This post is a look at how my team built a website that nearly broke 100,000 visitors in the first month after launch, and grew to more than 350,000 organic visits per month in only 6 months.
We were operating based on a modified version of my keyword evaluation model – but we also wanted to test out a new theory. So, taking lessons learned from growing a new website to over 100,000 visitors per month, toward the end of month 7 we decided to try it again.
The thought was that:
- With the right keywords
- Well researched and developed content
- And precision timing
We could capitalize on short-term trends and leverage QDF to gain massive traffic in a relatively short period of time.
The Initial Milestone
Our lofty goal for our consumer products site was to break 250,000 visitors in 90 days, which we did… sort of – it depends on how you measure visitors; total versus unique.
In our first 90 days (July 20, 2012 through October 20, 2012, pictured below) we acquired 471,475 visitors, but only 174,483 were unique. So in total visits we achieved almost double our goal, but in terms of unique visitors we came in approximately 43 percent shy.
Our Approach Was Simple
Our team of content strategists and writers took the nuances of our research and translated the projection data into engaging and, at times, viral content, which was all written content with images – your standard blog posts.
On top of this, we paid attention to a few simple, but key elements:
- Quick to Market: We decided to use a 3rd party platform so we did not have to worry about website configurations, application development, or any of the other technical distractions that come with building a new content-driven website.
- A Focus on Usefulness: We did a lot of research, both into our target content verticals and the keywords and user intent we were going after. Keyword research was one of the battles we fought, but the war was won by developing the best answers for questions that were still out there.
- Jump on Trends: As news broke, became available, or was leaked, we were on it. We curated content from as many reputable sources as possible, provided our own unique and grounded opinions, and got thorough, useful content out the door quickly.
- Build Loyalty and Trust: We were able to grow so quickly because people kept coming back, so we were able to build on top of our traffic month over month. We put a lot of effort into researching our content and curating our posts to be representative solutions for the topics they were covering. For this reason visitors trusted us and would bookmark the site to return later.
Getting Started
Gleaning data and knowledge from our previous experiment into the Japanese market, we went heads down and dove deep into competitive keyword research.
We designed a publication calendar for a few pieces of core content, and then set hooks in place to monitor the news and content outlets where our topics were likely to be published.
We all set up whiteboards in our respective locations (Philly, New York, San Diego, London, Paris, and Tokyo), and used handy tools like Google Hangouts to have live brainstorming sessions.
Furthermore, tools like Evernote and Memonic proved invaluable in helping us curate and share our ideas across continents.
Publishing Prowess
We developed 10 pieces of content prior to launch, and published 4 the first day (July 19, 2012), 4 the second day, and 2 the third day. As soon as we completed publishing on any given day we went immediately back to work researching topics and content highlights for the coming days.
In total we published 20 posts our first week on the following schedule:
7/19 – 4 posts
7/20 – 4 posts
7/21 – 2 posts
7/23 – 1 post
7/24 – 3 posts
7/25 – 2 posts
7/26 – 4 posts
We kept rolling with content production, but really let the demands of our target audience drive our editorial calendar. Beyond some foundational pieces we created to hit certain keywords, we watched for what was gaining traction and stayed agile.
Timing
One of the major success factors was timing content publication with important news events, not as they broke – but before announced. I realize at face value it sounds like I have a team of psychics in addition to my research and content teams, and while that would be pretty cool – it’s unfortunately not the case.
We weren’t capitalizing on news that needed to break, we were capitalizing on events we knew were coming; when major brands have products or service releases they promote them weeks or even months in advance.
We paid close attention to major product releases within our target content verticals and made sure we were poised to take advantage of them as they were announced. This was more than just throwing together a 350 to 500 word article to grab the initial spike in QDF, and while that did help, it wasn’t the driving force behind our traffic.
Trust
What worked well for us was really baking in research, analyst reports, and consumer opinions; sometimes as many as 30 to 40 references. This helped establish our blog as a source of reliable and timely information – and was the driving force behind our strong visitor loyalty.
In the first 6 months our returning visitor rate was just over 70 percent.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Our project requirements were pretty simple:
- Blog based (RSS) platform
- User permissions with roles
- XML-RPC
- Ability to create parent and child pages and categories
- Support rich media
- Support URL re-writes
So instead of creating a new application from scratch, we looked at existing platforms that met our technology requirements, and then narrowed it down based on the simplicity of the interface; it had to be simple enough to allow for the quick on-boarding of new contributors.
After testing half a dozen paid and open-source platforms, we ended up selecting a 3rd party platform called Livedoor. Livedoor is ranked within the Alexa Top 100 (#78) and is the 8th largest website by traffic volume in Japan; it’s stable, scalable, and easy to use.
The ability to lean on an existing platform gave us a short path to scale traffic. Since we were able to get moving quickly, without having to worry about all of the technology headaches that come with self-hosted websites, we were able to really focus on our content and audience.
A word of warning – being locked into a third-party platform isn’t always ideal; if later you need custom functionality or more control over the technology, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. For us, it was a great solution because this was a content experiment, and our end goal was to create an asset to leverage in the future. This probably wouldn’t work for a SaaS business.
The End Results
In the first 7 days we gained 18,626 visitors, of which 11,186 were unique (pictured below).
We were averaging 2,660 visits per day, approximately 931.3 visits per post, and in the first month we brought in nearly 100,000 visitors, coming in close at 92,778 (pictured below).
Some Clarifications
After publishing my post on growing to over 100,000 organic visits per month, I started seeing traffic from some unusual referral sources:
Further investigation revealed that these forum threads contained discussions (sometimes with hundreds of replies) where users expressed their doubt and disbelief that the traffic was all organic, located in the target geography, and didn’t require any proactive link-building.
But the fact remains; there are no secrets to this story.
Nearly all of our visitors were in our target geography of Japan:
And all of our traffic sources were earned (not paid):
The Takeaway
Useful content and a solid, well-researched roadmap is the best way to acquire organic traffic.
If your content is serving a purpose, is accessible, and is easy to consume – your readers will build all of the links you will ever need, and your online presence will flourish as a by-product.
Put in the time, do the research, build your own websites, talk to everyone you can, TEST, and you will start seeing improvements in your organic search.
Thoughts? Reactions? Questions? Thanks for reading.