More Content = More traffic.
This is something you should NEVER forget.
If you still don’t know anything about SEO, or you have no ways to spread the word via internet marketing techniques (social media, content marketing, guest blogging, etc), there’s still one thing you can do: Create Great Content.
Focus on it. And understand why you’re writing it.
Even without SEO, backlinks and all that stuff. Even without keyword research, if you create content, traffic will start flowing to your blog.
Sometimes we focus so much on all the things around that we forget to sit down and write great content for our readers. Instead, we’re procrastinating all the time.
- Checking analytics (no traffic)
- Learning and doing SEO
- Reading content from other sites
- Checking our affiliate reports (no income)
But all this stuff won’t grow if you don’t write any content. And then, you’re killing the purpose of everything else.
My Reality
Back in February 2012, I registered Stream SEO and installed WordPress on it with the purpose of creating great content in my journey into the Internet Marketing World.
One year later, I’m watching my traffic grow, my affiliate payments arrive, people leaving comments on my posts and even sharing my content into different social networks.
It took me one year, but it could have been faster if I had focused on creating content since the first moment I started this blog. That’s something I mentioned on my 8 ridiculous mistakes article.
At this moment, Stream SEO has 45 articles already. But being honest, only 5 of them were created in the first 6 months. The other 40 articles have been published in the last 5 months, and that’s when traffic started to flow. Here’s my screenshoot of Google Analytics showing organic traffic from search engines from July 2012 until now:
As you can see, before August, I had close to no traffic at all. My best month had 300 page views, and that was really good.
But in august 2012, I decided to start writing content, and I wrote 2 more articles. And then in September I added 2 more articles (9 articles in total until then) and traffic started to flow.
After that, I decided I would do at least 8 posts per month (or 2 posts per week) and I’ve been doing that for the last 4 months. The graph speaks by itself.
Stream SEO has grown a lot after I started writing 8 posts per month. Whereas I’d barely receive 200-300 page views per month, now I receive almost 5,000 page views per month and it’s growing every day. What I did 6 months ago in 30 days, sometimes I achieve it in 1 day. I mean, really, it’s changed a lot since I started writing content.
My first 20,000 page views!
As of February 2013, Stream SEO has already received its first 20,000 page views, and I think i can double that in 1-2 months more.
However, there are other achievements I’d like to share with you:
- 45 published posts (and more coming)
- 4 Pages
- 280 comments already! (And 1300 SPAM comments already blocked by Akismet)
- Page Rank = 1
- 4,100 backlinks and counting
- Alexa Rank: 73,000 (Started in 10,000,000 or more)
Additionally, Stream SEO also receives traffic from Yahoo, Ask, Bing and occasionally from other search engines. Of course, my main organic source is still Google, but it’s good to know I’m starting to diversify my sources, and 25% of my traffic is direct traffic coming from different sources or simply coming back for more.
Thank you very much!
So, if you’re still struggling to learn how to do keyword research, SEO, content marketing and more, don’t forget to focus on content and make it legendary. Content is still King, and it’ll always be.
There’s no better way to gain traffic, than creating content. Of course, you can do it smartly and be more efficient by selecting the right keywords, promoting yourself and writing content that your readers will love, but don’t forget the basics.
Start writing a post now!
Amit Gupta says
I read your blog It is very helpful!
I like this post.
Imer Imran says
Hi Servando
This post was awesome and has given new-found inspiration to me. you are right on your advice i.e. Create Great Content is the priority to get started. Its most reflected me when I’m not started to create great content but instead, procrastinating all the time.
BTW, one quick question, since this post is 3 years ago, do you think that Market Samurai is still the best one for keyword analysis compared to Sem Rush and Ahref?
Imer
liam says
I’m looking up everything I can about blog growth at the moment. I’ve been achieving a 60% growth month on month for the last 3 months but really want to get to my first 10,000 month soon. Then i’ll be aiming higher and higher. Hope it all goes well.
Jose says
Great information I just tweaking my website and I have noticed that what you have here is the truth.
Wing2xtech says
Let me ask one question sir, If I used a free blogging platform like blogger.com for my blog, is it possible to gain lots of traffic even I focused in writing content? as what you have indicated in this article? You’re a great SEO guru sir, thanks for sharing this to us. This a gold mine when it comes website traffic…
Servando Silva says
Yes, it is possible to do that but I would never recommend going big with a shared/free platform because your site won’t be yours 100%.
Winston says
Ok sir, thank u for your immediate response. Maybe someday, if I have enough budget, I would go for my own domain. Sir, what did you used for hosting this site? I mean, what can you recommend when it comes to hosting my own domain? Which is better to use, godaddy? or bluehost? Thanks again sir…
Servando Silva says
Bluehost is decent. Not super good, but for somebody that can barely afford it it’s decent.
Also ASmallOrange.
Pratik vyas says
Its really good to know how you increase your traffic mate.. But from 2012 to 2015 many things have change in google indexing procedures. I can see a website on internet who do alot of keyword spamming yet no actions by google and im shock that why google is not penalizing such website as its called keyword stuffing and due to such spam websites our website ranks poor no matter our content is unique still.. do you know what we can do to stop this ? i already reported that website to google for spam also i have made a question on google web forums yet no actions by google neither by their forums..
Servando Silva says
Yeah, that’s true. Well, I’ll recommend you to focus on growing your websites and let Google deal with the SPAM. There will always be SPAM with this algorithm. Better focus on growing your business instead.
ashik says
how to my new blogger at first day i want to 10,000 visitors its possible ?
i want to daily new 1 blog open and 24 hr times limit this blogger and delete this blogger so i want 10,000+ to 24 hrs not more times its possibles ? please tell me i want this
Servando Silva says
Sorry bro. I don’t understand you. Could you try to rephrase you sentences again?
tonythanh says
I have all agreed with you. great content will drive traffic for you like crazy. My website tonythanh.com has 11 pageviews per visitor. I can show analytics. I have no offpage seo, only contents. So, better that we creat new content and multimedias, then you will get good result in GSEP.
Seun says
Hi Servando, thanks for the great work you are doing. I really took my time to read through the comments. I so much appreciate how you are taking your time to respond to people’s comments. I stopped commenting because most high authors like yourself do not respond to questions, especially when it’s against their teachings. Thank you again.
Please kindly help me access my blog, to see if it’s cool for adsense and any other tip you can give me. Recently, I started getting about 3k pageviews a day, mostly from facebook. I was made to understand facebook traffic is not acceptable by google.
Thanks Servando.
Servando Silva says
Facebook traffic is fine. I don’t know where you heard that.
As long as your page has been live for a few months you’ve got content and you’re not doing any adsense forbidden niche, you should be fine to apply for an account.
However, if they don’t accept you, I’d recommend you to look for adsense alternatives.
khawer says
My online games blog is 15 month old and also my googleplus followers are increasing daily. Within 15 month i submitted my site into many directories but still i get only maximum 200 page views a day sometime. Now i am totally frustrated i don’t understand what to do. I need help. Check my blog and give me some suggestion.
Servando Silva says
Submitting to article directories won’t get you anywhere nowadays. You need to build backlinks and promote on social media! (hint: games are great on Facebook).
khawer khan says
I update my blog every two days . I have already connected my blog to google plus, facebook, twitter, tumblr, pinterest, stumbleupon and more other social sites. Google plus is the main part of blogger that’s why i get lot of followers but no page views as i have mentioned before in my comment . From facebook i got few visitors once through like exchange and same thing is happening in all other social sites also.
Servando Silva says
Yeah, but you need to build your audiences and your accounts. Plugging your social media accounts won’t help for anything if you don’t have followers or pay for Ads.
Facebook Ads could work really work for a gaming niche. They’re really passionate about it.
Jacika Posener says
Hello Silva,
I am not get sufficient visitor after doing SEO, have you any other tricks for this???
Servando Silva says
Hello.
Are you ranking already for your desired terms?
If YES, then it’s all about proper keyword research.
If NOT, what kind of SEO strategies have you been implementing?
Jacika Posener says
I am already get rank with this keywords.. English video dictionary, Video dictionary, Video dictionary app, English dictionary app, DIVII…. But English dictionary till not get rank on 20 pages.
Doing Guest posting, T1-T2 process, blog posting, sharing on social media, article, tumbler ect…
Need to rank with “English dictionary” this keyword…..what is my next step for this??? please help me…too much worried about it.
Lawrence Abiodun says
Silva
I am so excited and full of joy reading your post. My blog just a month with over 100 POSTS and daily page view of around 100. But before now I was thinking I am not getting it right hoping my traffic and page view should have been getting to a 1000+. BUT you just gave me the confident that continuing posting will bring the required traffic in nearest future.
Thanks once againg for sharing your experience with a newbie like me, cos reading this now will make to work more on writing rather then checking ALEXA, GOOGLE ANALYTICS everyday just to know my traffic inflow.
MORE SUCCESS TO YOUR EFFORT!!#
Servando Silva says
Well, if you get backlinks and shares, you’ll definitely get more traffic. I prefer doing SEO and keyword research instead of writing hundreds of posts per month.
Don’t focus on checking Alexa and Analytics every day. Maybe just once every week.
Sam Adeyinka says
Hey Silva, it’s so refreshing and pleasant to get to your blog after a long search through on Google on how to get 5,000 pageviews per day. That’s crazy right? Oh yeah I know it is but don’t mind me I’m just kinda desperate that’s why. 🙂
Okay, I have been doing all what you’ve mentioned and more and have published about 26 quality article on my blog in the space of four months and have closed to 1,000 comments but my highest daily pageview ever is 131. I wonder why it is.
You might be like, “but Sam, how come you have a thousand comments and don’t have a huge daily page view.” Well, that’s because I’m an ardent and chronic commenter and guest blogger…those have really helped buy I still want to know what I’m not doing right.
Silva, if you would tell me, I will so appreciate it. You can always contact me on any social network you can think of as I’m forever online on all of them. Don’t worry I will follow you on twitter, I can add you on Facebook as I’ve just been blocked from adding friends, and that would last for 30 solid days.
Okay that’s about me and I hope you will help me, Silva.
Speaking of your article now, it’s so lovely and inventive. I was stunned at the sudden rise and turn of success and achievement you’ve so far achieved in just 1andhalf years or so. That’s a very fantastic feat if you would ask me and brother I so envy you.
I think I’ve got to stop here else if I continue my comment would end up longer than your actual post. 😀
Thanks for the share brother and I look forward to connecting with you. Hope you will also come to my blog by following the commentluv link? Please do, I’d like to read your comment. 😀 You should have a very lovely and magical weekend okay.
Sam
Servando Silva says
Hello Sam.
If you’re promoting your blog, traffic will come. Promotion does 80%, content does the other 20%.
If you’re waiting traffic by SEO, then you need to to keyword research 🙂
Sam Adeyinka says
Thanks Silva for the prompt reply, you indeed are a fantastic blogger. I wonder why I’m just finding out about you when my friend Cudjoe of Kabenlah already has. Well, it’s good that I did anyways.
See Silva, I write three times a week and spend the rest of my time promoting everywhere, from facebook profile to fan page to FB groups, to stumbleupon, to reddit, to delicious, to communities, to G=, to Klinkk, to storify, to List.ly and several other methods…guest posting and commenting like forever.
And by the way, I don’t do SEO. I just focus on writing quality contents and make use of wordpress yoast plugin to the rest of the job for me.
I still can’t understand why I’m not getting results. And dude, how on earth do you come by 4,100 backlinks to your blog. Please clear all this issues for matey! 🙂
Sam
Servando Silva says
Hello Sam.
I guess my latest article about how to create a niche site from 0 to 900 visits per day in 10 days will work for you 🙂
Is Cudjoe fine? It’s been a longtime since I saw him.
Sam Adeyinka says
Alright I will quickly head over there to read and see what I could come up with…oh Cudjoe, he is ever fine with is habitually fantastic headlines and humorous posts.
Thanks dude and I’m still expecting you on my blog plus have added u to my circle and have followed you on Twitter.
Angelina says
You should also mention that these results wont be achieved by any mortal. I have 400, nearly 500 blog posts on my blog and it is receiving nowhere near the traffic that you mentioned.
Servando Silva says
So what exactly am I? an inmortal?
Honestly, 20k page views in 6 months is not really a big deal. I can do tat or even more right now in less than 1 month.
If you have 500 blog posts and you’re not getting anything similar or much more, you’re doing something wrong. I’ve seen this many times, Angelina.
Tapiwa Mapani says
This is a very inspiring post. All this time I’d been underestimating the power of search traffic. So glad I found this blog!…I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve been commenting like crazy on a million posts..lol
Watesh says
Content is truly king…. the content I post the more traffic I get. I hope to one day hit 20,000 daily page views from google since I know sites which do 5 million. It is very achievable
Money says
Hi Silva,
I have seen your success and I congratulate you for that..The blog I am writing is 4 months old and It has around 65 posts.. The approximate visits per month are below 1000 and slowly they are increasing. The webmaster tool shows backlinks but alexa analysis does not show any back links. The ranking of the blog was around 19800000 but it has improved almost 80 lacs in 3 months..Am not getting good backlinks and so a bit concerned. Could you check and suggest what needs to be done?
kle says
This whole page view per month is just confusing to me 🙂 I started my blog about one year ago, before leaving for my RTW trip, but i started writing content consistently only about 2 months ago. I am now at around 5000 page views per month, with 1000 unique visitors. I just create 1 guest post and my main way to promote the website is facebook (both my personal account and the fan page). I don’t really know how to consider these numbers. Plus i’m puzzled about my PR which is still 0. How is it even possible? I’m trying to understand what that means and why is still 0, but i don’t have a clear answer to that. I also got some comments here and there (200 in total so far). One trend i’m noticing is that in the past couple of months my organic traffic has increased by 200%, only because of a single article! That sounds crazy to me… but i guess you are right. With the right content (quality content) the visit grow in a significant way.
My goal is to reach at least 10.000 visit per month in the next couple of months. I’m writing new content every 3/4 days and it’s been helping a lot, but i still don’t see incredible results. Should i just be patient and continue writing or i should be pushing more trough social media? I dont want to put any advert on my website and i already refused some crappy requests for sponsored guest post… any advice? Thanks a lot!
Servando Silva says
Hello Kle. Don’t get confused.
5K page views per month is a good number for organic traffic. If you want more search engine traffic, you should focus on getting more backlinks like the one you got from the guest post. And don’t forget to make that backlink arrive to an squeeze page or something interesting to get subscribers on your list and keep those new visitors.
More backlinks = more rankings = more Page Rank.
Especially if the backlinks come from high PR domains (not really probable from guest posts as they get recently published).
Additionally, I don’t know if you’re already familiar with Google PR updates, but they do update only 3-4 times per year. I guess another update should be really soon as the last one was on February.
I checked your website and you have around 8,000 backlinks already and many of them have a good Citation Flow score. Your site should be PR 1 at least on the next update, I guess…
kle says
hey! thanks for the reply! im now actually so much happier about my traffic…for a combination of factors (and hard work) im now reaching almost 10.000 pageviews per month and it is pretty exciting. MY PR is still zero but i got a big big deal that should help…basically an online magazine (PR 7) wants me to write at least 8 articles about my trip and i can add links to my articles wherever i want and i will have a link to my website at the end of each article…do you think this is going to make a big difference? or just a tiny one? 🙂 the magazine is “cosmopolitan”, so n theory i should also get a bit more traffic to my website right? any suggestion on how to handle this will be much appreciated. It is a huge opportunity i think and i dont want to mess it up!! Thanks a lot!
Servando Silva says
Hello Kle.
It’s good to know you’re approaching the 10K mark. Your PR will still be 0 but don’t worry, it’s because Google hasn’t updated it yet (for anyone). Another way to check your real PR is by checking Citation Flow which can be measured in real time.
About your opportunity, I’d say take it. it’s a long time investment.
Even if the page has a PR of 7, the articles you’ll write will have a PR 0 at the beginning and then with the next update they will increase and send link juice to your page.
Williamspromakeup says
I just reached 20,000 page views in three months and considering it is a beauty blog in a super saturated market, I’m happy with that! But I use social media a lot and found that helped 🙂
williamspromakeup.blogspot.co.uk
Himanshu Negi says
Hello Servando Silva,
When I was reading your blog I feel that as I am reading my story, on my blog at present I am having 61 articles out of which 15 are guest sponsor/post. I too didn’t wrote anything much for first 6-7 months (I used to write 1 or 2 articles/month only) but now for last 2-3 months I am writing 8-10 post per month and traffic increases from 5000 to 14,000 and the show is still going on (traffic increasing everyday).
I too have some good achievements like you, most of my articles are on 1st page for main keywords and Income is also increasing every month at good rate. But I don’t have much comments on my blog because they is no way of getting backlinks from my blog with comments, that’s why. (also I don’t like comments that are made just for backlinks). My blog gets honest comments only 🙂
Okay, Keep on successfully blogging and to summarize everything I want to just tell that your blog is awesome and really different from others (better and unique). I had read only a few articles though but I will surely read everything here.
Happy Blogging!
Servando Silva says
Hey Himanshu, thanks a lot for the compliments.
I guess this is the same story for many bloggers out there and so many that don’t even arrive to this part.
Right now I have duplicated the comments and views in the last 3 months and it keeps growing.
Aside from that, if you want people to comment and then if they deserve it, get a backlink, you can change commentluv’s settings to do so. So for example, any new commenter with less than 3 comments won’t get any backlinks or so.
Thanks for passing by and take care.
organic seo service says
Indeed, Google loves quality content because it helps them become authentic and reliable search engine. One of the reasons why Google Penguin was released is to eliminate websites and small businesses using rehashed content just to get website rankings. They only spam the web which is not good because they ruin the reputation Goggle have established for many years.
Ram Shengale says
My blog also have 50 posts now but the traffic is no way near to yours. Congrats for your success. Although I’m just 4 months into my blog but I think I’ll grow more in the next couple of month than I did in last few months.
Ram
Servando Silva says
Your blog should grow more and more every month. So let’s see how it goes after 6-8 months 🙂
Taswir Haider says
That’s really great to know and inspirational one. I have already written 180+ posts but the organic search traffic is not as much as I expected, though I am implement good SEO practices. Obviously I am choosing keywords which is competitive.
It would be great if you kindly share how you choose the keyword to target. Are you using any other tool beside market samurai?
Servando Silva says
180 posts? Wow, that’s 3.5x higher than the number of posts here.
Honestly, I do most of my research with Market Samurai (https://stream-seo.com/find-competitor-backlinks/) and a little bit of direct/indirect feedback from my readers: https://stream-seo.com/website-content-writing-ideas/
Most keywods are competitive, but when you turn then into long tail keywords you have higher probabilities to rank.
Taswir Haider says
Yap Servando, actually I enjoy writing posts that is helpful for my reader but I am targeting mostly competitive keywords where there are already some good competitors out there.
Turning into long tail keyword is obviously helpful but the traffic from most of the long tail keyword is really too low! However do you think that Market Samurai is still the best one to check competition? Can it suggest keywords?
Servando Silva says
Yes, Market Samurai is great to check competition and keywords and it suggest them based on traffic, competition, quantity, CPC, etc.
I don’t know if it’s the best out there, but it works for me pretty well.
I know most long tail keywords traffic can be low (for example, 500 visits per month) compared to short keywords (1 million a month), but it’s easy to rank.
And with 180 posts, can you imagine what would happen if 80 of them were ranked on the first page?
Even with an average of 10 daily visits per post (which is super low even for long tail), you’d have at least 800 visits per day or more.
How I do it? you should check the links I gave yo in my previous answer 🙂
Taswir Haider says
Thanks Servando for your detailed answer. Yap it would be nice if many of them rank high but since my site is new and PR only 1, so it might take a considerable amount of time to rank my posts higher. When we check a keyword monthly searches, if we see it as “exact match” then the monthly search is really too slow compared to the “broad” searches. That is the real problem that the traffic is not as much as it seems when you rank first page on Google.
Servando Silva says
The PR doesn’t matter that much for ranking long tail keywords. My site is PR 1 too, and I have some good keywords ranked even better than sites with PR 2-7. Especially if those are Youtube or News Sites with short articles.
Taswir Haider says
Good to know it Bro. Best of luck on your journey. 🙂
Jennifer Cunningham says
Thanks for the reminder about quality and consistentency. I am giving more attention to writing regularly. You are right. Page views are growing.
Ana says
Content makes a huge difference – no one wants to come to an empty blog or content-thin blog!
Check this out, Servando: http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/weekly-marketing-skinny-february-16-2013/
Servando Silva says
Actually, Ana, that was one of my fears when guest posting some months ago. I feared that people would find my post interesting, then go to my blog and find little to no content at all.
I’m heading to your weekly summary now 🙂
Liudas says
The reply function didn’t allow to reply in the 6th level so I’m writing a new comment.
I noticed that my blog got penalized, because my traffic dropped. It’s easy to check in your analytics, you choose to watch only traffic that comes from Google and you can see how’s it going.
Now, I’m receiving around 50 visits a day to that blog.
Servando Silva says
Of course that’s an easy way to check it. My question was more oriented to “do you know why” Google penalized it? Any bad linking practice or software that you remember?
You can also check your backlinks on Webmaster tools.
Liudas says
I got penalized, because of duplicate content. You wont believe how many bloggers send out duplicate or rewritten articles as guest posts.
Servando Silva says
Ouch, that sounds awful. Have you tried contacting Google for that? And file DCMA claims to take down those duplicated articles?
Liudas says
No, I haven’t, because almost all the duplicates were on my own blog 😀 I scanned my site with copyscape deleted the duplicates and the traffic came back, for some time and now it’s gone again, It comes and goes, I got tired of plying that game so I started a new blog.
Kabenlah Cudjoe says
Obviously great works yields results. It’s truly amazing the successes you’ve chalked with less than 50 posts. We’re also expecting more from you,
Servando Silva says
Thanks man. I know you’ve been working hard lately on your blog, so you’ll achieve similar things if not better in the near future!
Oh, so now that you’re expecting more from me, I can’t let you down 😉
Liudas says
You should also mention that these results wont be achieved by any mortal. I have 400, nearly 500 blog posts on my blog and it is receiving nowhere near the traffic that you mentioned.
Servando Silva says
Hello Liudas.
I’m wondering what’s making me different to the rest of the “mortals”?
I’m no traffic guru and I’m way behind my target and other internet marketers. So this isn’t something especial.
If you have a blog with 400-500 posts and you’re not receiving at least the traffic I’m receiving you should really review your content marketing strategies.
Can I have a look to that blog? I could help you with some advise. The one you’re linking on your profile has less than 10 posts.
Liudas says
The blog is www,imz6.com It has been penalized by Google though even at it’s good times when it wasn’t penalized it had around 200-300 blog posts and was getting only around 300 visits a day.
Servando Silva says
300 visits a day was good. That means you receive almost 10K per month, and that similar to what I’m achieving right now.
I said I managed to get my first 20,000 Page views, not that I receive that every day (or even every month yet).
However, I have 6 times less posts than 300. Whet were you doing to promote it?
– Guest Posts
– SEO
– Social Media
– List Building
etc?
Liudas says
Ohh I totally misread your numbers, Sorry. Still in perspective you are doing very good 🙂 keep it up.
I was doing some SEO, some social media and concentrating mostly on List building.
Servando Silva says
Oh, that explains it all. No problem 🙂
Would you mind sharing why your old blog was penalized? How did you notice and how many visitors are you receiving after it?