Organic Google Traffic Sent Me 4562 Page Views To A Single Post Last Month - Here's Why

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It’s been a while since I’ve done a traffic post, so I wanted to write up a blog post to share what has been working for me – and how it can help you to. The reason I’m keen to share this is because there are no complicated SEO tactics involved at all so it really is something you can achieve yourself, even if you have a relatively new blog.

Please note this post may contain affiliate links. Please refer to my disclosure for more information.

Traffic – The Numbers

There was a bit of number crunching involved here. You can see from the screenshot that this particular post (The 109 Most Popular Instagram Hashtags For Entrepreneurs) had 5849 views during that 30 day period, but I do get a lot of referrals from Pinterest (more on that in a bit). When referring to my analytics, I get around 78% of my traffic from Google, so based on that, we’re talking about around 4-5k page views just to that post, from Google. (i.e. 4562 if you assume 78% of those 5849 views came from google – it’s an assumption but it’s not far off I’d imagine).

What Worked In Terms Of Google

Like I said in the intro, there was no huge SEO optimisation happening in this instance – I don’t spend a great deal of effort on things like link building to my website, for example. What I did do, however, was follow best practice. In other words, when I created that post (and all the other posts on that site) I played by the rules and created content that I knew Google would “like” (and by like, I mean that they would see it as good, authentic, high quality content).

Most of my knowledge there came from an eBook that I had read through (on recommendation) by Lena Gott, a blogger who’d managed to boost her traffic from 17k to 400k (per month) in just 10 months. I won’t list all her strategies here as it wouldn’t be fair – buy her book – it’s not a lot of money and well worth it – even applying 1 or 2 of her 21 strategies has an amazing impact on your traffic levels.

Google Traffic Strategies – The Best Practice I Followed

I will outline what I personally did that I think helped my SEO. Firstly, I wrote a blog post that people were already searching for. I had a broad idea that I wanted to write about Instagram hashtags, did my research on Google and Pinterest, and found that some of the most popular posts were all about lists of good hashtags. So that’s what I wrote about! It’ so tempting to just write about what you want to write about, but instead, write about the stuff your readers want to read. A bit of market research before writing a post goes a long way!

I also use Yoast, the SEO WordPress plugin, to make sure that my post scored highly from an SEO perspective – good use of keywords, good quality content, links etc. Yoast is a market leader – I’ve seen countless SEO experts recommend it. I’d say it’s a must-have plug in if you want to get any traffic from Google.

Lastly, I spent time researching and writing the post. I did the research I needed to find the relevant hashtags, and that’s valuable to people – when anyone reads that post I had saved them quite a few hours of their own research. The result? People are linking to my post as a recommendation. You remember at the top I said I don’t do link building? Well, I don’t actively go out looking for posts to link to my website, but people are reading my posts and linking to them because they’re relevant and valuable – that’s what Google wants. The lesson here? Don’t try and play the system. Always do what Google wants you to do if you want Google to send you traffic.

The Part Played By Pinterest traffic

Now, there was a time, not so long ago, when Google wasn’t really sending me any traffic for this post, but I was still getting a lot of views to it. Most of that traffic came from Pinterest, and it’s no coincidence that it’s one of my most popular posts on Pinterest, or that – as of the time of writing this – it has over 3000 social media shares. Here’s a screenshot:

I think this has been incredibly useful to Google when they are trying to determine whether they should rank my content. And that’s one of the reasons why I use Pinterest. Sure, the traffic from there is good, but Google traffic is great, and one seems to boost the other. Pinterest is me making a long term investment in my blog posts, making sure they get consistent traffic, month in, month out. And should something bad happen to Pinterest, I will still get the traffic from Google.

Now, don’t just stick a pin on Pinterest and hope it sends you traffic. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that (I can testify to that; I’ve used Pinterest for years but it’s only in the last 2 years it’s really sent me traffic – because I’ve had a proper Pinterest strategy in place. Again, much too much to talk about in this post but that strategy came from a blogger called Carly who writes the blog Mommy on Purpose – you can purchase her eBook here (side note: before reading her eBook I took a far more expensive, premium course in Pinterest, but read Carly’s eBook after it was recommended multiple times – the expensive course – which I won’t name – allowed me to start seeing a few hundred Pinterest referrals – but Carly’s eBook turned that into thousands).

What Traffic Lessons You Can Take Away From This

Traffic can be so frustrating – especially when you’re writing, promoting, promoting some more and you’re not seeing results. So stick with it. Traffic is a long game, but when the scales tip in your favor it’s worth all the effort. Be consistent and be persistent!
Don’t try and cheat the system. It might work for a while, but however smart your strategy is, Google and Pinterest are smarter. Just work with these two platforms, do what they want you to do, and you will be richly rewarded.
There is no substitute for just good, old-fashioned, high quality, valuable content that people actually want to read!
Don’t just throw stuff around trying to get traffic – have a strategy in place. And stick to it.