The Art of Blogging: Learn my Organic Traffic Building Strategy

Writing a blogpost about blogging is as lame as trying to make money with the ‘writing about how to make money’ strategy. Too many people are doing it. Why would I even try to beat the competition?
You need a good reason, a clear goal to do so.

Now I have such an objective, it is an important motivating element, a reason for picking up blogging as a strategy to build organic traffic. It all starts making sense and it feels like pieces are coming together.

Before I tell you more about that, let’s have a quick look at the writing about-what-you-are-doing topics.

• Tweeting about twitter
• Linkedin as a marketing tool for Linkedin marketers
• Facebook adds about Facebook advertising
• Writing about being a writer
• Running to be in time for a running competition
• Making a movie about making a movie

A bit dull It is. Making a B-movie. Lack off inspiration. Too easy perhaps. So why do I write this topic about blogging?

Because I know it generates organic traffic. Not only is it free -more important- it is sustainable over time.

Paid traffic is unstable in quality and costs money.

I am not suggesting that generating organic traffic goes without any effort, but I’ve done it before, so I know I can do it again.

I did it. Succeeded… and Failed. In that exact order.

Now that is interesting.

I guess.

I hope.

Wait… let me rephrase, better no guessing here.

I will know for sure if this article contains topics you are looking for.

There is one difference with my previous large search engine optimization (SEO) projects. Now it matters. When I first started experimenting with online publishing it was out or curiosity and the earning model was simple.

Business model for statistic based SEO

• provide great content
• get organic search traffic
• publish relevant advertisements
• analyze statistics
• optimize content

I implemented a continuous improvement cycle before I even knew that term existed.

Did you know that I never ever optimized an article for a single keyword? I publish for humans, not for bots. Robots are programmed, and can start to behave different overnight. Human behavior does not change that fast. Slow but inevitable changes, such as browser- and device preferences, are manageable and easily spotted in your website statistics.

The only thing I optimize are the topics. SEO at site level, not at article level. I write about things people are looking for. It is that simple. Does that always work? No, because when you have no clue what people are looking for, and write stuff nobody cares about, you will not get traffic and not learn about what people want to find or learn, or what problems they might have.

I tried getting access to the T1 market (USA, Canada, UK, Australia) by scaling up my little proven business model by setting up international sites about personal finance. I failed at that. I simple did not live in any of these countries and do not understand the small details of daily life that make content highly relevant for locals. Even using local copywriters did not help, because I was not able to define the topics detailed enough to generate valuable long tail search traffic.

Also, the usage of a new top level domain did not help to index my content. The sandbox effect threw in another six month or more delay so I had to pull the plug out of my global empire of personal finance websites. I hardly generated any valuable organic search traffic.

Why is organic search traffic so valuable? Because when someone hits a page of your site because it contains a certain keyword, for example ‘umbrella’ you will see in your stats that a search was executed from a unique IP address for the phrase: “Were to buy a red umbrella?”. When you have hundreds of people looking for umbrellas, you can learn what kind of umbrellas they are looking for. It can be a more popular color, a shape or a certain style. You may even discover a niche market for children umbrellas.

This is how you get ideas for new content. You can create a sub-page about children umbrellas. In some cases, you may find that the page about children umbrellas get more hits than the ‘mother’ page. Based on that intelligence you could decide to create more content for children. Write about children’s clothing, children cutlery, children’s furniture etc. The more specific your topic, the higher your return per thousand visitors (RPM). In my opinion it becomes more interesting when you have your own product to sell.

I have something to sell.

I am not selling children umbrellas, or a course about blogging, it is something totally unrelated with that, but now I have a reason to pick up blogging with a purpose. It also improves my writing skills or at least that is my perception. One can always do better.

My product is relevant for small and medium size business that have a long term vision. Do you know someone who runs such an organization, or are you that person? Than subscribe to the updates of this blog. I will tell you more about my thing in the coming blogposts.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end. Now you will find a surprise under your chair. Don’t look. Serious.

It is about time to write towards the ending of this writing exercise. Unconsciously I threw in some keywords here and there, those are relevant for my product, but that is just because it is top of mind stuff. I relate everything with it. I hope I surprised you, made you smile or in any way made these 828 (and counting) words worth reading.

Please do not share this article. Obviously I only want organic search traffic. Do not copy-paste the permalink into your favorite social media.

The Art of Blogging: Learn my Organic Traffic Building Strategy

Don’t bookmark it. And I especially ask you not to reply, because this is not a test about user generated content, that is a whole other story.

Have a great day.

Jeroen