What “WORKS” and what “DOES NOT”,
all about my journey from
0 to 45,000 visitors in just 3 months.
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The Problem
When I launched my own blog back in 2014, I did not have the slightest clue about SEO or how to get visitors to come to my website. So, I began researching how to get traffic to a website. I soon realized that optimizing each of my pages for certain keywords and writing helpful content was one way. I began my experimenting with content marketing and SEO. But, still I was struggling to get any quality visitors to my website.
Okay, now let me explain why:
In just 6 months, I was able to grow the traffic to my blog by a staggering 50,000 visitors through organic searches and social media. When I compared this number to the PPC ad spend required to achieve the same results, I estimated it to cost nearly $1,500.
60%
More Page Views
50%
More Search Traffic
My Strategy
Method #1
Optimize On-page structure
Optimizing Title Tags
I optimized all the title tags on all internal pages to provide valuable, keyword-rich data to both website visitors and search engine crawlers.
Adding H1 Tags
I optimized all the title tags on all internal pages to provide valuable, keyword-rich data to both website visitors and search engine crawlers.
Optimizing image ALT tags
I added optimized image ALT tags and file name attributions to internal content pictures wherever possible.
Relevant External Links
I added eternal links to high-value, highly relevant content sources wherever possible in order to maximize the SEO power of link blending.
Method #2
Implement On-site SEO
Creating New Sitemaps
My website’s existing sitemap wasn’t up to current SEO best practice standards, leading to improper indexing by search engines. So, my developers created proper site maps to make sure the key pages of the site were being properly indexed. This improved the crawl ability of search engines and got proper emphasis on the main pages of the website.
I realized that many of the keywords I was using as Title Tags were not keywords I wanted my site to rank for and had little to no search volume per month. Therefore, I did careful keyword research to find the keywords I wanted to and could rank my site for and adjusted the title tags accordingly to include those well-researched keywords.
Creating New Keywords for Title Tags
Page Management optimization
Pagination issues were limiting many of my website’s pages from being indexed properly by the search engine bots. By implementing page management best practices, my developers were able to improve site crawling and, consequently, the organic search presence of rafichowdhury.com
By custom-creating keyword-rich headings for each page on the Rafi Chowdhury site, I was able to capture the full SEO value of h1 tags, resulting in higher rankings in the natural search results.
Creating Keyword-rich Headings
Method #3
Tweaking of Internal Links
Usage of Internal Links
I realized that I could use one blog post to drive traffic to several others on my site and increase each visitor’s time on the website. So, I began to include links within each of my blog posts pointing to similar articles on my site wherever possible. I also included a “related posts” section at the bottom of my site to suggest similar helpful articles I have written. This technique significantly increased my site’s “average time on site” in Google analytics.
Finding opportunities to optimize
Anytime I saw a way to keep visitors on my site longer, I made tweaks to do so. I added a “related blog posts” section to my blog and also added photos and videos pages to the site. I also linked the videos pages to my YouTube channel to directly bring my YouTube channel to my site. I also regularly posted many pictures in my galleries and optimized the image ALT tags and descriptions to get even more search engine traffic.
Hiring & Training Freelance Writers
To make sure that the value of these internal links within each blog post was being properly utilized, I hired a professional writer and taught her all the internal linking best practices. She was able to use this training to produce some excellent, well-optimized blog posts for rafichowdhury.com
Method #4
Leveraging Social Media & My Personal Brand
Participation in Facebook Groups
By being actively involved in numerous Facebook groups within my industry, I have a built a strong social presence amongst my industry experts. I was able use my social following to dramatically increase the reach of every blog post I published. By sharing my posts within these groups, not only was I able to drive traffic to my site, but also I established myself as an industry expert with some very helpful articles.
Email & Social Media Marketing
I strategically placed email subscription forms throughout my website to collect email addresses of any interested readers of my blog. I then set up my website so that anytime a new post was published, it automatically sent an email to all subscribers with a snippet and a link to the rest of the post. It also auto-shared the posts on all my social media platforms in order to further extend the reach of my posts and increase traffic to the site.
Media Interviews
As a young entrepreneur, I received some degree of attention from media sources such as podcast shows, radio interviews, marketing blogs, and even TV stations. Each time I got interviewed, I made sure to post it to my social media accounts and also send a link back to my website for more information. This technique worked well to establish my personal brand, increase visitor engagement, and increased brand awareness as a result.
Method #5
Content Marketing
Blogging
In today’s blogosphere, really good content that is helpful and which also answers a customer’s question is considered King. By deeply understanding these concepts, I was able to implement an excellent traffic generation strategy for my site via content marketing. I did keyword research to find out what the audience in my industry are looking for or having problems with. I then wrote in-depth articles which sought to answer these same questions my visitors were searching for. As a result, rafichowdhury.com began to rank well for multiple high search volume keywords and more search engine traffic in effect.
Content Sharing via Social Media
Anytime I posted a blog from my site, I made sure that it was shared on all my social media platforms. This way, my message to my viewers had the greatest possible reach. I also took time to individually reach out to some of my more loyal readers and request them to share my content with their friends if they found it interesting.
Method #6
Website Speed Improvements & Mobile Friendliness
Image Compression
I noticed that the loading time for my site was rather slow. This results in poor user experience. I fixed this issue greatly by compressing all the images on my site to both save hosting space and also allow for much faster page load speeds.
Deletion of Unnecessary Plugins
My site was rather bulky with a lot of plugins which were not of the best quality and simply took up a lot of space. These plugins were also adding to the page loading time. So, I removed any unnecessary plugins and updated / reinstated all existing plugins to get rid of any technical issues with them. My site speed improved drastically as a result.
Mobile Friendliness
Although I initially chose a mobile-friendly theme to design my website, I realized there were many issues with the site on mobile since I made custom edits to my theme. I was able to once again make the site mobile-friendly by reinstalling my theme and organizing my menu items to have the site properly display on all mobile devices. I also fixed the dimensions of all the images on videos on my site to make them properly fit any mobile screen.
YIKES, YOUR WEBSITE NEEDS IMPROVEMENT!
