My Journey To 15000 Pageviews A Month
My Initial Goals On The Way To 15000 Pageviews
When I first re-launched this website (July 2015) the idea was to re-produce news events with my own spin on it. Telling events in my own way. It was a hobby for me to learn and practice new web-based skills. I'm no designer, and after the writing was done, my prime focuses were on traffic and social media. I wanted to learn about building a site that would attract an audience month after month.
'How could I get enough traffic to make my little website worthwhile and one day, earn me some cash.'
Publishing Articles
Originally I was going to produce an article once a week. And after reading all the information I could on website marketing and how to drive traffic to website from google - I decided to publish an article a day. This was so that when the googlebot visited my site it would notice the changes, and noticed there was something new written each day - therefore increasing visits from google to this site.
I then started publish Thailand News. This was a big problem as there was so much news, everyday, it was difficult to choose what I should publish. I found that writing about a famous celebrity and their death drove traffic but I didn't want to be so morbid - so I did it only once. This was never going to get me near my target of 15000 pageviews a month.
July 2015 - January 2016 - Why was my traffic so low?
So the first 6 - 7 months of this website the traffic was deplorable. It was terrible and non - existent. The only spike of traffic came from when I played with hootsuite - but the data from this showed that it wasn't worth wasting time on. After all there are plenty of other websites out there, that are huger and more popular than my own.
January 2016 Onwards
I was on holiday visiting Thailand. One month previous to this I had published the Thailand Lotto Results. And this was driving traffic. Whilst on holiday I didn't have time to publish any new articles. Accept for the lotto results. It was quick and easy to update the page. My mind at this point was still focused on the 15000 pageviews but I was on holiday so I had to relax.
In February 2016 I started to realize, rather than waste my time on un-original articles that were just re-productions of other news, that just publishing the Thai Lotto Results started driving traffic to my site. So that's when the penny finally dropped.
I utilized Facebook. To this day I have 1650 likes on a fan page. These are all genuine likes and none of them are paid for. Which means that all the activity on the Facebook fan page, well its real. Real people are coming from Facebook to my site. The more likes I get on my links, the further the pages go up in the rankings. So Facebook is really working well for me. And if you can get other similar groups in your niche to allow you to post relevant articles, then that will help you drive traffic as well. Facebook has really helped me on the way to 15000 pageviews a month.
Organic Traffic - Why Is It So Low?
I still need to focus more on this. I have on average 1500 visits from google each month. This is also showing an increase. But I still need to write more content on Keyword Research related words. If I improve and add more content i'm sure the website will keep getting stronger. I've also submitted to bing, not everyone submits to bing, so if you submit here then you will probably start ranking well. Other search engines are also picking up my articles (from the past).
Evergreen Writing
I did try and write evergreen articles or blog posts, but this wasn't driving much traffic. I still get traffic from two particular posts, which were about EXO and Dengue Fever. I'm quite glad i'm getting this extra traffic as it proves anything you write isn't a waste of time. Another goal of mine is to write two or three evergreen articles a month. We'll see how it pans out.
Future Goals For My Web Site
- Increase Traffic Through Organic Searches
- Increase Facebook Likes and Followers
- Provide more of what my fanbase wants such as Lotto Tips and Advice
- Change the design of the website, its not so beautiful.
- Improve my HTML skills
- Write more evergreen content
Increase Pageviews from 15000 pageviews to 50000 pageviews by Christmas 2017
When I first started this web site many of my coworkers laughed at me and said that it wouldn't work out. Well I've just continued with it, and its starting to work - and I ignored what others said or thought. If you can sustain and keep going, you will prevail. Ignore what others say to you. You might start with next to NO traffic like me, but then 6 months or a year down the line things will change. Just keep motivated and keep going.
Listed Below Are Several Ways That Helped Me On The Way To 15000 Pageviews A Month
HTML Skills
I have virtually no HTML skills or writing code for websites. But since starting this website and using the Blogger platform. I have had to learn about certain code and where to put it. I didn't even know that ctrl + f can help you find certain parts of code. I needed to learn for adding things to the website such as pop up email subscribe box and adding google adsense.
One website that has helped me consistently with blogger and HTML is http://www.mybloggertricks.com which has been owned by Mohammad Mustafa for many years. I've spent countless hours looking at articles on his website. Which has helped be in the long term. So thanks very much.
Fivver was a great help to me also. It has many experienced bloggers who have used HTML on the blogger platform. So once I had finished playing with the HTML, I hired someone for ten dollars just to check that everything was correct and make some changes. It worked out great as he made sure the website was mobile-friendly and this also helps with your google ranking as they now require websites to work on phones. If your website is mobile friendly it will rank higher.
Google Analytics
My google analytical skills get better by the day as I'm always trying to find out about my visitors and their demographics. It's good to lean hoe to use google analytics as you can find out where people are coming from to view your site. You can also see how many people return to your site. And you can see how people got to your page (social, search engines, direct, other, email) through the google acquisition button. Overtime I have noticed that visitors are visiting more pages and are spending more time on my site. Which makes me a very happy man.
Google AdSense
Add google Adsense from day 1 if you can. I still earn pennies from it. But I use it as a tool to see if the websites getting stronger. For example now I'm earning 10 pounds a month but the same time last year I was earning 0.30p or something similar. Don't forget that google won't automatically put ads onto your website, you need to wait several months before you can be accepted into the Google Adsense Program.
Social Networking
As mentioned before I use Facebook, I also use twitter and pinterest. But most of my luck comes from facebook. It is crucial to get some kind of social network following as you might find yourself with a google ban one day. If this happens, and you still have a following on social media, you can still keep your traffic up. Google Plus is also a good tool to use, as its owned by google, it will help with your page rankings and google index. Curently have upto 500 followers on Google Plus.
Alexa Ranking
I have not been bothered with this lately because I'm posting less articles Alexa is ranking me lower. But I still have more traffic going to my website. I've read countless of times about buying into the Alexa Toolbar, but I don't want to do that. If your website is good enough then you shouldn't worry about your Alexa ranking. Although, I was quite happy when I dropped from 20 million to 3 million. I'm now at around the 5 million mark, this is okay for me. I guess when I hit my target of 100,000 pageviews a month then I will get higher in the Alexa ranking system again.
A Big List Of Mistakes I Have Made
Domain Name: I chose the most boring domain name in the world, ever! That's was my creative mind at work again! I wish I had chose a name that was a brand-able name. But now i'm a year down the line its too late to change everything (well its not its just a lot of hard work - redirecting domains to new domains).
Finding A Niche: This website has gone through many niches from travel to news and now its at its final niche. Providing lottery results. The early days with this site when it was a travel based site, were difficult. As there were soooo many people writing about the same old thing. Like I mentioned before write about something people want, and your bound to get more traffic, in a shorter amount of time.
Not Using Social Media: The world loves social media, and I refused to use it at the beginning as I was determined to make a website that would eventually get just organic traffic. But then I changed my mind and created a Facebook Fan Page, and this has helped immensely, as people who visit from Facebook are real. Once they've visited your site there's more chance of them coming back. And this has been proved in my direct hits and return visits in Google Analytics.
Adding Alt Tags To Images: I didn't do this for many months although I had many images on the site. So that meant, once I learnt about ALT tags, I had to go through all of the images again and add alt tags. If you add alt tags to images you can drive a lot more traffic to your website. Just don't forget as it is a hassle going through everything again.
Duplicate a Meta Descriptions: On the blogger platform you can add search descriptions on every page that you produce. But remember not to duplicate them, that means don't write the same thing in every description. As the google search console won't be able to recognize everything that you produce, and it will state that there are error tags.
Use Search Console: Again as a novice, I didn't use this for a long time. So now I use it every time I publish a page - I use the Fetch As Google Tool to show to google I have produced more content. Its also useful for other things such as submitting robots, and analyzing more of your traffic results. You can also see if google has given you a penalty for something, they usually inform you of your mistake, such as the meta description duplicates, and you can go back and fix them.
Thinking You Can Do It ALL By Yourself: You cannot do everything, you are not superhuman and depending on your skillset you will probably need at least one persons help on the way. Whether that be paid for help, help from other bloggers and sites, or just simple help of visitors to your website. By that I mean they are helping just by pushing up your pageviews. Don't be scared to ask others for help. I'm sure they are willing.
My Advice (for what irs worth)
Produce something that people want. I am producing the results so people are coming back to my site. With 20 per cent returning visits it means people are coming back to my site because it has something that they need. I have nearly 5000 unique views this month (September 2016). And with 20 per cent returning visits, that means I have at least 1000 people coming to my website each month because they want to.
Don't try to hard, if you don't have anything to write, then don't write anything at all. If you are a bad writer then find a niche that doesn't require so much writing. Like results for certain things such as sports or elections. You can still create a website or blog, even if your not gifted in the writing department.
You won't make money right away. Maybe you can make a few pennies, but really you should focus on your pageviews. If you can get a lot of pageviews lets say 100000 pageviews a month then you can attract top advertisers to sell ads to. Even with a small amount of pageviews you can attract 'smaller advertisers' that will pay a lot less.
You should be able to try and understand what demographics are coming to your website, this way you can look for advertisers yourself. You need to look at gender, age and country. If you attract traffic from countries like Saudi Arabia or India, then typically you will be paid a lot less than a website whose traffic comes from America. This also applies to Google's AdSense..
New To Blogging? Here's Some Tips
- Learn Some Basic HTML
- Choose A Good Platform Such As Wordpress
- Buy A Great Domain Name
- Always Use Images With ALT Tags
- Don't Use Duplicate Meta Descriptions
- Sign Up To Google Analytics
- Sign Up To Google Search Console
- Sign Up To Bing Webmaster Tools
- Use Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool to find Great Keywords
- Try Your Best and Try Not To Pay For Traffic
- Write About Things That Readers Need
- Don't compare your site to others, this will drive you crazy.
- Set yourself realistic targets on a monthly basis.
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