How I Hit 100,000 Page Views Per Month On My Blog

Earlier this summer, I hit a monumental milestone for my blog when I began getting 100,000+ page views per month. I know this is likely small potatoes for some bloggers, but for me it was huge. I never dreamed I would be getting this kind of blog traffic when I started this corner of the internet, so for me, hitting 100,000 felt pretty phenomenal. Today, I wanted to share some actionable steps to take (literally – exactly what I did!) to hit 100,000 blog page views per month and increase blog traffic organically. If that is information you’re interested in, today’s blog post is for you!

How I Hit 100,000 Page Views Per Month On My Blog

Just a little bit of background if you’re new here. I started my blog in late 2010 while I was still in college, I maintained it (loosely) during my time working in the NFL and dove head first into it once we moved to Hawaii. To be honest, I’m pretty dang flattered there are people that show up every day to read my content, so first and foremost — thank you. 

Now, let’s talk about building your blog’s page views. I kept track of what I did from the very beginning (which was next to nothing) all the way to what I did this past winter to build the site traffic I have now. 

Why Content Is Important

1. CONTENT. I know this one seems pretty obvious, but having quality content that people want to read or that people could find useful is important. My readership here is divided into two categories, “daily” and “organic”, meaning that there is a big group of people who show up here everyday to see what’s going on and there is another big group of people who only find my blog through searching, Pinterest, etc. They don’t necessarily check my URL or subscribe to see posts.

This means that I have a whole group of people who care what I did last weekend and another who will never, ever see that post. And for me, that means balancing my content for everyone here. I highly recommend starting to track who is showing up to your blog and what sort of content they want to see.

Grow Your Blog With SEO

2. SEO. I will say this until I’m blue in the face, but if you want to take your blog page views to the next level, you need to buckle down with SEO. This means optimizing your content so that it performs well on Google, or search engines. Essentially – how do people find your blog post that don’t already know about your blog?

When I see SEO posts on Pinterest I dive all in, to learn as much as I can. I want my content to do well, even if that means it takes me two hours or three hours to put a post together, as opposed to one. My 2 Simple Ways To Supercharge SEO is a good place to start! 

SEO For Bloggers

To be completely candid, I did hire out an SEO specialist this spring, because optimizing nearly a decade’s worth of content for SEO is daunting, to say the least. In all actuality, it turned out to be a nightmare, which is a smart lesson to learn that anyone can be whoever they want on the internet, even if it means they don’t necessarily have the qualifications to do what they say they will. It was a hard (and expensive) lesson for me to learn.

Now, I do my own SEO, just as I had done before, and I’ve been doing just fine, but it does require a commitment to updating old posts, researching keywords, shooting new photography, updating Pinterest pins, including ALT text, in-text headlines, etc. SEO is a small word that takes BIG effort and because more and more content is being created daily, the SEO task is never really “done”.

Using Social Media For Your Blog

3. SOCIAL MEDIA. When I explain how social media works to someone who doesn’t work in the industry or doesn’t use it personally, I talk about it like this — “Think of your website as your final destination and your social media channels as vehicles. Every vehicle is different, not all vehicles operate the same way and no two drivers will take the same route, but ultimately, they wind up at your final destination.”

You want to drive people to your website and for me, I’ve found the best social media channels, or vehicles to do this, are Pinterest and Facebook. I do get occasional traffic from Instagram and Twitter, but not nearly what I do from Pinterest or Facebook, with Pinterest being in the lead by a landslide. High quality, vertical images do the best for Pinterest, so keep that in mind when creating content!

How Google Analytics Can  Help Your Blog

4. GOOGLE ANALYTICS. This component is crucial for bloggers who are trying to build their website. It gives such valuable insight into where your traffic is coming from, any referral sites, and how your traffic is behaving once they get to your website (i.e. are they sticking around and clicking around or landing on your website and leaving?). Make sure you’re utilizing this tool to see where you can make improvements, what posts are popular (see also: content that performs well!) and make adjustments accordingly. 

5. TIME. Blogging is a long game, so making sure you are in it for the long haul is important. I have nearly 10 years worth of content on this site, which means that various posts bringing in 40-50 views/day adds up. It helps that some of the posts on here bring in a good deal more than that, but my point is that the longer you are blogging and the more content you produce over time, the more opportunities (and credibility) your site has to be ranked among Google pages. 

This is also a good time to point out that mass producing content is not a strategy I’m promoting, rather, taking time to consciously craft posts, take quality photos and share useful information pays off over time.

I hope that anyone who is trying to hit 100,000 page views on their blog per month found this blog post helpful. If you’re like me, I was clicking and reading on every post written like this in my quest to reach this number! If you’ve been trying to build your audience, what steps are you taking?