I got over 5000 views (5327) in my first month (actually 27 days) of blogging. Now I'm going to show you how to do it. I didn't spend a single cent on advertising, nor I didn't use any widely touted SEO technique. I did it with these four steps: 1) pick an audience, 2) find related audiences, and 3) write for those audiences, 4) sharing it with my chosen audience.
Background and Introduction
I blog about Python and projects in the Python space. Technically, I bought my domain name in August of this year, and I published a home page and an about me page. So is this strictly month one? I consider it the first month because my first few months with it were a false start. I wasn't posting and I was only getting a few views because I told some friends about it. I had no posts published until November 1st, and you can scroll through my blog to confirm. Here's the image of my blog stats as of the morning of November 27th, 2021.
If you're reading this, I know you're interested in learning how to get more views on your blog. You've probably read a bunch of posts about SEO and how to get started with your blog. I did in those few months before I started. The truth is, you don't need an SEO expert, paid marketing, or buy backlinks. What you do need is to know your audience. For those of you new to this space — SEO is "Search Engine Optimization" and is a way to make your posts appear higher on search engines.
Misconceptions About Blogging and SEO
Many "SEO experts" and "SEO companies" out there will tell you that they can "boost your ranking" or whatever with SEO but they'll need 3 to 6 months to do it. Last year, I started a company (that failed) and worked with a digital marketing agency that claimed to be "SEO experts". Boy was that a disaster. I spent a bunch of money for exactly 0 results. It was after that experience that I decided I would do my own SEO research. Let me be perfectly clear that SEO is real, but many so-called "SEO experts" are fake.
I began reading about SEO content and I'll just break down everything I've read about SEO and used in my writings for you here.
- Use a good length title (somewhere between 50 and 60 characters)
- Write a readable article over 300 words and (usually) under 3000 words
- Use your keyword (if you have one) multiple times, ideally 8–12 times
- Build backlinks (please don't fall for the trap of buying them) You can also do this internally
- Publish content consistently
That's pretty much all you need to know about SEO to get started and quickly ramp up your site. I actually built 0 external backlinks in the first 27 days. I didn't post to other blogs, or anything like that. I'm starting that now, and we'll see how that works in next month's post!
One other thing I want to touch on, that should be clear by the numbers, but it should NOT take 3 to 6 months to see SEO results. If you're not getting increased traffic and rankings by the end of the first week (or first couple articles), the person or team you've hired doesn't know how to do SEO. Now let's get into how you can get over 5000 views in your first month of blogging.
Pick an Audience
The first thing you need to do is pick an audience. Don't pick multiple audiences, just pick one for now, you can always expand later. Note that this is different from picking a niche. We're not picking a subject to write on, we're picking the people we want to write for. This is a very important distinction so I'm going to say it again. We're not picking a subject to write on, we're picking people to write for.
Why is this important? Who reads blog articles? Is it subjects or people? For example, this blog article is written for people who want to get over 5000 views in their first month of blogging. The subject matter of this blog is a strategy, possibly the best strategy, to grow your blog. However, I didn't choose to write about this because I wanted to write about the subject. I chose to write about this because I know that there are people like me and you out there that want to know how to quickly grow their blog. I've been there. I've been one of you.
For the first three months I owned the domain, I wanted to start a blog but I wasn't sure how. I'm not going to lie, it was hard. I struggled with what to do. I had uncertainty and doubts. Now that I've made it to the other side of those doubts and uncertainties I want to help pull other people through. It's not as hard as it seems. It just takes some good strategies and execution.
The easiest audience to pick is people like you. That's what I did. I decided I was going to write for people with similar interests to me. I'm interested in coding (mostly Python), building interesting things with software (mostly using Python), and becoming an independent content creator. So, my blog is for people who are interested in coding, creating interesting software, and becoming independent content creators.
Find Related Audiences
Okay, now that you've established your main audience, you'll also want to think of related audiences. But Yujian, shouldn't I appeal to my main audience first? Well duh, but guess what? You're going to find that everyone has multiple interests. If you can combine two interests into a single post, why wouldn't you? Then by doing that, you can also attract related audiences. Let's just take my blog as an example. I've been a software engineer at a FAANG company, and this gives me a lot of credibility as well as insight into the industry. Even though I don't personally want to be a software engineer anymore, many people who like coding do want to be software engineers.
How did I expand my content to appeal to people who don't just like to code but also want to be software engineers? I simply started learning from my initial audience. I started to look at online communities related to coding and I saw that hey, a lot of these people are learning coding to get a job. In my personal case, creating interesting software can encompass a huge range. I decided to start with simply using APIs because that was what I had experience with. As I made more content, I thought about how to incorporate more topics. I created my own comprehensive Sentiment Analysis API for this exact purpose. To add Natural Language Processing enthusiasts (I am actually one of those people too) to my audience. People want and need to see cool software being built so they can emulate it and draw inspiration.
The same process applies to you. Let's say you're interested in playing Dungeons and Dragons. You can make a great blog out of that. Just take a look at Critical Role. You can then expand from that audience of DnD fans to other audiences by mixing things in. For example, you may talk about how DnD is like an RPG game, but in real life. Or you may talk about how DnD is like some other table top game. You could probably extrapolate that DnD fans also like games like Magic the Gathering, or something like that.
Write for Your Chosen Audiences
Picking your audience and finding related audiences is honestly the hardest part in my opinion. Once I did that, it was easy to come up with topics to write about. Personally, I started with about 70 ideas total, and as I wrote, I've added to my list of ideas. The feedback I've gotten has given my new ideas. I've also started interacting directly with my readers and some readers have even requested topics!
Coming up with ideas and writing about them can be challenging, but as long as you do this with your audience in mind, you can easily use these techniques to grow your own blog. Remember to be consistent with your posting. You can't grow a blog without content. Good luck friends and fellow content creators. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop them below!
Share Your Content
This one should be self-explanatory, but after I re-read my draft, I felt like I should put this here. Share your content with your chosen audience. If you don't tell people that you've written content, how are they supposed to read it?
If you like this or it was helpful for you, please share this story with your friends! For more growth tips, remember to follow me, Yujian Tang!