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How We Increased Organic Blog Traffic by 203.5% in Less Than 3 Months – And You Can Too

This is a guest contribution by Kristina Allen, marketing consultant for AdEspresso.

How We Increased Organic Blog Traffic by 203.5% in Less Than 3 Months - And You Can Too

Over the past couple of months my team at AdEspresso has increased our organic blog traffic by 203.5% and I’m going to share the secret of exactly how we did it!

Step 1: Conduct Keyword Research

When we first started working on driving (more) organic traffic to the AdEspresso blog our team began with keyword research. We used SEOmoz but you can easily get a keyword list using Google’s free Keyword Research Tool.

When using Google’s keyword tool simply type in  a couple of relevant key phrases and then Google will search for related keyword ideas along with their search volume.

How We Increased Organic Blog Traffic by 203.5% in Less Than 3 Months - And You Can Too

Because Facebook advertising is a really popular topic the overall keyword list is pretty gigantic so I immediately sorted the list by highest number of searches.

I then went through and highlighted in green the keywords that I thought I could easily turn into blog post topics. (I also highlighted in yellow keywords that I thought would be good for us to try and use as anchor text in link backs to our site – but that is for a different project).

How We Increased Organic Blog Traffic by 203.5% in Less Than 3 Months - And You Can Too

The keywords I did not highlight were skipped over because they were either too generic or would not have made a good blog post topic for us. For example, “facebook ads coupon” was skipped over because we do not have any Facebook ad coupons to give away and a blog post about Facebook ad coupons wouldn’t have helped us drive the right people to our blog.

Most people who use Facebook ad coupons are first-time social advertisers who are looking to experiment with Facebook ads. Our software is made for Facebook advertisers who know what they’re doing and are looking for an easier way to create ads and also deeper insights into the performance of their campaigns.

It’s really important to select your keywords carefully because the goal of increased traffic shouldn’t be about getting a bunch of people to visit your site for a few seconds. It should be about driving high quality traffic.

Step 2: Include Keywords in the Post URL

Once you have your list of keywords it’s time to get to writing! Simply start going down the list and turning keyword ideas into blog post topics.

For example, one of the keyword phrases we researched and deemed appropriate for our blog was “facebook ads on mobile” since AdEspresso can help you create and analyze mobile Facebook ad campaigns. With the keyword phrase “Facebook ads on mobile” in mind I wrote a post called 5 Tips for Rocking Facebook Ads on Mobile Devices and published it to the AdEspresso blog. I made sure to include the keyword phrase in the URL of the blog post like this for SEO purposes:

How We Increased Organic Blog Traffic by 203.5% in Less Than 3 Months - And You Can Too

Another keyword phrase we want to rank for is “Facebook Suggested Posts” I wrote a post called How to Run Suggested Posts Like the Pros. The URL for the post includes the keyword phrase of course:

How We Increased Organic Blog Traffic by 203.5% in Less Than 3 Months - And You Can Too

However, you will notice the title of the post does not include the word Facebook in it at all. That is because I thought How to Run Facebook Suggested Posts Like the Pros didn’t sound quite right. However, the body copy does include the word Facebook quite a bit and we are still able to rank for the phrase in Google:

How We Increased Organic Blog Traffic by 203.5% in Less Than 3 Months - And You Can Too

This leads us nicely into step three…

Step 3: Include Keywords in the Post

When you’re putting together your post be sure to include your targeted keyword phrase in body copy of your blog post frequently but naturally. Do not keyword stuff your post as this will likely get your penalized by Google and will definitely turn away intelligent readers.

What I do is write a post draft without thinking about adding the keyword phrase in at all. This allows me to focus on creating high quality content without worrying about the technicalities that come along with SEO.

After the post is finished I go back and see if and where I included the keyword phrase naturally. Usually I’ve included it enough times naturally that I do not need to make any edits. Sometimes I’ll have words flipped around a little bit and just need to make small adjustments with phrasing.

For example, using the keyword phrase “Facebook suggested post” I might have written “when putting together a suggested post on Facebook you should…” in my article. If so, I’ll just adjust it so that it reads, “A Facebook suggested post should include…” allowing me to get my target keywords in while saying essentially the same thing in a natural way.

Step 4: Stick to a Posting Schedule

One of the top rules for building up readership for any blog is to stick to a posting schedule. Whether you’re running a business blog or a personal one, frequency + high quality content will get you far.

Sometimes the hardest part of sticking to a schedule is wondering what you should blog about next – that’s the beauty of having a keyword list. You’ll never run out of great ideas! You can quickly go down your list and find a topic that people are actively searching for and help them out!

If you have a business blog, research shows that the more often you post the better your customer acquisition results will be:

How We Increased Organic Blog Traffic by 203.5% in Less Than 3 Months - And You Can Too

Since we started actively trying to increase organic traffic to our blog we have been posting twice per week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. While we would love to post more frequently, we’re a small startup team and we all have a million things to do. Posting twice per week is a schedule that we know we can manage and stick to, so that’s what we’re doing for now – and the results are positive!

Step 5: Understand that Growth May Be a Slow Process

When it comes to increasing organic traffic for your blog, understand that it may be a slow process.  Unlike posts that go viral through social media channels, organic traffic takes time to build; however, it is often the gift that keeps on giving for years down the road.

A post that goes viral will likely send you a lot of traffic over the course of a day, week or even a month and then die down. A post that drives organic traffic will continue to send you a steady stream of visitors over the long haul. That’s precisely why organic traffic is highly important for any blog. While you are building up your organic traffic you should also be sharing your posts via social media and bookmarking sites for the biggest boost.

And there you have it, the step-by-step process we followed to grow our organic blog traffic by 203.5%! We’ll continue to follow this process (and stay up to date with trends in SEO) to provide high quality content for our blog readers on topics we know they’re searching for information about.

This post was written by Kristina Allen, marketing consultant for AdEspresso, a Facebook ads manager that allows you to quickly create and a/b test Facebook ads for maximum campaign results!

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Comments
  1. tHANK’S you for this well written post
    I was wondering why my blog is not getting that much traffic now I got some point that i was missing out
    Thanks for summoning it all at one point sir

  2. These are mind blowing tips,i mean these tips prove itself when we will implement them, just after deep study i came to know that it will really work. and totally change the direction of my mind.
    Thanks again for providing such kind of practical information.

  3. Such an awesome trick i came to know, I honestly wanted to improve my page views to make my livings from my website.

    Thank you for this post.

  4. Thanks for this post, especially number 5. I just started my blog and I am doing all that is needed but I need to be patient. I keep telling myself, it’s only been 3 weeks since you’ve started, don’t expect the traffic to be rolling in.

    I’ll just keep putting out good content.

  5. Come check out my blog site on the best biotech stocks in the stock market!

  6. Awesome trick. This article is really awesome. I’m planning to implement these tricks in to my blog

  7. Rohit Upadhyay says: 08/07/2013 at 11:11 pm

    Your tips were really nice.Thanks for the post….

  8. Nice post. This will really help lots of people like me. Now I have hardly 200 pageviews in my website and trying my best to improve more. Thanks for this awesome post.

  9. Secure meaningful link building is defnitely crucial these days

  10. Honestly speaking these are one of the most helpful tips for increasing the traffic. I am seriously going to apply these one by one and hope can get positive response. I have just started my blog and I know these tips will be really helpful in the initial stages

  11. Thank you for these awesome tips! I’ve read tons of posts on SEO and keywords but they all made me even more confused. This post helped me tremendously!

  12. Actually I was wondering why my blog is not taking a leap even after 4 years..Now I got some points and I feel it will be useful. I’ll try to implement it. Thank you

  13. Thanks i will apply these tips to my blog.Since you are a pro blogger i believe in your words and blog.Patience is a great thing in blogging!

  14. i think google just replace the keyword tool with keyword planner
    you need to have adword account to be able to use it.

  15. Very helpful tips if someone is really looking to optimize his blog.

    Great post!

    Thanks.

  16. I am finding out more and more that the keywords that you target are the golden nuggets and sometimes take like what seems to be forever to rank for. Any suggestions on good tools to check keyword density? I am having a hard time with that one.

  17. Thanks for sharing so much important information with us. Since last few months I’m loosing Traffic on my blogs, just because I’m using same style of making posts as I did in the Past. Now I’ve to be more careful while writing new Post. Keywords are most important things, I’ll surly use Google Keyword Tool for finding appropriate keywords.. Thanks for your excellent efforts.

  18. It was worth reading for. I’ve followed the same method on my blog. Lets see if it pays me back.

  19. Good Article!!

    It motivates me to concentrate on blog to have good traffic

  20. Keyword research is backbone of SEO. You can drive a lot of organic traffic if your keywords are perfect.

  21. thank for your post, it was really enlightening, from my blog, i have noticed that anytime i did a keyword research and create a post based on that, it continues to generating traffic over a long period of time unlike other posts that i just carve myself without any keyword research. In addition to what you have said, I think long phrase keyword works better. Once again. Thank. [email protected]

  22. I do believe that anyone who knows about proper SEO techniques are very lucky, some people write a good content and has a proper optimization of keywords, thats why they are ranking high in search,.thanks Darren for this good article.

  23. Yes. I’ll be putting up a blog post about this.

  24. Am not the author of the post, just a fellow blogger and reader like you. In response to your question, you have to realise that effective seo is not just getting traffic but getting the ideal traffic that can be converted to customers, most seo experts advise that one should target long phrase keyword than generic keyword because it convert better. 2ndly concerning the issue of appearing on the 3rd and 4th page, i believe with effective placement of your keywords, it will rank well. Such place like the title, title url, headings, img alt etc. Here is a tip that has helped me, create a post (about 1000 words) with that keyword, then using mindmapping, create other posts around 5 posts similar to the main post and link to the main post using anchor link of that keyword

  25. Ann Daniel says: 09/25/2013 at 2:04 am

    Great Article, I think focusing on content marketing through blogging or guest posts is the fastest way to build huge organic traffic. However, content marketing is a quality game not a quantity game. So always focus on quality content which will be the main reason in increasing your website’s traffic.

    Regards,
    Ann Daniel
    http://www.smarttouch.me/en

  26. Very inspiring Rome sure wasn’t built in a day. I’ve been playing with images and trying to get more creative. You have me idea to work on title tags, to make them stand out more. Thank you for this one!

  27. This article is very helpful to those who starts their blogging carrier newly.
    I found this one very useful as it works for me.
    I am a new blogger and was searching for tips to increase my blog traffic and my search ends here.
    Thanks for posting it.

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