Blueprint for Taking a New Blog from 0 to 50,000 Monthly Sessions
New and struggling bloggers typically are not doing enough of the right things that have been proven to move the needle. Here's the blueprint that my past students and I have used to have breakout success with a new blog.
#1 Write as many posts on low competition keyword phrases as you can. The new bloggers with the biggest breakout success have published one post per day for six months straight. I did this for one year. If one per day is too much, commit to three posts per week at the minimum.
#2 Use all 16 of your RankIQ reports every month on phrases from the keyword library with a competition score of zero to 20. Many new bloggers will choose to write on topics they want to write about instead of the topics their blog can rank for. This is one of the biggest and most common pitfalls that keeps new bloggers from getting significant traffic to their blogs.
#3 Be patient and stick with this plan for one year. It can take months after publishing a new post on a low DA blog before you start seeing results. New bloggers often quit using the right tool after a month or two, or they stop blogging altogether when they don't see big traffic gains. Blogging is a long game. It takes a year or two of daily hard work to make a significant income that will be there year after year after year.
#4 Spend 20% of your time building backlinks via HARO and podcast interviews during the first year. Here is my podcast episode on my HARO process: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/link-building-tactics-that-deliver-higher-rankings-part-6/id1072931592?i=1000548529502
#5 If you are not getting much traffic, consider buying an aftermarket domain with existing high-quality backlinks. This is a quick way to start ranking on the first page and not have to wait until you have spent a year building backlinks to a new domain. There was just a person in the FB Mastermind Group that went from 0 to 50,000+ monthly sessions and got approved by Mediavine six months after their first blog post. Here's my podcast episode on how to find an after-market domain with high domain authority: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/link-building-tactics-that-deliver-higher-rankings-part-3/id1072931592?i=1000546447235
#6 Do not waste time monetizing your site with affiliate links or ads until you are getting 10,000 monthly sessions. Focus all your efforts on publishing new posts and getting backlinks.
#7 Do not box yourself in by niching too far down. You want to be the Wig blogger, not the short red-haired wig blogger for women over 40. Ideally, you should focus on one of the four top-level niches that produce the most blogs with 50,000+ sessions. Those four are food, lifestyle/mom, travel and arts/crafts. These four have the most low competition keywords by far of any niche.
#8 Consider passing on the Marketing/Business or Personal Finance niche. These two niches are dominated by blogs with domain authorities in the 70+ range. This includes starting a blog on how to be a successful blogger, which has one of the highest failure rates of any sub-niche.
#9 Stop jumping from one shiny new object to another. I have studied and worked with thousands of bloggers, having incredible success. Almost every single one gets all their traffic and income from organic Google search. And more specifically, from targeting low competition keyword phrases. Pinterest was the only other source of traffic that even showed up, and Pinterest traffic is rarely talked about anymore after they changed what shows up in the feeds the last couple of years. Do not waste time trying to get traffic from Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, or anything else that pops up on your radar. It will just pull you away from working on what matters most.
If you follow this blueprint, the results will come.