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Today I want to share with you all how blogging about relevant news can increase your website traffic by huge margins. This is certainly one of the best ways on how to increase your website traffic!
This has already happened to me, not once, but twice in the last month and I will talk about each scenario as there are differences in how much traffic I received in each case.
I’ll also talk about where and how you can be alerted of news that’s relevant to your blog topic so you can be on top of it by writing about it right away.
I will walk through the following:
- How I Received My First Spike Of Traffic
- How I Received My Second Bigger Spike Of Traffic
- How Does This Affect Your Blog Overall
- How You Can Be Alerted Of News In Your Niche
HOW I RECEIVED MY FIRST SPIKE OF TRAFFIC
The first big increase of traffic happened on April 21st, 2017 when a social media automation website called Instagress got shut down by Instagram the day before.
On my blog, I promote a similar, much more powerful software called Mass Planner and it was the perfect opportunity for me to write about the news of the competitor being shut down.
While informing people of the shut down, I also told people to go sign up to the product I promote instead, Mass Planner, and as well as naming all the functionalities that were not offered on competitor’s product.
This “news” post then also linked to my full product review of Mass Planner.
It worked like a charm and I received tons of traffic from my post:
As you can see, my blog don’t usually go over 100 sessions a day and on this “news” post, it went up to 171 sessions that day and broke a new record for my site!
The traffic continued to stay mostly above 100 sessions a day in the days that followed as well.
Lesson To be Learned
Now, the actual news of Instagress shutting down came out on April 20th, not April 21st.
I heard of the news that very morning on April 20th and was kind of more worried about the product I was using to see if they will go down too.
I got confirmation from my product that day that they were find and should not worry so because I had a busy day ahead of me, I didn’t think much about it this again till later that night.
Near the end of my day, I was telling myself I need to blog about it so I can recommend a better alternative to my product.
I finished up the work I was scheduled to do that day and then later at night I finally blogged about it, it was around 10pm by then.
The traffic spike then didn’t happen till the next day on April 21st which I was ecstatic about because it hit an all time high for my blog traffic, even though it was on Page 2 only on Google.
Because I was on Page 2, I was thinking, “Darn it!! I should have written this way earlier in the day and I could have maybe caught a bigger wave of traffic if my post was on Page 1!”
Lesson learned.
HOW I RECEIVED MY SECOND BIGGER SPIKE OF TRAFFIC
The referrals were coming in from that first wave of increased traffic and I was so happy about it!
I even started a PPC ad campaign to get my post on Page 1 instead of it being on Page 2 on Google so I can gain even more referrals.
Then BAM!
News hits around noon on May 12th, 2017 that my favorite social media automation program, Mass Planner, has shut down too!!
“WHAT?!” I thought, and thinking about all the money I’ll be losing from all the referrals. At first I didn’t believe the news, and thought it was a hoax.
Then I went to their website and sure enough, nothing but a huge message of the shut down was there and I can’t log in there or anything.
I was so bummed about it but after 5 – 10 mins of sulking, then I thought quickly that I need to blog about this NOW!
Especially when I searched on Google about the shut down and saw no blog posts or news post about it, except the forum that was blowing up with people talking about the shut down.
So I quickly threw something together and it was not even a long post, maybe 300 words! That’s the thing about this, you just need to get your post out there as fast as you can.
I published it (see it here), sent it through “Fetch As Google” on Search Console, and within 5-10 minutes, I already received my first comment on that post!
I was amazed!! I thought, “Wow! I wonder how many people are reading my post.“
So I went to my Google Analytics and looked at my real time report and I actually saw like 10-15 people on my site every time I checked!!
Throughout the day I made edits to it whenever I could to make it better to also add new information I was learning throughout the day, and eventually go the post to over 800 words.
By the end of the day, I still had 3-5 people on my site whenever I looked at my real time stats which I was so amazed because I have never been able to see any activity on my real time stats before… maybe I should have checked in April too but didn’t think of doing it.
Page 1 Results?
Yes, you guessed it, I was on Page 1, Position 3!! Because I didn’t beat out the forum that had higher authority than my site, and they were already all fired up there with two threads going about the news.
So I eagerly checked my stats the next day:
I was floored! My website traffic broke another all time high of 770 sessions a day!!
That was so cool to see and I will never forget this!
I will continue to look out for news like this for my blog because it’s great to get so much traffic to my site like this!
HOW DOES SPIKES OF TRAFFIC AFFECT YOUR BLOG OVERALL
TRUST AND HIGHER RANKINGS
It’s still early to tell from my second spike of traffic, but from the first spike of traffic, I know my site’s traffic continued to stay around 80-120 sessions a day for the days that followed.
Therefore, if you get hits of big spikes like this, it will definitely help your blog increase your organic search traffic overall.
My site’s traffic was always hovering below that and I don’t think now it’ll go back to where it was before.
Therefore, with every huge increase of traffic like this, you earn a little more trust from Google which in turn will raise your rankings on all your posts overall.
The news post from April still gets lots of traffic to it as well as my May news post, of course as it’s only been a few days past.
The traffic from 770 sessions/day has come down quite a bit as expected but now it’s hovering around 200 sessions a day which is a big jump for my blog.
I hope this continues and I will continue to write about relevant topics to increase my organic traffic.
There’s really nothing better than organic search traffic, that’s for sure! Not only it’s FREE traffic, but highly targeted.
I also hope to see my rankings get higher on my other posts in the coming weeks and that Google will give me more higher rankings!
SOCIAL PROOF
Your post has the potential to go viral as many will share your post to spread the news you are blogging about.
It can be shared directly from your post or from your social media accounts as you should have shared your own post on your social media accounts already too.
You’ll also gain organic comments on people having thoughts on your news, so there’s nothing better than this for social proof!
MORE MONEY
If your blog is monetized, the more traffic you get, the more money you’ll earn too, it’s just a numbers game too right?
I’ve gotten different referrals since all this traffic has landed on my site and it’s been really great to see!
This is why your site should always be ready to receive high traffic and monetized from the beginning. You just never know when you’ll get the traffic but when you do, you’re ready.
If you join affiliate programs, sometimes it takes a day or two or more to get approved, so that high spike in traffic will be long gone by the time you get approved.
It’s so important to have your site ready to go and you can learn more on how to monetize your blog here.
HOW YOU CAN BE ALERTED OF NEWS IN YOUR NICHE
If you want to do the same thing and catch some of these waves, I’ll encourage you to do the following things with your niche:
- Set Up Google Alerts – Google Alerts is very easy to set up and you can specify what keywords you want news from as well as specify how often you get the alerts. You can be alerted for product names mentioned in the news or keyword phrases in your niche. The faster you get the news out the better, so get the alerts quickly!
- Networking With Others – This is a huge one to be in the know! News spread like wildfire by word of mouth and you may get the news faster than some news outlets if you or someone in your network is personally affected by the news.
- Hang Out Where Your Audience Is – You have to know where your audience is for your niche. They may be on Twitter vs being on Instagram so you want to check messages on the social media platforms where your audience hangs out so you can see status updates of news breaking. Same with forums, this is totally the case in my situation where that was the most visible of the news on the web was on the forum threads.
- Top Blogs In Your Niche – If you follow some top blogs in your niche, they may hear of news breaking faster than you if they have a bigger network or followers that will give them the news. This is still good for you to blog about it right after them to catch some waves of the news.
I hope this helps you and your blog to try to use relevant news as one way to increase your website traffic!
If you have any other suggestions or have any questions/thoughts about how to increase your website traffic, please leave me a comment below! I always reply to all my readers. 🙂
Let’s make money online!
Heya i’m for the first time here. Thanks for the tips, very interesting about the timing of your posts but it makes sense to do it right away. How do you know what news to pick?
Hi Mikayla, you’re very welcome and thanks for giving me your thoughts and question. You would pick the news that most affect your business/website. The ones I used were about social media and how Instagram was shutting down these bot services that I was promoting so they need to be very relevant to what you’re doing as that will concern your audience too. You will also attract the right new targeted audience for your website if you use news that are directly related to your business this way.
Good luck to you!
Grace