Yesterday, my main site crossed 1 million page views per month for the first time.
Since the start of the year, I’ve implemented some new techniques that have really given it a boost
So I thought I would share those with you here…
The latest Google Core Update on March 16th has been good thing for this site.
The organic search traffic has seen a 15% boost.
Here’s how it’s looking right now…
The increase in Google Organic traffic was certainly welcomed!
Especially because the main thing I’ve been working on for the last couple of months
Is attracting traffic from sources other than organic search!
Why?
Well, when the Yandex ranking factors were leaked a couple of months ago,
One of them that stood out was ‘amount of non-search traffic‘.
That drew people’s attention to the theory that this may be a Google ranking factor too.
After all, that would make sense, wouldn’t it?
It would be an easy way to separate the content that humans love from that they don’t care about.
Google said themselves that you should avoid creating content ” primarily to attract visits from search engines”.
So, I’ve been working on increasing traffic from other channels.
This is also a good way to diversify revenue streams,
In case the amount of traffic coming from Google drops in the future.
Here are the four channels I’ve been targetting:
- Google News
- Google Discover
To do this, I’ve been creating a new type of content that works well for all of those channels.
And that is – news.
Before you click away…
A few months ago I would have baulked at the thought of adding news content to my blog too.
I’d focused on only evergreen(ish) search-based content.
News sounded like such a treadmill to get onto.
But, since AI tools have arrived to help,
I can now generate a decent amount of traffic, with very little work.
In the past month, the site has had:
- 45,456 sessions from Facebook
- 9,538 sessions from email
- 562 sessions from Google news
- 46,500 sessions from Google Discover
- That’s over 100,000 sessions.
Here’s how I make the content with AI…
(Important: This strategy won’t work for every niche and it isn’t right for everyone, I’m just sharing what’s working for me!)
I find the latest press releases from brands in my niche from sites like prnewswire.com.
When I find one that sounds really interesting, I use AI to turn it into a unique article.
I used to use Chat GPT but since last week I’ve found a much better solution…
I now use KoalaChat.
Hear me out – You don’t need to pay for it!
You’ve probably heard a lot of people talking about KoalaWriter lately.
KoalaChat is different.
It’s completely free for 25 uses.
Or $9 for 1,000 uses per month – this is what I have.
KoalaChat is powered by GPT-3.5 Turbo.
And it’s very similar to ChatGPT.
But for this task, there is one main difference.
And that is that you can get much longer answers, by typing ‘continue’.
Both tools stop mid-sentence after about 500 words,
Here’s what happens when you ask ChatGPT to continue…
It doesn’t listen!
It does continue by starting a new paragraph,
But it then repeats lots of points from the first half, making editing a nightmare.
However, KoalaChat actually listens to the ‘continue’ command, resulting in a whole article!
Yay!
I could publish this with no further editing if I wanted to.
And that would work just fine for Facebook and email traffic.
(Jon Dykstra said he noindexes content he makes for FB)
But, as I also want to index these posts for Google News and Google Discover, I do edit them.
I like to add in personal opinions, anecdotes and links to my other content.
If I have my own images that are relevant, I add those in too.
Otherwise, I just use images provided by the brand.
The free version of KoalaChat gives you 25 chat messages.
So you can test it out by adding around 10 articles to your site.
The $9/month version that I use is now my go-to AI tool.
It’s less than half the price of Chat GPT Plus
And unlike the free version of Chat GPT,
It’s always available
And can write long articles using the ‘continue’ command.
Plus, with the $9/month Koala, you also get access to KoalaWriter – the tool that people have been making a lot of noise about.
KoalaWriter seems pretty good to be honest,
I like that it can give you the outline to tweak before it writes.
I like that it links to sources.
I like that it can pick products from Amazon.
But, I’m going to take some more time to test it out and see the results of the articles it writes before I recommend it.
And that takes a few months, unlike the news content that gets traffic the same day.
I want to see if the articles it creates will rank and get traffic before I use it for more than a handful of test posts.
I’m not ready to dive in and publish a lot of content with KoalaWriter just yet.
I’m far too risk-averse for that!
But, each to their own, of course.
If bulk publishing is your thang, then don’t let my opinion hold you back!
Now that I have a system in place for news, I’m ready to outsource it to a team member for 30-60 minutes per day.
It’s an easy task that can be done on autopilot without me.
And I love that!
But first, I’m going travelling for a week.
I’ll be disappearing from Twitter for 7 days.
The algorithm will hate me but I don’t care – spending time with my kids is more important.
My Tuesday email will be scheduled though,
So look out for that at the usual time.
See you soon!
– NSL
And don’t worry, I’m not going to mention Koala again for a good while, I promise.
I know some of us are sick of hearing about it!
I just wanted to show you what I’m doing with it, as I think it’s a bit different.