was just trying to gain some traction at this time last year. But now with the work I put in, a steady flow of organic traffic is coming in daily.

Organic traffic is up 572% when comparing year-over-year.

A year-over-year increase of 572% in Organic Traffic is not too shabby if you ask me (168 visits vs. 25 visits).

I realize we’re dealing with small numbers here, but remember that I built this blog totally from scratch and it’s going to take a while to build up my domain authority for bigger traffic results.

With that being said, I’m very pleased with the growth I’m seeing thus far.

Strategy For August To Help Generate More Organic Traffic

August shouldn’t be as busy a month as July was which means I’ll be able to focus on moving the needle more as far as my blog goes.

What I plan to complete in August:

1.) Link Building: I am going to strive to build 2-4 natural and quality back links for my blog. More importantly, I am going to attempt to build these links from websites which have a domain authority of 40 or higher.

2.) YouTube: I plan on producing 1-2 videos in August of high-quality training on either SEO or blogging. Although this won’t really generate organic traffic to my blog, it can generate organic traffic to my YouTube videos, which can potentially drive more referral traffic to my blog.

3.) 6 New Blog Posts: In total in August, I’d like to have at least 6 new blog posts published to my website and at least half of them to come from me. At the time of writing this, I’m already up to 3 for this month!

4.) Address Crawl Errors: I noticed a few lingering crawl errors in my Google Search Console account and will be fixing those in August. Addressing issues like 404 errors, redirect chains, duplicate content etc. is an SEO best practice and can sometimes be a quick win.

As you can see, blogging in combination with SEO, definitely takes some time to see results, however once you gain some momentum it can really be exciting.

As my traffic increases, I have been noticing more comments on my blog, email subscribers and clicks to my links.

It’s exciting to see the progress of my journey when looking back over-time and makes me realize that all the hard work is worth it.

If this at all motivates you to start a blog of your own, take a look at my post here.

It will give you everything you need to get a blog up and running as quickly as possible.

That wraps it up for my July 2018 blogging report.

If you already have a blog, how are your results?

What strategies do you have in place to take things to the next level?

Check out the YouTube version of this blog post below:

Blogging Report (June 2018)

Welcome to my June 2018 blogging report!

The reason I do these reports is two fold.

1.) It helps me keep track of my own progress (traffic growth, search ranking increases etc.).

2.) It helps my readers get motivated to actually start a blog of their own and/or grow the website they are currently working on.

I haven’t done one of these since January 2017, but now that my blog is growing, I plan on doing them a bit more frequently.

I am also adding a section below of the key marketing strategies/methods that have helped me continue to grow my website overtime.

This is really valuable information that you should definitely review as these blogging strategies are the reason why I consistently see improvements.

With that said, let’s dive into the details…

(Please note that I still consider this blog very new…Organic growth of any website takes time and you really need to adopt a long-term mindset if you want to be successful with blogging)

Organic Traffic (June 2018)- 169 Visits

Organic Traffic for June 2018 came in at 169 visits.

Organic Traffic is really starting to show noticeable improvement thanks to the SEO work I’ve been implementing over the last 12 months.

The growth really started to happen around October of 2017 (see screenshot below) and continues to compound with the more content that is published and search engine optimization that is done.

I highlighted 3 specific reasons why I am seeing a major improvement in Organic Traffic, which is shown in the traffic chart below.

Organic Traffic all-time (by Month)

This screenshot came out a little smaller than I’d like so let me break down what it all means.

All of the red arrows represent “annotations” that I added to my Google Analytics account. They are basically notes that you can add when you make certain updates to your website, adopt a new marketing strategy etc. They are helpful to see what is working well and driving more traffic to your website.

Annotation #1: The first annotation (February 1, 2017) is when I started link building consistently for my website. I believe this is the biggest reason for my improvements as of recently. Although you can see how long it took to start seeing noticeable results from my link building efforts. Let me re-iterate that blogging and SEO is a long-term strategy, but it is a true asset you will have for life.

Annotation #2: The second annotation (August 5, 2017) is when I bought an SSL Certificate and switched to the https protocol on my website. This in combination with my link building work really made things spike in the right direction as you can see in the screenshot above.

Annotation #3: The third annotation (December 4, 2017) is when I started accepting guest posts on my website. I decline about 90% of the submissions I receive since they are low quality, but I do believe the ones I actually publish to my website help with overall organic growth.

If you’re wondering about the 4th annotation there, that is something that wouldn’t really affect my traffic. I more put that in there for my reference as it has to do with a really minor tweak.

Now let’s take a look at some very helpful data below which is year-over-year organic traffic increases.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (June 2018 vs. June 2017)

A helpful metric to analyze when it comes to Organic Traffic is year-over-year improvements.

Seeing your growth compared to this time last year can really reveal if your marketing efforts are paying off or need to be improved.

This data can easily be pulled from Google Analytics…See my year over-year increases below.

These are some really big improvements here and keep in mind that these are Organic Traffic statistics and not Total Traffic.

As you can see Organic Traffic is up 1,200% when comparing year-over-year (169 visits vs. 13 visits).

The blue line in the screenshot above represents June 2018 Organic Traffic and the orange line represents June 2017 Organic Traffic.

I am very happy with a 1,200% increase in Organic Traffic and plan on continuing this trend with the SEO work I have planned moving forward.

Search Engine Rankings

Over the past 12 months or so my search engine rankings are really making headway and many of the keyword phrases I’m tracking are increasing in position in the Google search results. Furthermore, many keywords are also making it to the first page of Google which is why my organic traffic is improving as you can see in my analysis above.

Below is just a partial snapshot to show that I’m hitting the first page for various terms (the reason my keywords aren’t in there is because I cannot let you know which phrases I’m targeting, that is confidential information :)).

The left column “Rank” is what position I am currently at in Google search results for a given keyword phrase.

I also wanted to highlight below the progress of a specific keyword that is highly targeted to my audience over the past 12 months or so. It was all the way down to position #120+ and now for the past 6 months it’s been on the first page of Google (and creeping towards the top 3 positions).

This SEO tool tracks the keywords rankings daily which is why there is so much variation in the screenshot below:

Blogging Strategies That Have Helped Me See This Growth

Here are a few main strategies that I use/used to really expand my audience and increase my Organic Traffic, some of which was stated above.

1.) Consistent Content Generation– I publish anywhere from 4-8 blog posts per month. This comes out to around 1-2 blog posts per week. It’s important that the content I publish is at the very minimum 500 words long. In-depth, helpful articles that are valuable to your readers is the best approach with content generation. I also make sure the content is optimized properly to be able to get recognized in the search results.

2.) On-Going Link Building Work: I am consistently writing guest blog posts for other authoritative websites in my general niche. This helps me build quality backlinks that really help my overall SEO, search engine rankings and organic traffic.

3.) Making the Switch to Https: This was an important move for me and resulted in more security for my website, increased search engine rankings and organic traffic as you can see in the data above.

4.) YouTube: I recently started working on my YouTube channel again and the additional exposure has helped increase my traffic slightly.

5.) Accepting Guest Posts: Since I started accepting guest posts, my traffic has increased. If you’re interested in this strategy yourself, make sure you only accept the highest-quality articles and check them for plagiarism with Copyscape or a similar tool.

6.) On-Going Maintenance: This includes ensuring my site is healthy from a technical SEO perspective. Fixing any broken links (404 errors), redirect chains, pages with “thin” content etc.

Remember with some of the strategies above (for example, content generation and link building) that consistency is everything.

This has to be a weekly/monthly strategy if you want to build an authority blog.

Thanks for reading my blogging report for June 2018.

I hope this information is helpful to you and sparks some ideas or motivation to try the strategies that I laid out above

If you haven’t started your blog yet, you should check out my post here.

If you have started your blog, how have your results been?