How I Drove 1,000+ Organic Visitors Per Month to My Site

January 12, 2020 was the second article I ever wrote on my site's blog with little to no prior knowledge on SEO.

A couple of months later, it ranked #1 on Google and drove 1k+ organic visitors per month.

Screenshot: Monthly pageviews from Google Analytics.

I was awestruck by the power of content marketing.

Here's my first-hand experience.

Content promotion works, but it's not sustainable.

You just finished writing an article.

Afterward, you start sharing it on every single forum you can think of. Reddit, Indiehackers, HackerNews, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The number of active users on your dashboard starts rising. But only for a day or two.

Then, it drops. Back to square one.

This is also known as the 'spike of hope'.

Instead of aiming for short surges of traffic, you need to aim for sustainable, organic growth.

Here's how you can do it.

Write articles that people actually search for.

Stop writing about things that nobody searches or cares about. This is the number one mistake that new writers/bloggers make.

This is why keyword research is extremely important. Start by using a free tool like Google Keyword Planner.

Find keywords that are in your niche, low in competition, and have a decent traffic volume.

Target long-tail keywords instead of common keywords.

Long-tail keywords are much easier to rank for (especially for newer sites) because they are lower in competition.

If you intend to write an article for a common keyword like 'SEO', it's almost impossible to get on the first page on Google.

Instead, aim for a long-tail keyword related to your niche.

Additionally, you should benchmark the keyword that you're trying to rank for with other websites.

What's the length of their article? Is it short (under 500 words)?

Is it a personal website?

In order for you to outrank other sites, these are some examples of things (weak points) you check before you even begin writing — then top theirs.

Request indexing from Google Search Console.

Newer sites get crawled a lot slower than well, established sites.

To quicken the indexing process, request your article for indexing in Google Search Console.

Afterwhich, it usually takes a couple of hours for the article to show up on Google and it'll start ranking faster.

Wait 6-8 months.

Blogging is a waiting game.

Articles tend to hit their peak of traffic only after the 6-8 month mark.

Rinse and repeat.

That's basically it.

You've learned how to write content that'll rank on Google.