As writers and passionate pet parents, we have a message and story we want to tell.
The cold, hard fact though is that not everyone is interested in what WE are want to tell them.
Sure, the small community you’ve built around your blog cares about what is happening in your life day-in-and-day-out, and some readers just totally get you, but large numbers of people are never going to click through to your website from Google search unless you are promising to solve their problem.
To really attract your target audience, and appear as an authority in your niche, you need to focus on writing articles that solve a problem (often these posts are “evergreen” – meaning that they are timely and relevant for years to come).
You don’t have to ditch your principles but you will have to find the balance between sharing what YOU want and giving people what THEY want.
If even 50% of your articles are giving people the help they need, you have the potential to pick up significant search traffic and increase your monthly pageviews. If you increase your pageviews, you can apply for quality ad networks like Mediavine.
You can achieve this 50% by optimizing your articles for search in the first place, by revamping older blog posts, and by repurposing old content.
Organic search traffic is an amazing thing
I see organic search traffic as a type of “passive income”.
If your article shows up on the first page of Google results – and especially if it shows up in the top 3 results – you can get a lot of traffic to that article EVEN WHEN YOU ARE DOING NOTHING.
That’s right, more traffic with zero additional effort (on that blog post).
Of course, you shouldn’t neglect your social media channels or newsletter subscribers, but good SEO can make or break a blog on your website.
Some of the largest and most successful blogs get 60-80% of their traffic from organic search (organic just means not paid).
Don’t worry… it doesn’t have to take a ton of time or be scary. I’m working on an eBook now to explain the most important pieces of SEO in easy to understand terms.
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Great advice! Luckily I learned about evergreen content about 6 months into my blogging journey. Unfortunately, consistent implementation has failed me. 77% of my traffic comes from organic search which scares me since I’m one Google slap away from losing the majority of my traffic.
That’s awesome that you started early. And also, you blog about puppies! It’s a winning formula for sure.