Baby Needs Help With Their No-Organic Traffic 5-Month Old Blog (8)
Baby Needs Help With Their No-Organic Traffic 5-Month Old Blog
Hello hello!!
I just joined the forum but being as incredibly impatient as I am decided to skip right to the Q&A section to get some help.
I've been working on this here blog for the past five months. You may notice that my activity at the beginning is much more evident than now, haha.
I've been putting my nose to the grindstone, pumping out posts, getting some comments from the area I came from (Wealthy Affiliate) and posting answers to Quora. As of right now I've got 61 posts which total nearly 90k in words, some few dozen comments or so and then Quora I have 27 answered questions (only started doing that one more frequently recently).
Despite using some tools (Jaaxy, Ubersuggest) to shoot consistently for low traffic, low competition keywords I am not ranking on anything at all.
Now I might be going about this completely the wrong way granted. My main strategy was SEO, and I recently read a book (From Nothing) that suggested to stick to one strategy and just keep going at it. They said it was still possible to get a blog to work out just via posting too.
So is this normal, or am I doing something wrong here? Please do be gentle, I've only been in the space so long as I've started this blog, give or take a few weeks.
Hi @christina! Welcome to STM! 
First of all - nice blog! Your topic is something I feel EVERYONE should pay more attention to. Self care is ultra important - if people could just get this one thing right, they'd be happy and healthy for the most part.
I have a few suggestions for you to consider:
1)Regarding SEO: Our forum doesn't really focus on SEO unfortunately. The best content we have is a bit outdated - from 2 years ago - so I don't know if the same tactics are still working:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...nking-Tutorial
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...oing-Into-2019
In this year's "What's Working in Affiliate Marketing" report, there are a couple of entries by SEO experts with some gold tips. You may want to check those out:
https://stmforum.com/whats-working-2021/
I haven't done SEO in a few years, so will refrain from making any further suggestions in this area.
2)What I really want to do, is start a discussion on what your ultimate goal is for this blog.
Are you trying to build a list to launch your own course? Get consulting clients? Or just to push relevant affiliate offers at your list?
I've quickly browsed through the "about you" page and a couple of your blog posts. This is good stuff! Makes me think, "there must be quicker and more direct ways to help her get her ideas and advice to people than trying to rank on google!"
Christina have you ever considered becoming a life coach? Based on personal experience, the demo most in need of more self care are women in the (approx.) 35-55 age group. A lot of people in this demo are married with kids and are constantly trying to juggle kids + spouse + career. The older end of the demo may even have aging parents to add to that list. This is also the age range where stress and resentment and other negative emotions have built up to the point where they're starting to manifest as physical or emotional conditions.
In the past few years, there's been a huge shift in how internet users consume content. More and more, I'm realizing that people just don't want to read anymore! The stats in the following articles are enlightening:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesa...h=78fbe2966b53
https://www.smartinsights.com/digita...noise-in-2021/
Don't get me wrong - I'm NOT discouraging you from developing your blog further. I'm just wondering whether it'd be better for you in the long run to start shifting more towards building video content rather than word content.
So - one possibility would be to brand yourself as a Self Care Coach for Working Moms (for example; I'm sure you can find your niche!)
Instead of JUST writing blog posts, you can make videos of yourself talking about various self care topics. You can upload them to youtube and Tiktok, then post them on FB, on your blog, and any other social media.
You can start an FB page and/or FB group to build a following (we can talk more about how if you're interested). You'll also build an audience on youtube and tiktok etc. with all your videos. You could expand your network to other social media platforms. And then of course you'll also have your email list.
So every time you have new content out, you'll have multiple channels of reaching people.
And using this network, you can steer people towards your digital course and coaching, and in addition promote affiliate programs of products and services that can help them.
You can do FB live sessions. You can run those popular 3/5/7-day challenges that are everywhere these days, where you provide solid information during the challenge, and then sell them on your course and/or coaching and/or affiliate products and services.
These are just very rudimentary ideas. If you'd be interested in exploring any of these, I'd be more than happy to do some brainstorming with you to flesh them out!
Amy
Hello Christina.
I had a quick look at your blog and I see quite a few problems from the SEO standpoint and also the site strcuture.
I'm in the middle of building a blog myself, so I'm educating myself on the currect stage of SEO and blogging in general.
I don't want to write an essay here, so let me just start with a few points, then we can take a deeper look later on
1. No social presence. You do have links to FB, twitter etc... in the header, but they link to facebook.com and twitter.com... why is that? Social signals are a strong part of SEO. Create social profiles, post excerpts and links to your articles over there. Google will pick these up.
2. No menu, you have quite a few articles and good ones on top of that, but how do I find them? There is no menu present. I just see 3 main categories on top of the homepage. You can do better than that. I'm sure the articles could be categorized more detailed. And you can use KWs in the category names.
3. Weak KW distribution in articles. I checked just a few but I noticed a pattern, you put the KW in the article title but you do not keep on repeating it in the text. I know it sometimes doesnt sound natural, but the KWs have to be mentioned in the sub-headings too. Some of your articles are very long and I only see the KWs mentioned 3 or 4 times. That's not enough. A SEO plugin can help you with this... I'm using YOAST plugin and kinda like it.
4. I've run your website through the "ahrefs" tool and you have basically no backlinks pointing to your website. There is no SEO without backlinks, unfortunately. You need to get some.
You've mentioned Quora, thats a good one, drop some links in the replies. Go to reddit and find subreddits where you could drop a link. Find similar blogs that allows commenting and at least link your username. Consider writing some guest posts in exchange for a link or buy them at fiverr (research the websites first though, many are spammy and won't help). Medium.com post some articles there. Find groups on Facebook that are related to selfcare and see if you can naturally drop a link there. Create a youtube page, shoot some video even if just by using your phone and link from there to your website.... there are many options here, it takes time but one by one, the link profile will grow and google will notice.
You need to dive deep into your niche, there might be communities out there, forums, groups on smaller social media platforms... find them, engage with the audience and naturally pitch your content.
Blogging is tough these days, there is a thousand blogs for any topic you can think of, but as long as you produce solid content you can still find your following.
BTW: google can take months to rank these days, so don't be surprised the traffic is not coming in yet. Work on the backlinks. Create a sitemap, submit it to google search console, that helps too.
I don't want to swamp you with information at once, this should give you enough food for thought for now
Matej.
Thank you both for such detailed responses! Let me see if I can get a proper response to it all.
@vortex, re: point 1, I'll definitely look into the at the report, thank you!
re: point 2, I thought about perhaps being a life coach before, but I'm not so sure I would do it now. I have a few main goals for my blog, two in providing value and one financial:
1. Make in-depth articles covering a variety of topics in regards to self-care and emotional intelligence. There's a lot of "top 5 tips" articles ranking for content similar to what I do, while I want to provide information that will give the reader a better understanding of what causes the conflict they're dealing with and several different approaches one can take. This is something they can reference time and time again as they encounter their problems to ground them and give them power in dealing with their issues.
2. I highly agree with your point on self-care being ultra important and something everyone should pay more attention to, which is part of why I made this blog. I want to get more folks thinking about self-care, including those who aren't even thinking about it right now. I want to make people aware of the kind of potential it offers them. So basically MASSIVE outreach.
3. The financial motivation: I'd like for this blog to be a passive income, one I could eventually replace my 9-to-5 with and maybe even get 5-digit monthly income with (but I understand not everyone's first is a home run and I do have a couple other ideas for future blogs).
YT is an idea I'm not really in love with though I do understand it's a huge benefit. I think my main problems are that my apartment isn't the cleanest and I feel like I need to take care of that first, and the second is I'm not really sure how I'd deliver my content on YT. Or how I could do it in a way that would be more beneficial than writing. (Personally I'm very experienced and enjoy writing a lot, which is why I've been capitalizing on it.) Only thing I can think of right now is maybe doing a sort of parody of an inner voice vs. actual person sort of skits that are humorous like some of the ones you can find on youtube (though I don't know how successful that would be in actually getting people interested in self care).
Social Media is also something I'm not big on, lol. I figure I should probably get some books/read articles on YT/SM and that might help me get chugging in that direction.
@matuloo, see above for point one, lol! SM has left a bad taste in my mouth for various reasons which is why I've been avoiding it but I really ought to stop that.
point 2: Right now I'm using a template website so my options are quite limited... but I definitely understand where you're coming from. One of my goals is to better learn CSS so I can tinker with the theme and add things like that.
point 3: TBH I keep seeing conflicting information on this. Some people say once is enough, some people say to use more. Fwiw I am using YOAST and at minimum I am trying to ensure all my posts come up "green" for SEO.
point 4: yup... lol. I have been doing Quora and the site is very strict on outlinking, so I've reduced my own link usage a LOT and focusing mainly on just getting more answers and building up my rep there. I think I've only dropped one link in the past dozen or so answers I've written. I want to make sure I'm not getting flagged for spam because that killed my drive in the past.
I've submitted the site map at least so there is that!
Thank you again!
But you know what, let's put this to a test. Can you please give me one url of your article and the KW that you are trying to rank for and I will do some research on what the competition looks like, deal?
This applies to many other platforms, it pays to have aged accounts. For example on reddit, many subreddits won't allow posting unless and account is a month or more old and has some karma accumulated. So you need to start posting something there asap too... even if it's not perfect, it's at least something and you would be building some reputation.
Same with FB groups, new members posting links are getting to get banned much quicker than those who have been part of the group for some time.
@christina OK got it! No videos. I'm still hoping though that some time in the future you'll consider doing this - branding yourself + using videos + social platforms can give you such an advantage these days. Blogs are a dime a dozen - people like to see a talking face behind the words.
I understand where you're coming from though. I had social anxiety for decades. Used to decline every single opportunity to speak or be interviewed. Very camera shy. It took a lot of energy healing and psychological preparation before I started to feel a bit more comfortable in this area. I'm still a work in progress but getting there!
So - hopefully I've planted that seed in your mind, that may germinate some time in the future.
And I agree with matuloo about doing videos: No need to worry about cleaning house! Just clean out one space in 5 minutes and go. You could even go into a forest / hiking trail or a secluded area of a park or whatever, and just look and talk into your phone camera. Most smartphones these days are good enough, so recorder/webcam/etc. are no longer a must (although they may be nice-to-have once you start doing more and more videos). They don't even need to be long videos, as few people have the patience to watch anything long these days. I mean look at how fast Tiktok has grown!
Anyways - I'm not trying to hard-sell here or entice you into doing something you aren't ready for. Let's see if I have any practical tips on how to get more traffic to your blog...
What I was alluding to was: How are you planning on monetizing your blog?
e.g. Are there certain products or services you'd like to push to make affiliate income? Are you planning on setting up an ecom store eventually to sell self-care products there?
Without knowing this information, it would be difficult to decide which keywords to rank for etc.
You need to know where you want to go, before you can chart a course.
Another suggestion: Self care is such a broad topic, it may be easier to gather a following and monetize them if you niche down. It's almost always easier to write copy and find products for a niche audience rather than a broad audience, and the conversion rates would almost always be higher (if you cater to a niche audience).
Linking from Quora is all fine and good, but you'll need more links from more places.
I knew I said I didn't want to give SEO advice because I haven't done it in a while. Please do get a good SEO course or read some good blogs on SEO. I CAN however contribute my method for finding easy-to-rank keywords:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Sniper-Method
Also analyze them to see where THEY are getting THEIR backlinks, and try to get backlinks from the same places.
That's all I have for now! Please feel free to continue the discussion @christina!
Amy
@vortex I do think it'd be good for me to do eventually. I think right now I'm still feeling burned on the fact that I've put so much work into my blog with not much to show for it. I suppose I fear of the same thing happening with videos I upload, heh.
Right now, I'm just using Amazon Affiliates and promoting some of those products on my blog. I was also hoping that I could eventually put together an e-mail list to send offers to.
As for a niche... I'm not quite sure what I could niche down to. To be honest I've been focusing a lot on emotional intelligence, and it doesn't seem like there are many good blogs on that at all.
I definitely need backlinks, that's true. Though I think right now my greatest problem of all is that I've been working on this for several months and I'm feeling very disillusioned, so my motivation has really plummeted. I really need to get the fire back so I can continue building on the base that I've made.
Thanks for all the help and advice, Amy, I really appreciate it.
Originally Posted by christina
You never know which attempt will result in profits. But in each attempt you'll need to stick with it for long enough to give it a chance. That's a psychological blockage every entrepreneur needs to get past.
Most of the world's richest entrepreneurs have failed multiple times before finally succeeding. Some have gone bankrupt (some even more than once), were homeless, etc. Of course I'm not wishing that on anyone. I'm merely pointing out that the best way to success is to take calculated risks, make peace with the fact that failure is a possibility, and to have the resolve to keep trying different things until you see some promise.
We shouldn't think, "what if my next attempt fails again?"
Rather, we should think, "it's OK if this doesn't lead to profits, because I will learn something in the process, so that my next attempt will be more likely to end up profitable."
@matuloo and I have already pointed out WHY your blog isn't ranking. So now you know that simply churning out content won't result in rankings and visitors. Yes you could have done some research 5 months ago and found this out BEFORE putting in all this effort - but heck, nobody's perfect and hindsight's 20/20.
And all we have is the present moment anyways.
So now you have a decision to make: Either stick with the blog but modify your approach, or try something different altogether.
Either way: You can still keep your blog, and maybe sometime in the future you'll have use for it. You may even be able to bundle up the content into a guide and sell that.
Don't look back - look forward.
As for a niche... I'm not quite sure what I could niche down to. To be honest I've been focusing a lot on emotional intelligence, and it doesn't seem like there are many good blogs on that at all.
I definitely need backlinks, that's true. Though I think right now my greatest problem of all is that I've been working on this for several months and I'm feeling very disillusioned, so my motivation has really plummeted. I really need to get the fire back so I can continue building on the base that I've made.
Thanks for all the help and advice, Amy, I really appreciate it.
If you still want to continue with this project, here's a list of tasks I would suggest, in this order:
-Learn about SEO - read a lot of blogs and/or get a solid SEO course or both.
-First of all, pick a niche and identify products and services you can sell to them - whether they be affiliate programs or your own services or whatever else.
-Then, identify relevant keywords with low SEO competition on google, figure out the on-page SEO, start churning out the content. Start collecting email.
-Build backlinks.
As for motivation - I know what it feels like to not know what it is you have passion for. I wished I had more suggestions on how to get that fire back. The best advice I could give - and what has worked for me personally - is to meditate often. Improve your connection with the Source and your High Self, and you'll be more open to receiving the intuition and guidance you need. SEO isn't the only way to generate an online income. Even online marketing isn't the only way. Heck even entrepreneurship isn't the only way. For example, some people prefer the security of having a job. I've seen people that wanted to create an online income because they hated their job at the time, that didn't end up "making it" online, then changed jobs/careers and ended up liking that so much better. Keep an open mind and keep your options open. You don't have to choose between having a job and working online - it's possible to explore both.
I'm starting to babble so will sign off here. Thanks for the discussion @christina and please feel free to continue bouncing around ideas if/whenever you wish. All the best to you in finding your passion soon!
Amy
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