I blogged consistently for 1 year, here's what happened to my traffic
You’ve heard it before ‘you should blog’. We hear ‘blogging is the best way to build traffic.’ ‘Blogging is vital to marketing your business to ideal clients’. ‘Blogging is the best SEO.’
So wayyy back in 2017 I decided to do an experiment & see what impact blogging consistently for a year would do for my biz...
Spoiler alert - it was GAME changing! 🤯
So much so, that 5 years on I'm still blogging my little face off & it's still the biggest driver of traffic to my website 📈, subscribers to my email list 📥 & students to my courses 👩🎓!
SO... before we hop back in time to the moment that blogging and I decided to go steady 💑, I want to address something that I know you'll be thinking...
Paige, I just don't have the time...
You have a life and maybe a business you’re running or a full-time gig you’re hustling at too.
Add blogging to that? It’s laughable for you, because you know it’s a massive time investment and undertaking.
We all want traffic, free marketing and better SEO, but we push back pretty hard when told to blog, because you and I both know, it’s darn time consuming.
And I get it, your time is valuable and it can be hard to justify spending hours a week on a strategy where you don’t know exactly what the outcome will be.
But given I built a multi-million dollar 💰💰💰 business off the foundation of blogging regularly I know it's SO worth it (the return on investment has been huge!)
I cannot guarantee you the exact same traffic numbers I’ve had, hell your blog might even take off leaps and bounds ahead of mine.
There’s one thing I can guarantee though.
Providing valuable blog content consistently will significantly increase your site traffic ⬆️.
I have no question about that.
(And of course, along with that increased site traffic comes oh-so-many other benefits. Your email list will increase along with your traffic, you will become an authority in your niche, you will build trust with your community, you will get more booking inquiries for your business, and you will earn back links - A.K.A. SEO gold.)
So today I’d like to show you what blogging consistently can do for your traffic.
Plus I’ll share my secrets for never missing a posting date, over the course of 1 year.
Pst... before we get to that - don't miss my Free 3 day Scale with Content challenge starting November 15 👇👇👇
What blogging consistently will do to your site traffic
June 2015: I started this site for my Squarespace web design business in June 2015.
April 2016: It wasn't until April 2016 that I blogged at all, and even then it was just a couple of sporadic posts here and there. While my blog content was pretty niche, it wasn't by any means consistent.
January 2017: It was in January 2017 that I decided and set myself the goal to blog consistently. As you can see, that created a steady upward trend in traffic over the course of that year, which has continued as I've continued to blog.
Pre & post blogging consistently
As you can see it's a pretty consistent upward trend in traffic, steadily growing over time.
At the end of my first year of consistent blogging, in December 2017 I hit 32,000 page views (and as of writing this post in November 2022 this has continued to build & develop (I have over double those December 2017 figures some months) - so you can see it wasn't a one-shot wonder, and has been sustained over the past 5 years.
My traffic didn't ever come from one super viral post that led to one massive spike in traffic and then bombed back down the next month. It was just super non-glamorous twice-a-week blogging on the topic related to my business.
Why if you blog, you must do it consistently
People have asked me before 'how often should I blog?'
My answer is always 'as often as you can consistently.'
As you can tell from my sporadic blogging to consistent blogging, there's a huge difference in the amount of traffic I was able to amass.
Showing up consistently for the blog, and having my readers know that they could set their watch by my blog meant so, so much for the growth of the blog and by extension, my business.
But I can tell you from 5 years of blogging, it's not easy to post consistently. Life happens and I have been thrown off my posting schedule on more than one occasion.
How do you blog consistently?
That's a great question, and I have to be honest, it took me a while to get into my rhythm, but now I have, and I've kept to it for 5 years, I can share with you my top tips for blogging consistently (and promise you that they work!
📅 "Batch" your blog writing process.
What this means is to set aside a chunk of time in your calendar for each step of the process - coming up with ideas, writing a title, planning your post & writing the thing. Come up with a bunch of ideas & titles in one "session", then in the next, maybe a few days later plan a bunch of posts, and finally, set aside a chunk of time and write your posts.
🤓 Get ahead of your posting schedule.
Write a bunch of posts in advance so that you're not creating posts the day before they need to go out. Writing under pressure is a sure-fire creativity killer - do not recommend !
⛔ Remove distractions.
Turn off your phone, have only your writing screen open (even better go somewhere with no wifi!) and during the time you're writing your blog posts, do that and only that!
👋 Say goodbye to perfectionism.
If there's one sure-fire way to stop yourself from blogging consistently, it's perfectionism. Truth talk - your blog will not be perfect. But that's OK! My blog is not, and was not perfect either. But over time I got better & better at it, and you will too. Everyone has to start somewhere, and the best way to do that is to give yourself permission to give it a go!
So let's recap
Blogging is guaranteed to increase your site traffic & will help you reap all the rewards that go along with it - exploding your email list, getting client inquiries and filling up your courses with ease!
Blogging consistently improves your skills, knowledge & authority in your niche! It also improves your writing skills, which means your posts get better & faster to create #winwin
Blogging consistently is fantastic for gaining a great reputation in the online world, creating community with your readers, building your professional network (heck - it's even how I got featured in the NY Times!)
Did I convince you to take up blogging for your business and stick to it consistently?
