How I Reached 30,000 Visits Per Month With Less Than 2 Posts Per Week
One of the common suggestions for bloggers is to post as much as possible. A higher post frequency usually translates into higher traffic numbers. I have found that to be true but what if you don’t have time to publish many posts? That has been the situation for my gaming blog. I started it two years and two months ago. My initial plan was to post 2-3 times a week. However, life got busy and I didn’t have a lot of time to devote to the blog. Also, it took me longer than I expected to write the posts. I underestimated the research time to produce quality content.
As a result, I’ve posted less than two posts per week over the life of my blog. The screenshot below shows that I have 176 posts total.
I published my first post about 112 weeks ago. When you do the calculation (176 divided by 112), on average I’ve only published 1.57 posts each week.
Fortunately, the low post frequency has not kept me from increasing my traffic. I recently reached the 30,000 monthly visits milestone in March. As I write this post on April 30, the last 31 days have also seen 30,000 visits. The traffic has been mostly steady so I expect similar numbers in future months. Here are the relevant screenshots.
How did I achieve these traffic numbers with a low post frequency? My main method has been SEO.
SEO
The majority of my traffic comes from search engines. Here’s a graph of the traffic sources for the lifetime of my blog. Over 83% of the visits have come from search engines.
My SEO strategy consists of two things, keyword research and link building.
Keyword Research
At first, I used Google’s Keyword Tool to generate a list of keywords to target. This was somewhat effective but many of the keywords were too competitive or unrelated to my blog. I soon ran out of viable keywords.
Looking for inspiration, I visited a popular forum to see which words they were using to describe the niche. This technique gave me a lot of keywords to work with. I wasn’t sure if they would drive a lot of traffic but it didn’t hurt to try.
I inserted the keywords in my posts and my traffic grew slightly. Not every keyword was a winner though. I analyzed my keywords logs to determine which ones were sending the most traffic. In my analysis, I saw a curious pattern. Most of the top keywords were related to one broad topic.
I hadn’t planned to write much about this topic but I quickly changed my plans. The demand for content in that subject area was high and I was ranking well for the related keywords. Gradually, I shifted the focus of my blog to cover the popular topic. That’s when my traffic really grew. Today, 90% of my posts cover that topic.
My keyword placement has been pretty simple. I followed basic SEO fundamentals by including the keywords in the title tag of my posts. Also, I made it a habit to link back to my older content with keyword rich anchor text.
I’m able to get a lot of traffic without a high post frequency because I target a popular keyword with each post. In 2010, I already have 25 posts that have received over 1,000 visits. 12 of them have eclipsed 2,000 visits. My top five blog posts have combined for over 36,000 visits.
Link Building
Link building is important because some of your competitors will be targeting the same keywords. To determine the rankings for popular keywords, Google’s algorithm is heavily weighted to take into account the quality and quantity of incoming links of a site.
I haven’t spent too much time building links. Link building hasn’t had to be a big focus because most of my competitors do not have strong link profiles. Since my competition is weak in this area, I didn’t have to build many links to outrank them. If you’re in a saturated, more competitive niche, you will need to spend much time on link building to rank for the popular keywords.
I built my links using a variety of methods.
In the early days of the blog, I followed many of the smaller blogs and linked out to them. A couple of the bloggers appreciated the traffic I sent them, so they added my blog to their blogroll.
One blogger was impressed with my writing and asked me to write for his blog. I wrote two guest posts for him.
I interviewed a popular blogger after he did well at a big tournament and he linked back to my interview.
I wrote a few articles for EzineArticles.
I used to be a staff writer for a few internet marketing blogs. Since I would use my gaming blog as an example and case study, I was able to place links on those blogs.
I found a forum that allowed members to link back to their blog posts. I created an account, wrote about some of my best posts, and linked back to them.
I submitted my blog to automated news sites in my niche and they added my RSS feed.
In the last six months, I have regularly earned links from different blogs and forums without doing any work. I think this is a result of blogging consistently over time and getting enough traffic to develop a good reputation within the niche.
Don’t Underestimate SEO
SEO doesn’t get as much airplay as it used to in the blogging community, but it is still a very effective strategy especially in non-internet marketing niches where most of webmasters don’t optimize their sites for search engines.
If SEO is not a part of your overall marketing plan, you should consider it. Google is one of the most visited sites in the world. If you can get on the front page of Google for many popular keywords, you will receive a big boost in traffic.
Be patient though. SEO usually takes time and you may not see major results quickly. But if you work hard, in a couple of months your blog will reach new traffic heights.
I recommend reading the following articles to get started with SEO:
- SEO Basics
- The Blogger’s Guide to SEO
- Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization
- Search Engine Ranking Factors
This is a guest post by Dee Barizo. Along with operating a gaming blog, he recently started an online degree site called The Best Degrees with a friend. He hopes to apply what he learned from the gaming blog to this new site and reach 30,000 monthly visits within six months.
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- Backlinking Tactics to Use For Your New WordPress Website
- How I get Thousands of Visitors to My New Blog Every Week
Hey Deen,
30000 visits per month. That’s really great man. Keep it up.
!!
I think i should try ezine articles
Thanks for sharing this great post
Dev, thanks
Ezine Articles is great for ranking for long tail keywords. Good luck!
30Kper month is a big number. U have also mentioned few of ur seo tactics which is really good. Im also planning to consider guest blogging. Need to make my social network lagrge.
is great … Good luck.
I’d love to get 30,000 visits each month to my blogs. Hell, I’d even be happy with 3,000 each month. The maximum I’m getting now for one of my niche blogs is 1,800. But it’s going up steadily and that’s what counts
interested article. networking and guest blogging on social networks can help you increase your traffic above the 30.000 a month. all bloggers need to do is been consistent and with a plan of action.
good luck
very informatife posting good share
Nice story…
Google always like fresh content and will love your blog if you update it frequently. In this case, Dee Barizo is targeting some low competitive keywords upon demographic keyword search. That’s important. And, the traffic is coming from limited countries, where people do search optimized keywords.
Best of luck…!
very good……..
^^
like it very much
I think SEO is and will be the top source of valuable traffic. Quality of the traffic from Search engines is high if you target right keyword.
Great inspiring post. I think this story proves that the blogging is still one of the best way of online content publishing and marketing.
Your points are really valuable, and great testimony with valid proof. To me, this is like a magic show, but facts are convincing. Thank you for sharing.
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Cool insights, I totally agree that getting involved in other blogs is a great way to increase traffic to your own blog. keep up the great work.
In addition, I found using services like twitterfeed.com to automatically post blog entries to twitter accounts can really help drum up traffic
thanks for the posting. i should follow some step there.=D
30,000 thats a fantastic number. I’m definitely going to try some of this.
Thanks for sharing this information.I am a new blogger and I was in need for this kind of information
that was great thanks for sharing whit us
This is a tremendous amount of traffic. You have obviously worked hard building your blog and reputation. Do you use any other software (shortcuts) to help in the process and would you recommend any new blogger to use such software? What is your main means of monetization?
Regards,
I don’t really use any software other than WordPress and Google Analytics. Google Analytics was especially important to figure out the best long tail keyword to target. I published posts in different topics and then looked at the keyword logs to see which type of posts were generating the most traffic.
I monetize with eBay’s affiliate program. I tried AdSense but I stopped because it didn’t pay very well and showed irrelevant ads.
Not sure what you mean by “I submitted my blog to automated news sites in my niche and they added my RSS feed.” What is an example of that type of site?
Wow.. It is very hard work to do..
Many method to be used…
Can’t do as much as you.
With a bounce rate above 50%, you mose well be getting 10,000 visits. A good blog will have a bounce rate under 50%, I have 3 of them and know that bounce rate is very crucial. You should focus on reducing bounce rate, it will help in the long run.
It’s great to get 30K a month. Congratulation to you.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for your advice !
Fantastic… thanks for sharing, admire your well written ideas
OMG! 30k per month visit? hmm…
im still learning about SEO, tengs for the info…
30k/mont…,it’s amazing.my blog has visitor les than 10/day…,i will keep try to tips…,thanks for tips guy…
Just shows you that you need to stay the course and don’t give up. Nice job and thanks for sharing
Yes, but your BOUNCE RATE IS TOO HIGH.
People come here and look for the OUT DOOR.
Most do not even stay for a third page, take your page view average.
Not even 2.
30 000 visitor is nothing if you cannot keep them for a while.
Cool article.
I join Technorati and the result is rather cool.
Check this out: http://technorati.com/people/simpleindulgence
Less than 2 post a week, and 30K visitors per months!
I don’t know what to say.
That sounds like Easy Hard work.
Easy because it’s not even 2 post per week,
Hard because I bet you do a lot of keywords research.
I am willing to learn your strategies…
Teach me your tricks, Please keep me posted!
Very impressive! Keep it up!
And those SEO articles are very helpful.
Thanks for the information!
I have always known of the importance of keywords in ppc and page ranking, but never connected it to blog posting…(duh)
Appreciate your information, thanks!
Thank you for the detailed post. I also use keywords for posts on my blogs and also target local events.
It is definitely worth visiting forums to find out what they are looking for…and you were ‘smart’ enough to pick up on the conversation keywords and flexible enough to change the direction of your posts… to your advantage.
Guest blogging definitely has it’s advantages as do Blog Carnivals.
WOW! 30K visits per month and you have the same niche as mine gaming. Thanks for sharing man I will follow your tips and hope that I can get traffic to my http://www.gameuber.com site
Many Thanks!
Great! and thank you for the tips
Awesome info! Thanks for being so detailed about the backlinking!
I am still working how SEO works in the real world. This article helps bt sometimes I still feel lost in the woods.
…very interesting !! thank you so much
The link to the gaming blog is not working. its giving database error, looks like someone hacked it.
Thanks for the information! I will use it.
Well, there is one conclusion i can get from your post.
Give your extra attention to your extra famous post, then give them extra additional post to pull the Search engine trigger. Wait and see the result sooner or later.
That is surely a great traffic. And you seems dominate the popular keyword in your niche which give you such great traffic.
It’s very inspiring. Thanks for sharing the tips. Focusing in one niche and subsequently dominate it…..is much more worth than try to cover 30 niche in one time.
Well, Well, Well…
God Job !!! Dee
Nice info.. will try it.. hope my traffic will reached 30,000 visits per month too.
Great achievement! I too don’t lost that often on my blog. But this will certainly help strategize my traffic building.
Did the increase in traffic bring users that interacted?
Tthat is really great. Have you figured out why your bounce rates are so high? I’d love to hear about any discovery with that. Thanks.
wow.. 30K mine is still under 200 a day…
thanks for share the tips.. i’ll try to apply to my blog
very challenging posting. I will copy your way to my blogs
Thanks Dee,
Couple of informative tips up there. SEO is the key to blogging success and look here what google think about long tail keywords in the blogs.
Thanks