40 to 1,226 Visits a Day in 60 Days: SEO Works!
By: Keith
Friday is usually the day I write a story. But, today I am presenting anybody interested with my analytics. I have never seen anybody else’s traffic so I have nothing to compare this to. The point though is not the overall number; it is the trend upwards. I’ve provided here several screen shots of September and October traffic. These are unique visits, not page views. When I started this blog, in May, until September my traffic was flat at between 35-80 visits per day. It was frustrating to not see big progress despite my constant efforts. However, I knew that with good SEO and a little persistence the traffic would eventually multiply; I just had to not quit. I finally saw that movement I had been waiting for starting in September. You’ll notice that it’s subtle, but that it moves in a constantly upwards trend. I started September under 100 visits per day. I finished the month with 269. I hovered around 250-300 until mid October when I made another subtle climb to a steady 400 per day. Now, starting 5 days ago, I’ve shot up over 1,000 unique visits per day. Yesterday I ended, and you can see in the screen shot, at 1,226. I should also mention that a full 70% of my traffic is coming from organic search results and not returning visits. That is a good thing, but it also means I can do more to try to encourage repeat visits. Always, the most important thing is to be seen by search engines. Site loyalty is also a big thing and that’s something I still need to work on.
The other three screen shots are of my traffic by country. One thing that helped was translating my site to Spanish. I am now getting several hundred visits a day just from Spain and Mexico. South and Central America are also starting to turn.
In a way I’m bragging, but I’m mostly just demonstrating that persistence pays. I’ve primarily been concerned about writing content that I think people find interesting and educational; that is always the most important part. But, bloggers have to worry about more than writing good content. We also have to learn a thing or two about SEO and what things will attract people to read what we say. Three helpful resources of mine are Dennis-Yu.com, seomoz.org, and seobook.com. I waited until now to give out those sites because I wanted to see the information start work first. The last thing I want to do is promote a scam or something I don’t believe in. Well, believe it. SEO works! Content + SEO = win every time.
Analytics September
Analytics October 1-16
Analytics October 17-29
Map Overview USA October
Map Overview Mexico October
Map Overview Spain October
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It is fantastic and well deserved!!! Congrats!
Incredible! Very cool of you to share your ‘secret’ resources with us, Keith. You rock!
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Thanks guys! I felt like this would make a good opportunity to reveal my traffic number
Haven’t seen many people do that.
Hi Keith! Kudos to you! You do offer extremely valuable content and I am excited to see that your site is growing. You certainly deserve to be recognized by Google and to be read by a broader audience.
You should write a post sometime about the specific SEO strategies that you use. I’d love to hear your “take” on the topic.
Also: I am very interested in the translation idea. What is the cost for a service like that?
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Thanks, Stephanie! There are two ways to get translations done. The free way is with the Google tool. It’ll translate everything immediately but it’ll definitely sound like a computer did it. It’ll probably be understandable, but a little off. The other way, which is what I did, is to get it professionally done. I totally cheated though because my wife is a translator by profession
Content (legal stuff costs the most) and size determine cost. She has charged people by project on occasion and sometimes she charges by word. If it’s by word then it’s between 10 and 15 cents per word (that’s the reason we usually only see large companies with professional translations). It can get expensive, but it all depends on what market you’re going after. It is worth it if you expect high traffic in that language. I get about half my visits from Spanish Speakers. I had 190 from Spain yesterday and 165 from Mexico. Another 120 or so from the rest of central and south America. I’m expecting that to be pretty big in the future. You can easily use the google tool and that would probably be a pretty cool feature. There is a wordpress plugin that handles the translation on your blog. It woulnd’t take long to do either. If you wanted something professional then that can be done too 
Thanks for visiting again. I’ve been keeping up on your blog too!
Keith, I think this is all thanks to the great quality of the content that you publish. I will share your site with a few friends in Chile (South America). Let’s see if you get more hits from that corner of the world. Great work and thanks!!! Carlos
I love reading success stories, great job on your blog and good luck with traffic in the future!