Hi friend! I am glad to see you here, I am excited today because I will share with you my latest traffic report from my blog, I never thought that I would be having these results on my second month blogging, but I am not satisfied and this will grow no matter what.
First, let me tell you that I am not having too much hot days lately, thank god! I was going pretty crazy about it, but now I have some decent days and I can work much better than before. Today is Monday, starting the week the best I can and looking forward to write an awesome report to show you friend.
I started my blog on November 2015 but I was just writing content for myself and trying to learn about blogging while making content to promote. After 2 months of learning and creating content to have a blog with more than 5 posts I started the promotion, it was very hard because this is my first blog ever, but if I can do it, you can do it as well my friend.
Sadly I have no report for January because for lack of experience I was unable to track my traffic with Google Analytics, my configuration was bad and my numbers were 0 every week. It was strange because people were commenting on my blog, that is how I realize I was doing something wrong with my Analytics. I finally solve the problem on February and got excited about the numbers, I was averaging 20 visitors per day, that is insane friend, at least for me, I do not know your experience.
Some people think that Alexa ranking is not important but I think different, I think it is very important because it shows how much authority you are. For example, when you are looking for authority blogs to make some blog commenting, you should look for a low Alexa number, that means the website have tons of traffic, also you can verified that just seeing the large number of comments on each post.
I went from 1.750.000 Alexa ranking to 456.106 in 2 months, the goal for any blog should be to have at least 5 digits, I am going there, day by day. The only way to improve your Alexa ranking is to make backlinks, drive traffic, have an active audience and grow your domain rating.
You can add a plugin to your browser to check the Alexa ranking for any page you visit, you can download it and install it from Alexa’s website.
My traffic is 100% FREE, no paid traffic, no ads, nothing. Just completely organic traffic from SEO, social media and blog commenting. Pretty easy, right? Now, think if you add forum marketing and email marketing to the mix, even better results, I am going to add both when possible.
To make things happen you need a solid strategy, what I mean with a solid strategy? Quite simple, just consistency day by day, I will show you my strategy and how I did it. Before sharing my strategy in detail I am going to talk on each of the traffic sources I use and what I learned from them.
SEO
Writing great content with good keywords can make traffic to any blog, if your blog is new you should aim for low amount of traffic when looking for keywords, otherwise you will not be ranking at all, as new bloggers we cannot compete with authorities. Find great keywords with low competition and less than 500 searches per month, make a proper search before writing any content to make sure your content is optimized to the keywords selected, you will have more chances to rank for them because most people do not even care about those keywords. You can even check the keywords on Google, you can see that there are no ads or any promoted link, only organic content from other people.
SEO was my main traffic source for weeks, but now is my second best traffic source. Not because I am not working anymore, social media claimed the first spot when finishing the month and now is leading for a huge difference, but I know that SEO have the potential to be number one for sure, I need to be an authority first and rank for good keywords to make insane results.
After writing some content for different keywords I created an account on Google Webmaster Tools, you need to wait some weeks before seeing some stats I am not sure why but that is how it works.
The good thing about this is that you can check the top keywords for your blog, these keywords are not “real keywords” (like how to create a facebook page), these keywords are more general but you can have a better idea what keywords your blog is good at it to write content about it, you can see in the image below what I am talking about.
It is very helpful to know these stats, create your account and wait for the data to be active.
I made three posts about SEO with a lot of tips for you to check out, also I share my experience with this traffic source, if you missed these posts you can find them here:
How to find good keywords with Keyword Tool Planner.
SEO Tips.
Traffic Sources – SEO.
Blog Commenting
Even if the traffic is not huge, it is a traffic source and I love it. The better the blog, the better the amount of traffic you will get, but you need to leave great value to do it. If you are like me, with a regular job, you probably do not have the time to make large comments on blogs as part of your strategy because it is time consuming and you have more things to do for your online business rather than blog commenting with your time.
I was doing two different things with blog commenting, when I had time I was doing large comments with great value on blogs with tons of traffic. I started to see some traffic from these blogs but not huge amount of traffic, maybe 5 or 10 from one single comment. Making friends from other blogs will drive traffic to your site, be active there even if you do not leave huge comments, leave a good comment and be active because people will read your blog and the owner as well, that is traffic to your blog on your Analytics.
Even if your content is great people will not be commenting if no one else is doing it, but if you have tons of comments, your audience will be more likely to leave a comment or even answer something to someone else. Something I am not doing is writing guest posts, another thing you can add to the strategy to drive even more traffic, the only thing you need to do is to find blogs that accept guest posts, you can identify these blogs just watching their authors, if you see different people creating content is because they accept guest posts. Pay close attention to what kind of content they write, so you have a better idea what content that particular blog want from guest posts.
Now, blog commenting can be mixed with social media, I will show you that in the next section because is something awesome, not only drives traffic but also tons of activity to your blog and content.
Social Media
My best traffic source so far and growing day by day with consistency and effort. Social media is not just Facebook or Twitter, making a Facebook page could be a great idea but I am not driving too much traffic from there because my fan base is not large and my followers are not very active, most of them are friends and not part of my audience.
The key for most of social media networks are groups, you can drive a massive amount of traffic with groups, if you are not inside related groups to your niche, it should be something to care about because you are losing traffic, followers and activity.
Try to find groups with more general topic, for example if you have internet marketing as a niche as I do, finding a group about email marketing could be a good idea but only if you have a lot of content about that, if you have only 3 posts about it you can only be active and engage with others without promoting your content because you do not have it. You could engage and contact with them so you can lead them to your page on social media or your blog.
There is something positive, even if you do not have the content to promote you can make friends there, adding them so they eventually will see your content on your profile to lead them to your blog and maybe make a loyal follower.
You can stick with only one social media but that is not what I do, I have few of them but I started with only one, when I started to feel comfortable about it I added another. If you are not an authority you cannot have only one social media account because your reach will not be very huge, so you need to show your content all you can but try not to get overwhelmed.
I have a Facebook Page, Twitter Profile, Google+ Profile and Pinterest Profile where I share my blog posts, inspirational and motivational quotes, marketing memes and some engagement posts. Even if I share the same things on my social networks, you do not need to create unique content for each of them. People who use Facebook do not use Google+, same for the rest, that is why I told you to get out there and create different accounts on different social networks but do it with caution to not get overwhelmed. I share my content on these networks but each of them have different styles for the content, for example on Twitter I create unique images for some topics to match the better size for it.
I recently created a Tumblr Blog called Synergy Quotes where I create unique graphics for it because the size and the engagement there is different from the rest. Well, when I say “unique” I mean for the graphics only, because the quotes I create are the ones I share on my other social media accounts, you can check it to see what I am talking about, by the way if you want to follow me on any social media above, please feel free to do it my friend.
My Experience
As I said, some people use Facebook, some people use Google+, some people use Twitter, they are not active on all of them so share your content as much as you can to reach all the people you can, with some time you will see what social network is making the best results. For now Facebook is my first traffic source (from groups, not from my page), Twitter is quite new so is not driving too much traffic, I created recently but I have 10 loyal followers so far, I am pretty happy with that. Google+ is my most active network, with 50 followers sharing, liking and commenting all my content, again I am super happy with these results. My Tumblr Blog have one week of life so the content is not indexed on the search so I have no followers or activity yet, but the potential is huge and I am looking forward to make it happen. My Pinterest Profile have a lot of content with 4500 followers but almost 0 activity, well I have re-pins all the time but there is almost no data on my Analytics from Pinterest.
Learn while doing it, that is the only way, just do it friend.
Some people say “become an expert on Facebook or Google+, it is better than having 100 social media accounts”, could be true, but only when you are an authority, for new bloggers like you and myself that does not work at all, well I am not sure if you are a new blogger like myself so I am sorry if you are not. If you find some trending people on Youtube or in real life, they have one main account on social media, that is exactly what I am saying to you, because they are an authority (even if they have an account on every social media you can see a huge difference from their main and the rest), they have an active audience already. If you think different I would love you know your experience, just leave a comment below friend, this is just my own experience.
There is not too much things you can do when starting, even if I have 10hs of my day for Twitter, after 1-2 hours I cannot do anything else because I will be spamming, same for each social media, that is why you need to have more of them to make you an authority, for example after I share all my content from today on different groups on Facebook, there is nothing else to do even if I have time.
Another thing people recommend is the classic “follow per follow”. I tried myself and I realize that I hate it with all my heart. When you see a Twitter account with 10.000 followers you think, WOW this guy is awesome, but when you see how many people is following you realize that the number is like 25.000. Doing some scroll down you can see that each tweet have almost 0 engagement or less than 5, that kind of engagement with 10.000 followers? What is the point of that? It does not make any sense at all.
The main reason why I hate it, it is because your wall or feed will be completely full of crap that you do not even care and you will never care. You will never engage or share anything and there is no way to track the real good content and value that you want to share with your audience or engage.
I have like 4.500 followers on Pinterest doing this follow per follow, but I have more engagement and traffic from my Google+ profile with only 50 followers (loyal and super active 50 followers).
Now, if I have a twitter with 10.000 followers but I only follow 40 people I can easily find great content I want to share to my audience on my feed and also my account will look more professional and authentic. My recommendation is to focus on quality over quantity when talking about followers and engagement. I started Twitter few days ago and I have 9 followers, I can engage with them more in deep than my 4.500 followers from Pinterest.
I recommend you to have Facebook and Google+ first to drive traffic, maybe Tumblr as well. On Facebook and Google+ you can find tons of huge groups related to your niche where you can share your blog posts, make comment for comment, etc. That will drive tons of traffic to your blog for sure, I share my blog on many groups on Facebook and Google+, a lot of people end up on my blog and also they read my other posts as well. Find groups with a lot of members but before doing it (unless they are private) check out how active they are, some groups with 25.000 people have no activity at all, no engagement and no one cares about anyone. If you find a group with a lot fo people and the content you see have a lot of engagement, that your perfect group to join.
Making comment x comment it is great, we have more engagement on our blog and we make contacts. Also, the people who like or share your content, add them to your network, they will be very likely to follow you and share your content. There are groups that have some rules to follow, for example some of them will allow you to post one link each day, some other will allow you to post a link on a particular ports (not in the wall), some others will allow you to post a link only on Mondays, some groups are just for comment exchange, be creative and find the best one for you.
You do not need to join groups related directly to your niche, for example I am part of different groups about inspirational and motivational quotes for business or life where I share great quotes I make, I made tons of engagement there and when I add them after I see they like my content, they follow me and read more of my content.
Facebook is my number one traffic source, not from my Facebook page, 100% from groups, but Google+ is my number one when talking about engagement with my followers, they are super active and Google+ interface it is super cool, all your content in one single place. On Facebook someone need to search a while to find a specific content on your page, on Google+ that does not happen.
On Pinterest you should aim to search different topics and create a specific board for that topic, only re-pin viral content, you can see what is viral just viewing the stats of the post, if you see tons of shares, tons of likes and tons of comments, that is something you want on your boards. Never share things with no activity because could be not very good content (even if the image is great), provide value over quantity.
On Tumblr the more active you are the most people will engage with you, there are two paths for you to choose, one is to blog your content only so people can find it very easily and the second one is to not only blog your content, but re-blog any good content you find with the search or even the internet with a proper credit for the author.
The bad part of the second path is that re-blogging will leave all your content in the past, people will need to scroll down a lot or explore different pages to find something from your blog, but you can always re-blog your old posts to make them fresh again because you have a great amount of followers since you are active and you re-blog tons of quality content from other people.
Hashtags are super important, make sure to optimize your content so people can find it with the search engine for that particular network, for example people interested on Football will search “Football” and if you have a hashtag #football in your last content there, it will appear on the result feed with other content from different people as well.
My Strategy
I have a routine after doing it for a while, I will share it with you so you can have a better idea what to do and maybe build your own. This is my everyday strategy:
Create two quotes for Tumblr.
Create one quote and one meme for Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest (then I share it on related groups).
Share one post on all my Google+ groups.
Share one post on all my Facebook groups (few of them only allow me to post on Monday).
Comment on two different blogs.
Comment on different blogs inside Facebook groups.
Share one post from my blog on these comments groups (so people will leave a comment on my content as well).
Share at least five viral content on Pinterest to my boards.
Add everyone who likes, share or comment on my content on every social media.
This is not part of my daily routine, but I write one post per week for the SEO strategy and have more content to keep sharing on my social media accounts.
Simple but effective as hell, this is my strategy so far hope you find it helpful so you can improve your business and online presence. If you have a routine or something you want to share about it, please leave a comment below because I would love to read about it.
Final Notes
A strategy is important, but consistency is even more important. The days I do not do all my tasks I can clearly see worst results on my Analytics, now when I am active and do what I need to do, I am doing over 40 unique visitors per day, that is awesome and I am going to have more than 600 this month for sure. The days I am not able to do my full strategy I see a different number, something like 20 or even 10 only just because I did not take action.
Remember that quality is better than quantity, create as many social media account as you can without being overwhelmed, write your strategy down and stick with it no matter what. I can promise that if you follow this full report to the letter your traffic will increase dramatically, in just one week you will be able to see some results on your Analytics.
After testing different sources I found that tracking my content with Bitly helps me a lot to see even more stats, I do not know why but my sometimes my Analytics does not show me 100% real stats, while on Bitly I can clearly see all the clicks I made from a single link and also from where that particular click came from, super helpful tool, it is free of course and pretty simple.
Let me know in the comments below if you like this latest traffic report so I can do more for you, would be great to share all my results with you friend. Also if you want to ask me a question just do it because I will answer you as soon as possible. Feel free to share it to your friends if you find it helpful, hope you have an amazing day mate.
Best Regards,
Nicolas.