How I Grew My Travel Blog by 45k Pageviews in 6 Weeks

In a world where AI is transforming industries, it’s natural to wonder about the fate of SEO and blogging.

While many predict doom and gloom, I firmly believe that the future of blogging is far from dead.

In fact, I have witnessed significant growth on my own blog in the past six weeks, despite minimal involvement. I’ve been driving across the US, climbing mountains, and camping in the woods for most of that time.

During a time when most people are panicking about less traffic or lower income, I’ve had my 3rd highest earning month as a blogger, hit over 150k pageviews for the first time ever, and had 0 active income (aka. blog coaching or audits).

Let me share the before and after of my traffic first, then we’ll dive into what I did (and didn’t do) to get to this point.

45k Pageviews in 6 Weeks

Google Analytics Screenshot 1 (March 2023)*

*Note: I did break my analytics for a couple days when migrating a plugin. Since I was averaging 1.8k per day let’s say an extra 2k pageviews per day to be liberal. So that brings us to 112k pageviews in March.

Google Analytics Screenshot 2 (April 16 to May 15 2023)

This is my traffic in the last 30 days (6 weeks from March 31st). I grew by 45k pageviews!

The best part: I found out by accident that I even hit 100k by applying to a new ad network. The 150k I discovered when I logged in to do some self-study of G4.

Before You Get Your Hopes Up…

Now is this attainable for a newbie? 100% no.

I don’t even think growth like this organically is attainable for an experienced blogger on a new site.

There are some tricks you can do – like internal linking between your sites, syndicating content, buying ads, etc. – that would move the needle faster.

But other than paid ads, you’re unlikely to drive this amount of traffic quickly.

Even though I don’t think this is replicable by someone at say 10k pageviews, I’m going to share how I did it. 

Because while you may not grow by 45k pageviews in 6 weeks, you can definitely see growth with these methods.

What I Didn’t Do to Grow by 45k Pageviews

I didn’t:

• build more backlinks (I already have a lot and a high DA)
• write a ton of new content (I published max 8 posts in the last 6 weeks and most of them still aren’t up to page 1 yet. The two that are, are winter content so they aren’t getting great traffic yet)
• pay for ads (I have ads running to this site for my course, not my travel site in this period)
• suddenly become social media savvy (I did add a couple web stories last week so we’ll see how they go – but they aren’t included in this as I have a separate GA for them)
• use any black hat SEO techniques
• pay for anything related to growth (I bought links to other sites for a trial, but none to this one)

My Steps to 45k Pageviews Explained

Step 1: Conducting an EEAT Audit

This isn’t really a thing but I keep saying it like it is.

So what is it?

An EEAT audit is basically like any other content audit: you go back through old content and improve in. In this case, you specifically improve the EEAT signals.

What is EEAT? It stands for Expertise Experience Authority and Trustworthiness (Google reverses the two Es but I think Expertise comes before Experience in most cases).

In March, I went through about 25% of the posts in detail and over 70% of them quickly to ensure they satisfied EEAT.

Did they include my personal credentials?

Did I mention my personal experience in the place?

Did they have original images?

Was there an original video, if I had one, that I could embed?

Did I link to quality sources?

Did I link to my author page and have an author bio? (Nope! This one I had to add on all my sites.)

Although I haven’t completed the audit for all my content yet, I prioritized posts with the highest traffic potential.

By enhancing the quality and relevance of my articles, I ensured Google knew I can be trusted on these topics and they should listen to me.

Step 2: Using Original Images

While some argue that adding original images doesn’t directly impact rankings, I believe that it can only benefit your blog.

It never hurts to have an original photo, even if the background is slanted or something is blurry or there are 10 random people behind you in it.

My posts with original images ALWAYS do better than my ones without, so I made a concerted effort to have at least 1 per post. (Psstt did you notice the ones in this post yet?)

Again, I haven’t done every single post yet, but I’ve gotten through the top 50%.

I even added a few extra to some posts when I had them available.

This enhances user experience because they can really see the things I’m talking about, and helps them trust that I actually did the thing.

Remember, every little improvement counts when it comes to SEO.

Step 3: Adding Author Schema

Author Schema tells Google who wrote this and why they’re qualified to speak on the topic.

In this post, you’ll see it in two places: in my byline at the top where it says “by Nina” and at the bottom in the Author Box.

I created the Author Boxes with Kadence (it’s soooo easy!). Then I ensured my byline showed and linked to my About Page or Author Archive (I’m trialling both and so far Google seems to be ok with either one).

Google really cares about who wrote the piece now, so be sure to have this up for any and all writers on your site. (It’s a bit harder with guest posts, but I wouldn’t recommend a separate author box and archive for each person.)

Step 4: Optimizing Internal Links

This episode of Niche Pursuits with Cyrus Shepard got me rethinking my internal linking.

I had many posts with dozens of links using the exact same anchor text.

Since, as Cyrus put it, links have 2 types of weight: relevance and popularity, I was undercutting the relevance by using the same words again and again.

It’d be like only ever linking to a post from it’s title: Google sees what you’re doing and kinda ignores the link to some extent. It’s not new to them and provides no more context, so they go “ok, that’s a link. Bye”.

While I don’t think it needs to be different every single time – I do think you should have at least 10 different instances of anchor text.

I had one post with 50 internal links and 40 of them were for the same term! That had to change ASAP.

I identified posts where all the anchors were the same and adjusted them accordingly using Link Whisper.

Optimizing internal links promotes a healthy site structure and helps search engines understand the relevance (aka. topic) of your content.

Step 5: Posts From February Started Ranking

I enlisted the help of a virtual assistant (VA) to upload 20 posts for me in February.

In March, some of these posts began climbing from low page 1 to the top of page 1.

These posts targeted zero volume keywords and were part of a writer trial during the hiring process. I have built 0 backlinks and many of them have only a couple internal links (like I said, I wasn’t working and my VA is new so she hasn’t been trained on this yet).

Delegating tasks to a reliable assistant allowed me to focus on other critical aspects of my blog’s growth. Without her, I wouldn’t have had time to even start the Author Boxes.

Step 6: Updating my Silo Pages for Topical Authority

I neglected updating my silo pages for about six months, but when I finally dedicated time to this task, the effort paid off.

I found a way to automate the process (which I teach in my Profitable Part-Time Blogger program) so I never have to go in and do it again – well not until I have over 200 posts on each subtopic anyway.

Posts that had been stuck on page 2 or 3 suddenly moved up without any other changes being made.

Site architecture is so vital and I’m annoyed it took me months to realize I’d forgotten to do that.

Here is an example of a silo page from She Knows SEO.

Step 7: Diversifying My Content

No, I didn’t add on a new niche or anything. I didn’t even add on a new content pillar.

I’d been doing a big affiliate content push since summer of 2022 (I literally called it the “summer of affiliates”).

That’s great because my income boomed from the $2k or so I made from Mediavine to over $32k in January 2023.

BUT my ad income was stuck. Considering Canada isn’t consistent with tours, I wanted to ensure. I had a good basis of ad income for the cooler months.

The posts I wrote myself (cause as much as I love my writers, I really really enjoy writing solo) were zero volume keywords – much like the ones my writers did in their trial.

A few well-optimized zero volume posts yield faster and more significant traffic growth than I’ve ever had from affiliates – even if they get to the #1 spot.

It sounds counterintuitive – “Nina, they’re zero volume?!!” Nope, they’re not.

One zero volume post gave me the 5k pageview push I needed to get into Mediavine. No backlinks, 2 internal links, 1 picture in the entire post, and less than 3k words.

You 100% need affiliate posts to scale your income epically, but you also need traffic to get people to those posts, and to ensure Google trusts you on the topic before you start selling around it.

Want to learn how I write affiliate posts that earn hundreds of dollars within 6 weeks? Get my Profitable Part-Time Blogger program today!

Step 8: Removing a Slow Plugin

Earlier this year, I removed the Grow.me plugin, and the decision has continued to yield positive results.

However, I discovered some residual code in my C Panel even after removing the plugin.

Eliminating this hidden code further improved the performance and stability of my blog.

I’ve been super lax on dealing with audits and cleaning up my site. Especially since I put them through hell with all of my testing (like breaking a site by adding Ezoic ads to it), I need to be more on top of this.

Removing this plugin from all my sites did wonders for my speed and my rankings that had been stuck since summer of last year finally took off!

Want to know some speedy plugins that are worth your time? Check out my free essential SEO plugin guide.

The Power of EEAT

While I’ve seen tons of other experienced bloggers losing traffic, mine has continued to grow even with all of the recent updates, including the weird beginning of May 2023 one they did in secret, and the loss of some featured snippets for the Google AI.

The biggest difference I notice between my posts and others’? EEAT.

Answering the question “why the f*** should you listen to me?” has always been something I prioritize. 

On the road trip I just finished the US part of, I was researching stuff to do all the time. The amount of posts that never told or showed me that they’d done the thing was CRAZY.

I would leave them almost immediately.

Same for the posts with intros that said nothing of value.

If you can’t tell me in the first 100 words that you can help me, I’m outie. 

The Power of an Audit

I cannot stress enough how badly you need to be doing regular audits of your content.

Things go out of date. You grow as a writer. Google changes their guidelines once again. You may be ranking for things you don’t even realize, and you can optimize for them better.

Last year, I fucked up.

Plain and simple. Towards the end of the year, I was trying to pump out content to hit 100k pageviews (a random goal I set).

I was half assing the content because I was so busy running 5 sites, courses, prepping a membership, and planning an in person retreat.

I was still working full time at a law firm at the same time.

So I skipped internal links, didn’t add alt text beyond the post’s keyword, and often only added one image.

Guess what? Those posts didn’t do well.

And they shouldn’t have done well because they were not that great.

Sure some did rank #1 (which shocked me). And many brought me affiliate income.

But since fixing them, they’ve brought in wayyy more than they ever did before I fixed my laziness.

If you haven’t performed a content audit yet this year, consider this your sign to start one today.

Conclusion: Moral of the Story

So SEO isn’t dead. Blogging isn’t over. We aren’t all out of a job.

My recent blog growth is a testament to the fact that, with the right strategies, you can achieve significant results even with AI and crazed Google updates.

By focusing on key authority signals such as EEAT, original images, internal linking, updating silo pages, and writing informational content, you can skyrocket your traffic too!

Remember, consistently delivering valuable content and doing content audits are vital for your blog’s success. Great content is way better than 2x as much half-assed content.

Want to learn more about how I do content audits, join the Profitable Part-Time Blogger and learn how I make $20-30k/mo passively from my travel blog. 

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