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21 Comments

3 month search console growth

I know it’s not much, but it sure is fun to watch the graph move in the right direction. This is the last 3 months of search console data vs the previous 3 months.

Launched TokyoSpark in October.

  1. 2

    This is inspiring. Congratulations.
    I’m just startinng a content marketing campaign to ramp up...

    Your ctr declined significantly. Do you have any intuition or theory why?

    1. 1

      Thank you.

      I think my biggest advice is that it takes time -- and you'll want to do a little competitive analysis.

      And I mean just a little. Basically, for the keywords you want to rank for, do the search, look at the top results.

      Then make sure to write better, more helpful, articles than the top results pages.

      Then move on to write more articles and let Google do its thing.

      CTR declined because the previous three months are essentially just me testing and searching and clicking myself -- or asking friends to check, etc...

      Honestly, this view is skewed because the previous three months are when the very first articles were written. It will be more interesting three months from now. :)

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        Hi Chad,
        yes, I agree. Super curious to see the next few month. Thanks for sharing!
        Michaela

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          I wish I could post a photo in comments, but I ran a comparison between Feb and Mar.

          Feb: 9.74k impressions, 61 clicks
          Mar: 37k impressions, 257 clicks

          I'm up to 68 articles now, though I wouldn't expect all them to rank well. I recently pivoted from a paid newsletter to free access and I'm still reworking the content to do better in Google.

          But if things go well, the next few months should show growth. Would be insane if I could see the same amount as Feb>Mar, month-over-month.

          /fingers-crossed

  2. 2

    I should mention I use a tool called Hike for SEO.

    It’s like having an SEO expert watching over my shoulder to make sure every article meets a certain set of criteria: like word length, headline/h1/meta length, etc.

    It also lets me spy on what competitors are doing, but I haven’t really begun to use that part yet.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the tip. I might have to try this product out.

  3. 2

    It looks impressive. How did you pull that off?

    1. 2

      30 deep articles in the first month, cleanly optimized. Bout it. ;)

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

        1. 2

          Sure.

          First, I picked content that I knew was something I wanted to teach readers.

          I did not specifically look for busy keywords.

          Then I started with an outline of all the things I wanted to write in the article.

          Then I did keyword research to expand upon my outline. I used things like Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic.

          Once the outline was done, I started writing. Writing content helpful for a reader, not trying to keyword stuff or anything.

          I made sure to quote and cite any sources I used too.

          I use the SEO Framework plugin to make sure my headlines/meta descriptions are the right length.

          Over time as I create more articles I go back and add in links where it makes sense in previous articles.

          Really that’s about it, just well-researched, epic posts like: https://tokyospark.com/what-is-ramen/

          Lately I’ve been adding shorter, like 350 word articles. I’ll be writing longer ones soon. Just starting to mix it up now.

          I’m also going to add a “Q&A” category and just write articles that answer common questions for those wanting to come to Tokyo.

          Hope that helps!

          1. 1

            This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

            1. 1

              Yes, it's all posted on TokyoSpark.

              However, some articles I did import to Medium as well.

              Import is the keyword there, because when you do that using their import tool, it sets the canonical tag to the article on your site -- important for Google to know which to index/rank.

              But I'm not sure if this had any impact on the results.

              1. 1

                This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

  4. 1

    Fantastic. I'd like to know where sessions come from? Searching?

    1. 1

      Impressions are the number of times my articles appear in the search results for people.

      Note: none of my articles rank #1 for high-volume keywords yet. ;)

  5. 1

    Performance of your site is markable, it's on right track. I'll go through it in detail.

    1. 1

      Thank you. I always keep performance in mind when experimenting with new design tweaks.

  6. 1

    You have done a really good job at optimizing your site for speed!

    Did you code your own theme or any other WP speed optimization tips?

    1. 2

      The theme is a heavily modified version of GeneratePress

      Hosted on Google Cloud and LiteSpeed web server + LiteSpeed cache.

  7. 1

    Wow, that's crazy - nice job! Any specific strategy you used?

    1. 1

      Nothing out of the ordinary. Just some very in-depth articles written to actually be helpful to someone interested in visiting Tokyo.

      Hit all the standard SEO checks too. Wrote about 30 articles the first three months, so there wasn’t a lot for Google to have ranked at all in the first three months.

      I’m at 5 months now, excited to see how the next three months go.

  8. 0

    Good job!

    Traffic is nice but make sure to capture your visitors’ email! 😉

    1. 1

      Thanks. This is Google Search Console data. Impressions aren’t visits (I wish).

      But definitely grabbing email addresses, right on the front page. https://tokyospark.com/

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