Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that I do not publish blog posts here as much as I used to. In the past I published as many as five or six articles per week, but nowadays it is not uncommon for me to go a few weeks without updating the blog.
One of the main reasons I blog less is because I devote more of my time to publishing videos on YouTube. Instead of spending days writing articles that are thousands of words long, I enjoy sitting down and speaking directly to people.
I was however conscious of the fact that with me updating this blog less often, traffic would go down. Bizarrely, the opposite has happened. I have seen traffic increase every month over the last four or five months.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Increased Traffic
A close look at Google Analytics shows that my search engine traffic has went up.
I talk about this in the video below.
Without a doubt, this is due to Google changing their algorithm. Whenever Google tinkers with their ranking system, the vast majority of website owners go online and complain about losing traffic. When this happens I normally see my position stay the same or get a little better.
The reason I always do well when Google changes things up is because I don’t focus my attention on SEO. Sure, I make sure my WordPress design is optimised for search engines and I use plugins such as Yoast SEO; however, I don’t focus my time on manipulating search engines. All I do is focus on producing good content and let search engines do what they do best.
I’ve written for many different websites over the years which has allowed me to peek into how other businesses handle SEO. My opinion is that, generally speaking, too many websites place an emphasis on SEO over producing good content.
I’ve had to walk away from potential work because the owner kept coming back to me and saying that they needed the keyword density to be 10% instead of 8% or that they needed me to write a particular keyword eight times. The problem is that when you start focusing on things like keyword density, you rip the heart and soul out of an article and you are left with the generic bullshit that corporate websites pump out every day.
I am certainly not downplaying the importance of SEO in being successful and I know that I would probably generate more traffic to this blog if I gave it more of my attention; but I would rather devote my time to things I enjoy.
Ultimately, I feel that I am a creator, not a marketer. I would rather play to my strengths and focus on producing good content that spending too much time on the marketing side of things.
I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to focus your time on things you enjoy. If I had to spend all my time doing boring repetitive tasks that I did not enjoy, I would walk away from working online and get a “Real Job” (perish the thought!).
Have You Seen an Increase in Search Engine Traffic?
I am curious as to whether any of you have seen any major changes to your search engine traffic recently.
At this point I am unsure as to whether this increase in traffic is temporarily or if this blog is going to keep getting more visitors every month. Time will tell.
Be sure to check to your traffic stats on Google Analytics for the last six months and let me know below how your main websites have been performing.
Thanks,
Kevin
I have the same issue with my blog and my youtube channels. I can produce a ton of content, and get less views on all my content, then I post very little for six weeks, then boom, my views go through the roof. Encouraged by this I produce a bunch more content, then all my views decrease…. process repeats itself. It’s pretty frustrating. I’m not sure what to do to increase traffic over time.
There is no simple answer to that. A blog with just a few articles can have good traffic if they are shared enough and/or are positioned well in the search engines.
I try and link my videos in posts sometimes, but I don’t always do it. It depends.
Hi Thanks for the information in your post. When someone is new to blogging, and still trying to be found online, how much content in terms of posts is needed to really start seeing rankings and traffic with Google? You mention having transitioned to doing videos. How often to you create a video, and do you link to the videos on Youtube from your blog or link from Youtube to your blog?
No that’s the first thing I checked. I wrote an article about Google Analytics spam last year so knew that was something I had to check.
I could have shown you organic search traffic to illustrate my point, but I wanted to talk about the overall increase in traffic.
In July 2016 I got just over 23,000 visitors (sessions). It was 26,510 in November, 27,625 in December, and 33,829 in January. That’s organic Google traffic.
And you’re sure it’s not just Google Analytics Spam Data? This kind of thing: http://webtrainingwheels.com/how-to-deal-with-google-analytics-spam-data/ ?