SEO Case Study: ~200% Increase in Pageviews in the Past Year
Today, I’m breaking down how I went from 0 traffic to 5000+ pageviews a month. Specifically, I had 36,000 pageviews in the last year - a 192% increase from the year prior.
Crazy, right?!
And guess what...it’s all from blogging combined with SEO (search engine optimization).
In this post, I want to break down my journey to this point because I know it may seem daunting to start blogging from scratch.
The actual data (October 6, 2019 - October 5, 2020)
Traffic
Here you can see that in the last year, I had:
20K unique visitors (217% increase)
16.4K visits (172% increase)
36.7K pageviews (192.3 increase)
The unique visitors metric represents all the new people to my website. Pageviews is precisely what it sounds like - number of pages viewed. I still count this as important data because it shows that many people stuck around and explored more than 1 page.
Bounce rate is when people visit your site and click out without going to any other page, which you definitely don’t want since it negatively affects SEO.
Traffic sources - Google
More than half of the traffic comes from Google search. Here you can see the daily view of how my traffic really propelled forward with blogging.
Clicks
I had 8,000+ clicks from Google in the last year.
You can see from the daily view filter that last year around this time, my visibility in Google wasn’t all that great. Up until April 2020, it was very sporadic in terms of how much visibility my blog posts were getting.
So here you can see that even though I started picking up blogging again almost a year ago, I didn’t see a major uptick in clicks from Google for 6 months. That’s why SEO requires patience and plainly “sticking it out.”
Before, I had 1 blog post that was the only one visible on page 1 of Google. Now, people are finding many of my blog posts every day on page 1.
What is awesome about blogging is that all that effort snowballs over time. The more you blog around certain topics, the higher your website’s authority grows. That means that all of your blog posts start to benefit. My blog posts rank faster now than they used to because I’ve already shown Google I’m an expert on a topic. So even though it’s a slow process at first, it is SO worth it.
Giving up early is just 1 of the 4 common blogging mistakes I see business owners making.
Backstory
I want to mention my past because it definitely plays a role in where I am today.
March 2016
Got my job at an SEO agency, where I spent 2+ years working on accounts for billion dollar global brands and high profile people. I got tired of doing reactive work (basically trying to “push down” negative Google search results), so I quit my job in June 2018.
August 2018
I had started my business full time but was barely blogging. I wrote some educational posts and shared some client portfolio pieces, but I wasn’t consistent. I put my focus on Instagram and Facebook groups after hiring a couple coaches to get my business off the ground.
November 2019
By the time that November 2019 rolled around, I was pretty frustrated. This was when I decided I was going to get more serious about blogging after being tired of showing up on Instagram Stories every day. Facebook Groups were a flop and I wanted to put time and energy into a marketing strategy that was going to be constantly working for me in the backend.
I was getting some clicks from Google, but very sparse. I knew it was time to step it up.
What I did to increase my traffic in the last year
Now, the juicy part.
How did I experience such a big jump in traffic and have more people finding me in Google?
Blogged more frequently
In the last year, I published 37 new blog posts. That’s an average of 3 blog posts per month. Even today, my goal is 2-4 posts a month.
Was it a lot of work? Yes.
But it felt so much better than being active on Instagram 3x a day.
I also felt like I got to a point in my business where I could hire additional hands. Going beyond the support of a virtual assistant to help with adding/publishing blog posts to Squarespace, I hired a content writer.
Don’t worry, it’s still mainly me back here ;) But she definitely helps take the burden off writing everything from scratch.
I monitored my analytics
Inside the Analytics panel in Squarespace, you can see data from both Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
I took note of what keywords were performing well, and which ones needed a little boost. Basically, I wrote more targeted content using the keywords where I ranked on page 2 or 3. This helped me move higher in the Google search results.
Got serious about keyword research
Want to see real results from your blogging efforts? You have to be paying attention to what people are actually typing into the Google search bar.
That’s where keyword research comes in. I personally love Keywords Everywhere and Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest. With keyword research, you can find search volume and search difficulty for long tail keywords (phrases with 3 or more words).
Taking a look at my analytics combined with keyword research gave me the data I needed to make calculated decisions about my content. Every piece of content published had a purpose. You never want to sit down to write a blog post without intent and strategy.
More than just the numbers
Many of my blog posts start ranking on page 1 or 2 of Google in a matter of a couple weeks. People are clicking through to my content every day from Google.
In the past year, I’ve seen a few other amazing benefits from my efforts:
More client inquiries coming from Google
Clients actually signing on for my 1:1 offers or courses because they found me in Google
Growing my email list faster than the year before
Making money in my sleep from my trip wire and upsells in the backend
Making affiliate income from 1 blog post
That’s a behind the scenes look at how I’ve increased my pageviews from 178% over the last year.
What are your takeaways? Drop any comments or questions below!
Ready to have results like this? Want to finally get found in Google by dream clients? With 2+ years in the SEO industry, helping female coaches and creatives get seen is my jam!
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